Opponents of the plan to sell SAISD land for the San Antonio Missions ballpark hold signs at the district’s public input meeting last month. Credit: Adam Doe

Real estate firm Weston Urban on Friday warned residents of the Soap Factory Apartments they won’t receive a $2,500 relocation stipend if San Antonio ISD doesn’t sell land needed for the downtown ballpark the company wants to develop.

Earlier this fall, City Council and Bexar County Commissioners Court signed a deal with the owners of the San Antonio Missions minor-league baseball team and Weston Urban to move forward on developing a $160 million sports facility.

The paperwork included a clause stipulating that tenants at the Soap Factory — a low-cost downtown complex owned by Weston Urban — would receive a $2,500 relocation stipend to help locate new housing. Weston Urban plans to demolish the Soap Factory to make way for luxury condominiums as part of the stadium project.

As a result of the city and county effectively green-lighting the deal, some Soap Factory tenants have already moved out of the complex with the understanding that they would receive $2,500 to cover their expenses. Some planned to use the money to cover deposits elsewhere or help with moving costs.

“It feels like they backpedaled,” Soap Factory tenant Arturo Villareal told the Current of Weston Urban after receiving the email. 

Villareal, a student at San Antonio College, wanted to use the stipend to put down a deposit on another apartment.

On Friday, weeks after some Soap Factory residents already vacated the complex, Weston Urban clarified that those former tenants would recover nothing unless San Antonio ISD goes through with the sale of a 2.3-acre parcel of land to the Missions’ ownership group, Designated Bidders LLC. Designated Bidders LLC and Weston Urban plan to build the 4,500-seat ballpark on that specific plot of land.

“The city has clarified that the relocation assistance funding outlined in the [memorandum of understanding, or MOU,] is contingent upon finalizing the stadium plan,” Weston Urban said in an email to tenants. “Without SAISD’s collaboration, the MOU and stadium project will not proceed, and unfortunately, the relocation assistance funding and additional resources included in the MOU would not be available to residents.”

Weston Urban’s email to tenants, sent in both English and Spanish, echoes a statement the city provided to the Current last week.

“The funding for the $2,500 stipend is conditioned upon the development of a baseball stadium,” the city said via email. “Unless the property is secured, the stadium will not be built.”

After the city sent out its statement, Soap Factory residents told the Current they felt mislead about the offer.

“It just feels like they’re going to keep the money instead of it going to residents,” tenant Robert Laurence said at the time. “It all seems very shady.”

The condition being applied to the stipends wasn’t made abundantly clear to tenants or the media when council voted to approve the deal in September, leading some tenants to relocate empty-handed.

Even so, the city and county both signed the paperwork knowing that Designated Bidders LLC hadn’t yet acquired the land from SAISD. The land is currently used as a parking lot for Fox Tech High School.

SAISD’s Board of Trustees discussed the potential land sale during a Dec. 9 executive session but took no action.

The district’s board will meet again discuss the matter and unveil its new terms for the land sale on Monday, Dec. 16, at 5:30 p.m. at the district’s headquarters, 514 W. Quincy Street.

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This article appears in Dec 11-17, 2024.

Michael Karlis is a multimedia journalist at the San Antonio Current, whose coverage in print and on social media focuses on local and state politics. He is a graduate of American University in Washington,...