Owners of the Missions Minor League Baseball team are on track to build a $160 million, 7,500-seat stadium northwest of downtown, following an agreement reached Monday night to start acquiring the last piece of land.
Opponents of the stadium plan had hoped that a dusty parking lot owned by San Antonio Independent School District could offer one final chance to derail the project, and packed several SAISD board meetings begging trustees not to play ball with developers.
In the end, SAISD extracted promises of affordable housing units, a parking garage and land for a new Advanced Learning Academy campus in exchange for a tentative agreement to sell the lot.
The board voted 5-1 to approve a non-binding memo of understanding between SAISD, the City of San Antonio, Bexar County, Weston Urban Management LLC, and the Designated Bidders LLC, which owns the San Antonio Missions.
Trustee Sarah Sorensen voted no; trustee Stephanie Torres was absent.
A legal contract will come at a later date, but the agreement allows developers to move forward with a conceptual framework for their plans.
Though the stadium was never expected to go on SAISD’s land, the broader project hinges on tax dollars from a much bigger redevelopment of the area around it, including thousands of new housing units and commercial properties.
What SAISD will get:
- Land for a new Advanced Learning Academy: Weston Urban will donate land for SAISD to build the new ALA campus and a parking garage near the Fox Tech campus. The agreement said that having the developer pay for the new campus, as was requested by SAISD, wouldn’t be legal.
- Fox Tech parking: Bexar County will build a parking garage on the Fox Tech campus. The lot would also be used for game day parking, but SAISD would own it.
- Affordable housing: The city and county will partner on plans for at least 1,250 family affordable housing units in SAISD’s boundaries
- Event space: SAISD will be able to use the stadium facility for events like sports games and graduations.
- Position of power: A seat on the City of San Antonio’s Housing Trust Board, which oversees affordable housing policy. This was offered instead of a seat on the Houston Street TIRZ board.
What the Missions get:
- Exclusive sale: The purchaser would have the exclusive rights to buy the property from SAISD.
Driving a tough bargain
Some critics were still disappointed with Monday’s outcome, in part because of the developer’s overall stadium plan calls for demolishing and displacing residents of a 1970s-era apartment complex.
“If the Soap Factory [apartments] were destroyed right now, I don’t qualify for assistance, and I will be homeless,” said Phillip Adcock, a resident of the apartment complex who presented the board with a petition of signatures requesting board members reject the deal.
But others praised the district’s leaders for tough negotiation tactics — which started with demands valued at 20 times the value of the parking lot, according to one local developer.
“This body was the only public entity to call for a town hall and center the voices of the people most directly impacted by this proposal,” said Adrian Reyna, executive vice president of the union representing SAISD employees, called San Antonio Alliance, which supported the ultimate agreement.
“You have stood firm in the face of immense pressure from the wealthy and well-connected of our city, to ensure that affordable housing is a non-negotiable part of this proposal,” Reyna told the board members.
After the city and county had already agreed to the developer’s asks, SAISD issued a list of “terms” for their their parcel of land, including a new $45 million school building for the district’s Advanced Learning Academy, which SAISD had planned to expand on the property.
The district also wanted guarantees of more affordable housing within SAISD’s boundaries, to help mitigate already shrinking enrollment that’s contributed to the closure of 13 campuses this year.
It’s unclear how the district will hold the other parties accountable for the agreement’s affordable housing goals. But district leaders said their unusual ask to include that provision was righting a wrong from the city and county’s earlier agreements.
“This has been a big value for us, the affordable housing for our community,” said SAISD Superintendent Jaime Aquino. “I think we’re getting the attention of the city and the county on this very important issue that maybe has been neglected.”