Locked out of the formal negotiations, East Side Commissioner Tommy Calvert (Pct. 4) is exploring new ways to influence a major redevelopment plan in his precinct.
Bexar County is currently working on a deal with the city that would allow the San Antonio Spurs basketball team to move downtown — in exchange for new investments on the East Side, where the team would be breaking its lease at the county-owned Frost Bank Center.
Though Calvert represents both downtown and the East Side and spearheaded some of the only community input efforts surrounding “Project Marvel,” his attempt to claim a seat at the negotiation table was shut down last month and he wasn’t included on an advisory committee of local officials expected to produce a vision of the area’s future.
As the city and county’s discussions continue without him, Calvert is now gearing up for a media campaign to promote the priorities he says East Side residents want — along with some ideas of his own.
This month Calvert’s office took the unusual step of producing and distributing a roughly 400-page book of takeaways from two public input sessions he organized to bring community members into the conversation about what should be done with the area surrounding the Frost Bank Center and Freeman Coliseum.
His office declined to provide a cost estimate for the book, but Calvert has also brought on a videographer and additional communications staff to continue elevating those ideas throughout the negotiations.
It’s unclear how the projects Calvert is advocating for would be funded — the county’s roughly $400 million venue tax that’s being eyed to fund the Spurs’ new arena can only be used on a narrow scope of work. But the results of the input sessions highlight a big disconnect between the arena plans and the public’s desire for other amenities, Calvert says in the foreword.
“Twenty-five years ago, an 18-member committee was assembled by the county, city and the Spurs to create an economic development plan for the arena district,” the book’s summary says.
While that vision was never realized, Calvert’s office said that this time around he wants to be sure the community’s input is not overlooked.
A vision for the East Side
When the county built the Frost Bank Center for the Spurs in the early 2000s — the effort Calvert alluded to in the book’s foreword — residents of the long-neglected East Side were expected to be among the biggest beneficiaries.
The anticipated development around the center never materialized, as Calvert and participants in the information sessions detail. Now, the commissioner and some constituents see a world where Project Marvel negotiations could be used to right past wrongs.
The book also documents a wide variety of community hopes for the area, from more green space and local businesses to a hospital and new school.
At the first of his town halls at the Freeman Coliseum in late January, however, Calvert described his vision for repurposing not just the post-Spurs Frost Bank Center but also a wide swath of the East Side.
Calvert said the arena can’t become another Houston Astrodome, then turned the microphone over to an infrastructure consultant who showed off leafy-green renderings and proposals that had less to do with specifics around reusing the Frost Bank Center than with incorporating an adjacent golf course.
Though residents brought their ideas for what to do with the 18,000-seat NBA arena — from building new apartments and a mental health hospital to educational entities and indoor recreational spaces — Calvert offered up a plan with a wider focus on the future of the entire area, especially the city-owned Willow Springs Golf Course.
“It has been rumored that the City of San Antonio may give Willow Springs Golf Course, the golf course across the street, to the county,” he said.
He said the 18-hole golf course should be removed from the floodplain, an $80 million proposition, and developed into a neighborhood with workforce housing.
The “River East” development also could feature hotels, restaurants, offices and a baby animal breeding zoo “where families could visit the baby animals in partnership with the vet school, rodeo and the zoo,” states the report.
Calvert said conversations with residents and stakeholders revealed that the community “had no objection” to yielding the golf course to the county for the development, though they were adamantly opposed to placing a casino there, he said.
To help fund improvements in the area, Calvert said he recommends establishing a Super Public Infrastructure District (PID) that would span from New Braunfels Street to Loop 410. A PID is a special district created by a city or county to finance, through a special assessment paid by property owners, public improvements within a defined area.
An independent streak
Plans for a much grander project are par for the course for Calvert, who has spent years championing major development concepts like the Link — a quarter mile linear park that would connect the San Antonio Riverwalk to San Pedro Creek Culture Park for roughly $150 million.
But this time his maneuvering comes as officials and business interests pushing Project Marvel, already face growing criticism for a lack of transparency about a massive project that which will require hundreds of millions of public dollars, and that the city has already started lining up potential developers to execute.
Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai, who leads the county’s negotiations, shares Calvert’s idea that Project Marvel is only possible with a plan to spur Eastside development.
Sakai pumped the breaks on plans to use the county’s venue tax for a city-led project that focused solely on downtown, and has made the golf course proposal a top priority — at the objection of some city leaders.
But Sakai didn’t put Calvert on the 18-member advisory committee he assembled to create a vision for the East Side, which included state Rep. Barbara Gervin-Hawkins. And an amendment Calvert introduced at the Feb. 4 Commissioners Court meeting seeking to include himself in the negotiations died after it didn’t receive a second from any of his colleagues.
That’s as the City Council agreed to add East Side Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez (D2), as well as Councilwoman Sukh Kaur (D1), who represents downtown, to all substantive discussions. It was approved with a 9-2 vote.
Meanwhile Calvert, who voted against the memo of understanding that excluded him, has received briefings about the negotiations with the rest of the commissioners during executive session.
To some who fear the East Side is once again being left out of discussions about its own future, Calvert’s efforts to bring more voices into the room has been a mixed bag. On the one hand, he delivered the only public input sessions. But so far, he hasn’t been able to secure a seat at the table.
“The East Side has no hospital. Neglect of food and quality produce [has left it] designated as a food desert. Transportation has long been a problem,” said James P. Amerson is the pastor of St. Paul United Methodist Church, who signed up to speak at the Feb. 4 Commissioners Court meeting in support of Calvert’s inclusion.
“For too long, the East Side has been neglected and not been invited to the table to represent our needs. … As a result, we are fragmented as a community.”
