A rendering provided by the city shows what Project Marvel could look like. Credit: Courtesy Image / City of San Antonio

Editor’s note: The following is a piece of opinion and analysis.

A much-anticipated economic impact report released Wednesday on San Antonio’s proposed Project Marvel sports-and-entertainment district raises more questions than it answers.

Prepared by Minneapolis-based CSL International, the document states that Project Marvel will have a $9.4 billion economic impact on the city over the next 30-years, adjusted for inflation.

For those who need a reminder, the ambitious development has an overall price tag of $4 billion, which in addition to a new Spurs arena, would cover a 192,000-square-foot expansion of the Henry B. Gonzales Convention Center, renovations to the aging Alamodome and a new 5,000-seat concert venue in the former John H. Wood Court House along with a new downtown hotel and residential units.

The overall economic impact promised in the report amounts to about $313 million annually. Not a lot considering San Antonio’s gross domestic product — or total sum of all economic activity — is $182 billion, according to a 2023 report by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Interestingly, CSL International also forecasts the music venue developed in the one-time courthouse would have a higher economic impact on the city than the renovated Alamodome by more than $100 million, adjusted for inflation. Also keep in mind the hall would need to compete against a plethora of other downtown concert facilities including the Majestic Theatre, the Tobin Center, the Aztec Theatre and Stable Hall to name a few.

Meanwhile, the consulting group projects the expanded Convention Center’s economic impact will total $4.2 billion over the next 30 years, adjusted for inflation.

CSL International also included a category called “Mixed-Use District,” which weighed the hypothetical economic impact of 1,920 new residential units, 445 new hotel rooms, 220,000 square feet of office space and 95,000 square feet of office space tied to Project Marvel. The group projects that impact to total $4 billion over the next 30 years, adjusted for inflation.

The report left out how much property tax revenue the city would recoup over the next 30 years. Odd, considering the city plans to use property taxes collected via the new Hemisfair Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone to pay for its share of Project Marvel.

Further, CSL’s report didn’t include a possible economic impact for the Spurs’ proposed $1.5 billion downtown basketball arena — a centerpiece of the massive development.

Consultants hired by Spurs Sports & Entertainment said the arena will create $897 million annually in economic output, measured in today’s dollars. However, CSL International wrote in its report that its staff would need more time to conduct an independent assessment of what the new NBA arena might generate.

It’s also worth noting that other consultants’ past forecasts for large-scale projects in San Antonio have widely missed the mark.

When HVS Global Hospitality Services delivered a 2004 analysis to justify the city’s development of the 1,000-room Grand Hyatt Hotel downtown, conventions in San Antonio produced more than 700,000 hotel room nights annually. HVS projected the new hotel would boost that total by 180,000 yearly.

Instead, the city tallied just 766,259 convention room nights in 2019, even with the addition of the Grand Hyatt and a $325 million convention center expansion in 2016.

Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones and San Antonio City Council were scheduled to discuss CSL’s economic impact report during a special meeting this Thursday. However, the gathering has since been pushed back to next week.

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This article appears in Jul 23 – Aug 6, 2025.

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,...