An artists rendering of what the new downtown minor league baseball stadium for the San Antonio Missions might look like. Credit: Courtesy Photo / San Antonio Missions

The boys of summer are still headed downtown, but they won’t get there until 2029.

The San Antonio Missions minor league baseball team is pushing back the opening date for its publicly financed $160 million ballpark by a year because of a shortage in construction materials, the Express-News reports.

Randy Smith, a co-founder of real estate development firm Weston Urban and part of the Missions’ ownership group, told the daily the park will debut on opening day of the 2029 baseball season, as opposed to the opening day of 2028, as originally planned.

Completion of the apartments, hotel and retail shops planned for the area around the new stadium also will be pushed back to 2029 or early 2030, or two years later than first expected, he added.

“Anything can change, but I think we are, as a group, confident that it’s not likely to get worse,” Smith told the Express-News of the new timeline.

Major League Baseball, which gave the Missions’ owners a 2028 deadline for moving into its downtown digs from the aging Nelson Wolff Stadium, approved the revised timeline, the paper also reports.

As a result of the slowdown, the city of San Antonio and Bexar County will push back their sale of bonds to cover their $126 million share of the park’s cost, according to the Express-News. The city and county plan to repay the bonds with tax revenue generated by the now-delayed development around the sports facility.


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Sanford Nowlin is editor-in-chief of the San Antonio Current. He holds degrees from Trinity University and the University of Texas at San Antonio, and his work has been featured in Salon, Alternet, Creative...