Residents of Bexar County, Texas, will go to the polls in November to vote on raising taxes on hotels and car rentals to help fund a new San Antonio Spurs arena, after county commissioners voted 4-1 to put it on the ballot.
Because we can’t have nonconfusing things, the ballot measure will come in two parts:
The first asks if voters are willing to spend $191.8 million for upgrades and expansions to county facilities on the East Side, including the Frost Bank Center, the Freeman Coliseum and the San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo Grounds.
The second question will ask whether to use the remaining funds — up to $311 million — to help fund a new downtown arena for the Spurs.
So if one wins and not the other, will the taxes only be raised partway? Will they still both go up, but the money will only be spent on one of the two uses? San Antonio Express-News? KENS-TV? Anyone?
The tax hike would only raise $311 million for the Spurs over 30 years, so it would only cover about $150 million of up-front arena costs. But not to worry — team owner Peter Holt is also looking for about $500 million in city money from existing hotel and business taxes, and hasn’t ruled out additional asks toward the arena or the larger Project Marvel, which would include a convention center expansion and new hotel and Alamodome upgrades and other stuff, and is expected to cost more than $3 billion in total, of which Holt would commit to putting in about $1 billion. None of those additional subsidies are expected to require public votes.
And how does Holt, who unlike most of his fellow NBA owners is not a billionaire but a mere hundredmilllionaire, justify asking for all this public money for his private sports venture?
“For context, of the 30 NBA teams, the 14 smallest-market teams all have publicly funded arenas. The average is 70% public funds. … The most recent, Oklahoma City, is 95% funded by public funds,” Holt said.
Ah, “all the other kids are doing it.” A classic!
Holt was notably quiet about the Convention, Sports & Leisure consulting report that projected the development could be worth $18.7 billion to the city, possibly because word was starting to get out that the report was, well, let’s call it crap:
The forecast is “jaw-droppingly vacuous” and doesn’t include market, cost or risk analyses, said Susan Strawn, a member of “No! Project Marvel” and former District 1 City Council candidate.
CSL provided no explanation of the data underlying its assumptions and no study of alternative uses for the public funding that’s expected to flow into the district, she said during a press conference Monday outside the Alamodome.
And FoS convention center correspondent (and University of Texas at San Antonio professor) Heywood Sanders adds:
In 2003, CSL forecast that an expansion of Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania Convention Center would boost hotel room night generation from an annual average of 503,000 to 786,000. In 2024, the expanded facility generated 411,315 hotel room nights. It’s never even come close to that 503,000 number again.
Other projections by the consulting firm have also missed the mark.
There’s still a long way to go before all the boxes are checked for this project, and San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones has been strongly critical of it, saying Holt should be asked to kick in a share of team revenues. Still, that won’t stop Holt from trying to lock in his first tranche of subsidies in November, before asking for his next few hundred million. Keep that up long enough, and pretty soon you’re talking real money!
“ In 2024, the expanded facility generated 411,315 hotel room nights. It’s never even come close to that 503,000 number again.”
That’s likely typo in original? Maybe should be 2004 or 2014? Otherwise seems pretty unfair to expect the record to be toppled in seven months.
The convention center had 503,000 attendance in 2003, was expanded after CSL projected attendance would rise to 786,000, and instead fell to 411,315.
I believe we’re talking room nights rather than center attendance. Either way, it would make sense that “It’s never even come close to that 503,000 number again” since that mark was set seven months ago.
O, sheesh. I should read site after coffee, not before. I think I may have partially made a modicum of sense though … maybe.
Ha, yeah, it’s a lot of dates to parse before coffee. But “again” here refers to after 2003, not after 2024.
And yes, room nights, not attendance, my bad.
The decline in the number of room nights is likely due to other factors related to Philadelphia. It isn’t like they expanded the convention center and events avoided it solely because it got bigger.
It’s because the convention center business has been tanking for a couple of decades, yet convention center capacity is expanding everywhere. If you read Sanders’ book “Convention Center Follies,” he provides scads of examples of expanded centers seeing attendance (and room nights) decline even after consultants like CSL predicted the opposite — it’s hardly just a Philly thing.
Of course, Philly visitors are doubling-up on hotel room stays! Trying to save money to spend at the basketball/football/baseball games and wrestlemanias (not sure if the plural of wrestlmanias is supposed to be wrestlemani …?)
But hey, fellow San Antonioians , the team won’t move to hated Austin, and nepo baby Holt gets richer along with Sixth Street Partners and Michael Dell. Win! Win!