Cityscrapes is a column of opinion and analysis.
From the outset of Project Marvel, it was never clear what real goal the city had in mind for its $4 billion all-this-and-the-kitchen-sink downtown development project.
In addition to a new Spurs arena, the project would include a convention center expansion, a new convention headquarters hotel, an events center, an Alamodome “reimagining,” a land bridge and a “mixed-use district.” All of which city documents claim will have “transformative [and] iconic effects,” raise “quality of life for residents” and bring “enhanced connectivity.”
Yet there didn’t seem to be any unifying strategic purpose, beyond just doing more of the same for the hospitality industry and hoping it helps us reel in more visitors.
But now, thanks to stirring rhetoric from Trish DeBerry of Centro San Antonio, our local downtown organization, and Jeff Webster of the Greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce, the real intent and purpose is clear.
In a debate with former Councilman Greg Brockhouse broadcast Oct. 10 on KTSA, DeBerry termed the proposed Spurs arena “transformational.” She and Webster even went on in an Express-News opinion piece to deem the downtown sports and entertainment district anchored by a new arena “a game-changing move that will define the city’s next chapter.”
“More importantly, it sends a clear message: San Antonio is ready to play on a bigger stage, both from an economic attraction and retention standpoint … . The time to go big is now,” the two boosters gushed in their piece.
If that rhetoric has a slightly familiar ring to those who have lived in San Antonio for a decade or two or three, it should. Residents have been treated to a parade of big public investment projects and public-private partnership deals over the years that have been promoted with almost exactly the same over-the-top rhetoric.
There was Fiesta Plaza on the near West Side in the mid-1980s, fondly remembered as the “Pink Elephant.” At the time, then-Mayor Henry Cisneros touted it as “an exciting place … filled with specialty shops, restaurants with an international flair, endless entertainment” that would become “a major visitor attraction in a city already ranked third in tourism in America.”
Fiesta Plaza was supposed to be joined by a high-rise office tower, a new hotel and an array of single and multifamily residences “blended into a total community setting,” with the promise that it would “make San Antonio one of America’s most attractive cities in terms of growth, jobs, flair and economic health.”
Today, it’s the site of UTSA’s Downtown Campus, the Pink Elephant long since torn down.
Then, of course, there’s Rivercenter Mall. At the time it was announced in 1980, the head of Centro, the downtown group now led by DeBerry, called the mall “the largest single development ever done in San Antonio in terms of money … it’s mind-boggling.”
And when the “Just Add Water” mall opened in early 1988, Cisneros was on hand to dish out the praise, calling it “the most important addition to the river and downtown — perhaps the entire city of San Antonio — in the last 20 years.” It was termed a “catalyst for revitalization of the downtown area.”
Then of course there were the thousands of new jobs promised by the development of the Alamodome, forecast by economist M. Ray Perryman in a study paid for by the Greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce.
And the grand prospect of a Houston Street lined with major national retailers such as Bath & Body Works and Barnes & Noble bookstore promised by Federal Realty in the first incarnation of the downtown thoroughfare’s 1999 tax increment zone project.
And the promise of more visitor dollars from the 2001 convention center expansion and from the city’s financing and ownership of the Grand Hyatt hotel. And the promise of a big increase in convention business from the last convention center expansion in 2016.
The colorful rhetoric continued flowing through Mayor Julián Castro’s “Decade of Downtown,” which built a great deal of market-rate and luxury housing in the center city, much of it along the river’s Museum Reach.
A quick check online for mentions of San Antonio’s downtown transformation also brought up a May 2015 Express-News editorial headlined “Houston St. projects can transform,” which offered the judgment that for “too long Houston Street downtown has shouted out neglect.” But change was on the way, the piece proffered, citing news of “major transformational redevelopment on Houston [Street].” The editorial went on that “downtown is on the cusp of something grand if all goes as planned.”
So how is the Houston Street transformation coming along, and the “grand” downtown a decade later?
According to real estate firm CBRE, the third-quarter 2025 vacancy rate for Class A office space downtown is 40.2%. The availability rate, including space available for sublease, is an absolutely unheard-of 43.5%.
Yet the city is planning to persuade some “private developer” — not the Spurs — to build a new 220,000-square-foot office building as part of its “sports and entertainment district.”
Perhaps our city officials don’t understand what a market is.
With the Frost Bank’s new tower and the shift of city offices to its old building, now dubbed City Tower, downtown offices have emptied out. USAA abandoned One Riverwalk, VisionWorks has left the IBC building, Zachry Group has moved to Wurzbach Parkway, and AT&T is leaving downtown for Westover Hills.
The planned new “private development” next to the Spurs’ proposed arena has no developer or commitment from the NBA team in sight because it makes no economic sense. Neither does a new arena for the Spurs.
Isn’t it time we learned?
Heywood Sanders is a professor emeritus of public administration at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
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