The following is a piece of opinion and analysis.
Chatter about what might happen to the San Antonio Spurs if Bexar County voters reject a proposal to raise the county’s visitor tax to 2% to finance an arena for the team has reached new levels of hysterics.
Given the hyperventilating nature of many online posts, one might assume the Spurs Coyote has already rented a U-Haul and is packing up his things at the Frost Bank Center in preparation for a speedy departure.
Meanwhile, former Mayor Henry Cisneros — the visionary behind the Alamodome, San Antonio’s SeaWorld and the since-razed development detractors call the “Pink Elephant” — this week warned in an Express-News op-ed that the city will enter a “downward spiral” and become the next Oakland if voters reject public funding for a Spurs arena.
Dramatic much?
In reality, many publicly financed arenas and stadiums that do go to a public vote failed the first time around. And yet, those cities where arena votes failed still have their pro-sports teams.
One needn’t look far for examples.
Houston voters, still smarting from the relocation of the Oilers football team to Nashville two years earlier, rejected a 1999 referendum to use the visitor tax to build a $160 million downtown arena for the Rockets.
Sound familiar?
But, alas, the Rockets didn’t pick up and leave like the Oilers. Instead, Houston officials and the NBA team worked out a new plan with better terms for taxpayers — and it passed the following year.
Some will argue that example doesn’t hold water because San Antonio is a far smaller market than Houston. If that’s a concern, one should look at the fight over the Charlotte Hornets’ arena project.
In 2001, Charlotte voters rejected a plan to use tax money to pay for a new arena. However, unlike what took place in Houston, the Charlotte City Council found a mechanism that bypassed a second vote altogether, eventually leading to the construction of the Spectrum Center.
And there was the rejection by Jackson County, Missouri’s voters of a sales tax increase to build a new stadium for the Kansas City Royals and renovations to Arrowhead Stadium. And the 1997 vote in southwestern Pennsylvania to pay for a new stadium for the Pittsburgh Pirates using taxes.
And yet, the Royals, Chiefs and Pirates are still in their hometowns.
The rhetoric about relocation, especially from Cisneros, a respected former mayor, is disingenuous, deceitful and a makes bad-faith argument. There’s a greater chance of the Alamdome finally landing an NFL team than there is of the Spurs leaving if the Nov. 4 vote fails.
And if the franchise does leave after a single vote, did they really deserve us anyway?
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