On January 14, 2026, the San Antonio City Council received updates on two major downtown projects: the proposed sports and entertainment district (including a new Spurs arena) and the proposed downtown minor league baseball stadium. The meeting began at 1:03 PM and ended at 5:42 PM. Staff presented detailed work plans for 2026, including timelines, budgets, and public engagement strategies. Council members provided feedback on priorities such as parking, transportation, affordable housing, community engagement, and the need to balance downtown investments with citywide infrastructure needs.
Presentation: Ben (staff) presented a 2026 work plan that builds on the non-binding term sheet approved last summer. Key elements:
Council Discussion:
Key Outcomes:
Presentation: Ben presented the 2026 work plan for the proposed downtown ballpark, which is further along. Key elements:
Council Discussion:
Key Outcomes:
Good afternoon. The time is now 1.03 p.m. on Wednesday, January 14th, 2026. Happy New Year. And the City of San Antonio B session is called to order. Madam Clerk, please call roll. Councilmember Corps. Councilmember McKee Rodriguez. Present. Councilmember Via Gran. Here. Councilmember Mungia. President. Councilmember Castillo. Here. Councilmember Galvan. Councilmember Alderete Gavito. Here. Councilmember Mesa Gonzalez. Present. Councilmember Spears. Councilmember White. Mayor Jones. Mayor, we have a quorum. Thank you, Madam Clerk. We've got two items for briefing today. The first is an update on the proposed downtown minor league baseball stadium, and the second is an update on the proposed downtown sports and entertainment district. Eric, over to you. Thank you, Mayor. Good uh good afternoon, Mayor Council. Um, so this afternoon's uh presentation are on um two items um the downtown district um and and the um uh baseball um each presentation includes um an overview of the proposed work plans that are underway and the anticipated timelines of all the major work efforts um in each of these areas um with a big focus of on the things that um will occur later on in the year um much work needs to be done in these areas um given the the depth and amount of information included um you know i think what we're gonna do and i i uh we talked to the mayor's office earlier we're gonna break this up into two presentations so that uh we do we we we um spend time on each one of those um the other the other part of this is that and i'll I was gonna say it at the end but I'll take an opportunity to say it uh up front you know this is um um we're gonna need to set a regular time frame and update tempo for the council um and the public um as we go forward so it's one of the things I wanted to get some feedback from you all uh this afternoon um and that starts uh really today um much like we do uh with the airport in the sense that we have there are a lot of things happening at the airport not just the terminal development plan but we bring those together in to uh in in a quarterly fashion to the council if not sooner um remember for some council members we did it we did it more often early on in the in that project um and I do anticipate us needing the need to needing to have a regular executive session conversation to be able to discuss matters of negotiation when we get to that point uh later on in the year but I suspect that council will want to have some of that conversation early on um quickly so those are a couple of things that that are uh that you should consider as we as we go through the the work plan of these of these issues um and we're gonna start with um the uh the downtown district first thank you so good afternoon mayor and council members so as Eric said I'm gonna kind of walk through our proposed work plan for calendar year 2026 and is your mic on I think so there you go all right good afternoon mayor and council members so uh with the presentation today we're gonna walk through our proposed work plan for 2026 calendar year uh this work plan really builds upon the work that's been done before it takes into consideration some of the phasing that we've talked about before you know the district's got a number of very large projects in there we've talked about the fact that we've got to really phase those over time in order to be able to implement that so that is built into this work plan uh it takes into consideration our non binding term sheet on the arena project which that's the framework for how we proceed with that project and again builds on the work that we've done before so let me talk a little bit about what's in the work plan and then what's not in the work plan when we talk about the district so our work effort's gonna focus on the expansion of the convention center and I'm gonna go into these in more detail on subsequent slides. So our work effort's going to focus on the expansion of the convention center, and I'm gonna go into these in more detail on subsequent slides. This is the phased one where we've talked about previously. This is a focus on what is the dome need in terms of operational capital so it can continue to function and operate. The larger potential renovation reimagination of the dome, we've pushed that out into around a tenure time frame, so around 2035. We're gonna talk a little bit about infrastructure improvements for the district, uh mixed use development, connectivity. So we've talked about in the past how do we create more connectivity between the Alamo Dome and the eastern side of IH 37 with the park on the western side. So we'll go into a little bit more detail on that. What is not in the work plan is and you see on the right there the convention center hotel. We've talked about before that we'd kind of push that out into kind of the second phase. Um that's more challenged because the site we were looking at is the current side of Chill Water Plant. I'll give you a little bit of an update on that today. But we had already kind of pushed that out. That is not in the near-term planning for us, and I'll go into a little bit more discussion on that. The other one is the event venue listed there. So today we own the Wood Courthouse. Great opportunity to renovate that, turn that into an event venue, potentially a live music venue. Um it is not in the work plan given some of the other work that we need to do on the things I just went over. We are looking maybe towards the end of the calendar year to start to look at what do we do with that. So we might try to incorporate that towards the end of the calendar year.