Gatekeep San Antonio
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Written by A. Addicks, a concerned resident.
The same ground, again
The city paid to give 13 acres away. Now it’s paying 180 times as much to get them back. In the 1960s, San Antonio paid about $25,600 an acre for cleared Germantown land and gave it to the State of Texas for a museum. The University of Texas System ended up with it. In 2026 the city is paying the UT Regents up to $60 million, about $4.6 million an acre, to buy the same land back for an arena. With interest, it comes to $115.7 million, paid from property taxes in the Midtown TIRZ. Since 1964, the city has made five promises on this ground. All five came back for more public money.
Urban Renewal Agency, Civic Center Project No. 5, July 1964. The boundary line is the only color added to the scan.
The ground inside the 1964 line, 1964–2026
| Assignment | What was promised | What happened | Public money again | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1964Germantown cleared → About 1,600 people moved; the city pays a third of the cost, $5.79 million | A world’s fair for the whole city | HemisFair ’68 lost a reported $7.5 million | About $1.61 billion more on the same ground since, in today’s dollars | F |
| 1966–6913 acres given to the State → The city pays about $334,000 for the land, then gives it away | The Institute of Texan Cultures | Open 57 years; torn down in 2025 | Up to $60 million to buy it back from the UT Regents, for an arena | D |
| 1968HemisFair Arena built → | A home for big events, then the Spurs | Torn down in 1995, after 27 years | A convention center expansion on the same spot | D |
| 1968Convention center opens → | Visitors and conventions | 336,966 attendees in 1989; 365,850 in 2019 | Expanded five times; a sixth under study at about $900 million | F |
| 1993Alamodome opens → | The Spurs, and the hope of an NFL team | The Spurs left in 2002; no NFL team | $109 million in upgrades; about $125 million more under study | F |
Different councils, same four steps. The Spurs, Landry’s, the Grand Hyatt and Zachry keep the revenue, minus rent. The city covers the losses with public money: about $110,000 a day.
My grades. The facts behind them are in the ledgers.
— A. Addicks
Sources: City ordinances 34989, 35199 and 37347 (1966–69); KSAT (Sept. 5 and Sept. 11, 2026); San Antonio Report (Sept. 11, 2026); KSAT (Jan. 16, 2026); Urban Renewal Agency survey (1964); Handbook of Texas; Heywood Sanders, San Antonio Current (May 9, 2022), citing city and Arthur Andersen figures; San Antonio Business Journal (Oct. 22, 2026); city convention center official statements; City of San Antonio FY2025 financial reports and budget (costs and income on the 1964 ground, about $40 million a year net); arena term sheet (Aug. 21, 2025). Full accounts are in the ledgers.
Show your work.
A grade without sources is just an opinion. So I went looking for them: the ordinances, deeds, budgets and campaign filings behind every number here, all public and free to look up. Some of those records have my family’s names in them. That’s how I started reading the rest.
Who Is San Antonio For?
Addressed to the
Residents of San Antonio
On the following subjects
Written by A. Addicks, a concerned resident.
San Antonio
Introduction
The first time I spoke at the dais in City Council chambers, I had two minutes. I stumbled over my own name for twenty seconds, then ran through my speech to a row of people who seemed mildly interested at best. That’s what this city offers its residents: a turn at the microphone, while the deciding happens somewhere else. I wanted to know how it got set up that way.
In 1964 the city drew a line around 140 acres of homes and businesses beside downtown and called it a slum. That label unlocked federal urban renewal grants, which cleared it for HemisFair ’68. About 1,600 people lived in this area known as Germantown, a mix of Mexican American, German and Black families.
The fair’s theme (“the Confluence of Civilizations in the Americas”) required removing the real thing it claimed to celebrate. No single villain made that call; the rules did. Until 1977 the charter had every council seat chosen by the whole city instead of by district. A business group, the Good Government League, picked a slate each election, and the North Side’s ballots could carry it; neighborhoods that disagreed lost every seat. Pay for the job stayed next to nothing until 2015, so only people who could afford it served. The 1964 bonds for the convention center and arena went to a vote of property owners only, while three of every four households there rented. Those rules decided whose interests counted, and the same ones keep winning on this ground: about $1.61 billion in public money since, in today’s dollars.
Deciding who belongs on this land is an old habit. Before any flag, the Payaya and other Coahuiltecan peoples lived along this river, which they called Yanaguana. The Spanish crown claimed it next and gathered them into missions. Mexico, the Republic of Texas, the Confederacy and the United States each took it over, and each time those already here were handed new rulers. Five flags passed over these people until 1964, when the city wanted Germantown’s blocks for a world’s fair and the incentive was finally enough to displace them.
My mother’s family reached this river twice.
The first time was 1718, with a soldier named Francisco Hernández. In the 1840s one of his descendants, María Susana Hernández, married Thomas Addicks, the county clerk. Their name came down to my grandfather.
The second time was November 1913. A one-year-old was carried across the bridge at Eagle Pass, one of hundreds of thousands who came north during the Mexican Revolution. He was my grandmother’s father. In 1943 the Army drafted him while he was still a citizen of Mexico. In 1952 he petitioned to become an American. One line never crossed a border; the border was drawn around them. The other crossed it on a bridge. Most South Texas families can tell both stories.
Then I got metiche. The archives that hold my ancestors hold the city’s too. That’s how I found Germantown.
I told my mom recently that reading documents as old as she is has changed how I see this city. None of it happened very long ago, and the same decision-making apparatus still holds the reins. In those files I kept finding human beings: names on deeds, families counted and moved. The land taken from them has been run at a deficit ever since, on the books and off them. In 1966 and 1969 the city paid about $334,000 to give 13 acres of it to the State. In 2026 it agreed to pay $60 million to get that land back. A business that did that would be under new management.
San Antonio needed that fair. And some of what it left paid off: the Tower, the parks, a busy convention center. But it’s an old pattern: decide first, put a public good up front, and keep the ground public and untaxed while a few private players profit. Some of the rules have changed since then: by 1970 the Supreme Court had ruled that renters get a vote too. The pattern is still here. Here’s how it played out:
The ruleAn independent economic study
The ruleA public vote on the city’s share
The ruleNo one pushed out, and housing nearby people can afford
The ruleTaxes, or payments in their place
The ruleA lease as long as the bonds
The ruleThe land handed back to the people at no cost
Better people won’t break the pattern on their own. Different rules will.
The short version · 5 min
Read the bold line at the top of each page. If one catches you, stay and read the whole thing.
Chain of title · eleven generations on the river
The short version · 5 min
Read the bold line at the top of each page. Follow the “Continue” link at the bottom of each page.
The story · 20 min
Every part in order, starting here, with each ledger in brief. Follow the “Continue” link at the bottom of each page.
The full experience
Everything, in the order it happened, starting with the family on this river. Every receipt is linked.
Before any of this was a parcel, it was Yanaguana, home to the Payaya and other Coahuiltecan peoples. In 1718 they received the Spanish here, and everything my family built, kept, and lost on this river runs downstream of that welcome. It’s an inheritance with a debt attached, owed to people who are mostly missing from the archive I’ve been reading. Theirs is a loss I can’t document the way I can document a deed, and it isn’t mine to tell.
Eleven generations, from an alférez in 1718 to a woman who chose his line’s name, on the same river where the city cleared Germantown.
It starts with a man: Francisco Hernández, alférez of San Antonio’s first garrison in 1718. Four generations later his line reached a woman, María Susana Hernández, who married Thomas Addicks around 1841. Five Addicks men carried the name through the 20th century. By the time I reached for the name, it was a choice I made.
I started out checking a family story my mother told and found María Susana Hernández instead. Her family had been on this river since 1718. I did what any history major with no kids would do: I went Henry Louis Gates Jr. on my own ass. Eleven generations, on land grants, court testimony, wills and baptisms. The same archives hold the city’s records: the ordinances, the bonds, the deeds to the ground it cleared in 1964.
Five years ago I couldn’t have told you much about my grandparents. Now I notice how few people know their great-grandparents. I expected the paper to run out around 1800. It didn’t. It turned up Thomas Addicks. He was born in Pennsylvania to a German father and an Irish mother. He spoke Spanish well enough to interpret for a U.S. general. Mexican authorities once jailed him on suspicion of conspiring with Texans.
My first ancestors here were Francisco Hernández and Ana García; their son Andrés names them in his own petition in 1752. In 1717 the commander of the expedition that founded San Antonio listed his soldiers, and the first name is “Francisco Hernández, Alférez, who was going with his family,” with two sons, Nicolás and Francisco, enlisted beside him. On June 14, 1718, six weeks after the founding, the same alférez heads the first roll of San Antonio’s garrison. Every parish record since points to him as my Francisco. The one document that would close it, naming Ana as the alférez’s wife, hasn’t surfaced. What I can trace is the paper trail: a chronological record that starts in the 1700s and runs, document by document, to this ground today. In those three centuries, San Antonio has answered to Spain, Mexico, the Republic of Texas, the Confederacy and the United States.
The record · January 28, 1765
Andrés Hernández and Juana de Hoyos, “consortes, y vecinos de esta Villa de San Fernando y este Presidio de San Antonio de Béxar,” swear before the town magistrate that the herd held by their son Miguel is his alone: 24 breeding mares, a stallion, 12 fillies and 7 colts, grown from a mare his godfather gave him in 1748. They ask that it be written down, “because we are mortal,” so their heirs won’t fight over it. The brands are drawn in the margin. Andrés didn’t sign; Silvestre Joaquín de Soto signed at his request.
Béxar Archives, Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin. Summarized from the original Spanish.
It starts with me. Follow the river backward, one generation at a time, until it reaches Francisco Hernández in 1718. Tap any generation to open its record.
Eleven generations on the river · from me to Francisco Hernández
Each name is the child of the next one along the river. Every link, back to Francisco, is in church, land, court and civil records.
You are here
Present
I started with a family story and kept going. I found it in hundreds of years of documents. Six generations back, María Susana Hernández married Thomas Addicks. Ten generations back, the line reaches Francisco Hernández, the ensign of San Antonio’s founding garrison in 1718.
I took my mother’s maiden name as an adult. It comes from a marriage in 1841–42, six generations back.
2025–2030 Downtown
In November 2025 voters passed Proposition B. The new arena goes on the Institute of Texan Cultures site, the Texas Pavilion from the 1968 fair. The Spurs put in at least $500 million. Bexar County puts in up to $311 million from a hotel and car-rental tax increase. The city puts in up to $489 million in bonds, repaid from Spurs rent, the Hemisfair tax increment district, and state hotel taxes. The Spurs play at Frost Bank Center, the east side arena from 2002, and the Spurs’ goal is to move in July 2030 (the city’s 2025 timeline said 2032). It would be the second HemisFair-era building taken down for something bigger. The first, HemisFair Arena, the Spurs’ first home, came down in 1995 for the convention center. See the official concept renderings by Populous, as published in the San Antonio Report (Nov. 2024) → Sources: City–Spurs term sheet (Aug. 2025), as reported by Texas Public Radio; Bexar County election results (Nov. 2025).
Present Downtown
Hemisfair is now a downtown public district with parks, the Tower of the Americas, the expanded Convention Center, and surviving historic buildings. The Spurs currently play at Frost Bank Center on the east side; Hemisfair continues to be redeveloped.
1995 Downtown
HemisFair Arena is demolished for expansion of the San Antonio Convention Center, two years after the Spurs moved to the Alamodome. The arena had stood on the former HemisFair ’68 grounds since 1968.
1993 Downtown
The Alamodome opens May 15, 1993, on downtown’s southeastern edge. The Spurs move from HemisFair Arena for the 1993–94 season, while their former arena remains standing at HemisFair until 1995.
1973 Downtown
The Spurs moved to San Antonio in 1973 and made HemisFair Arena their home. The former fair arena, opened for HemisFair ’68, became the team’s San Antonio home as the city entered a new era of professional basketball.
b. 1963
My mother, born in Bexar County. Her maiden name is the one I chose to carry as an adult.
Daughter of Eddie and Henrietta.
1968 Downtown
HemisFair ’68 opened April 6 and ran through October 6. The Tower of the Americas, Convention Center and Arena, Institute of Texan Cultures, U.S. Pavilion, international exhibits, and an extension of the River Walk transformed the cleared site into a six-month world’s fair.
1966–1968 Downtown
Clearance for HemisFair began in 1966 and proceeded block by block while construction followed. Homes, businesses, streets, and community institutions disappeared across the 92.6-acre site; a small group of historic structures was preserved.
1964 Downtown
The last snapshot before the clearing: Germantown had grown for a century by then, with simple 1850s caliche houses joined over the decades by late-Victorian mansions, home to a mix of German, Alsatian, Mexican, Polish, and African American families. Rodfei Sholom Temple and St. Michael’s Church stood a block apart, family grocers and a hotel lined Sycamore Street.
1937–2007
My grandfather. Born in San Antonio in 1937; he was twenty-nine when the city began clearing Germantown for HemisFair.
Son of Antonio and Isabel. Married Henrietta Gloria Ortiz, daughter of Ramón Peña Ortiz. Died in San Antonio in 2007.
1949 East Side
The Bexar County Coliseum opens on the east side; it was renamed Freeman Coliseum later in the 1950s. Brothers Harry and Joe Freeman organized ranchers and civic boosters behind the idea, Bexar County broke ground in 1947, and built it as a public facility for the stock show and rodeo. Downtown and Germantown remain dense with houses and shops along the river.
1911–1990
Born in San Antonio in 1911, when the family had been on this river for close to two centuries.
Son of Eduardo and Marciana, born September 2, 1911. Married Isabel Estrada, born 1918 in Mexico. Died January 11, 1990, in San Antonio.
1873–1934
Born February 15, 1873, in Wilson County, Texas. Died in San Antonio in 1934.
Son of Nepomuceno and Juanita María. Married Marciana Algarez, born 1892 in Monterrey, Mexico. Died December 19, 1934.
1850s Downtown
Homes, farms, and new neighbors take root near the San Antonio River as the Germantown community grows.
1842–1914
Son of María Susana and Thomas Addicks, born in Texas in 1842. He worked as a laborer and died in San Antonio in 1914.
Married Juanita María López, born 1843 in Mexico, on August 19, 1870. Died December 21, 1914, in Bexar County, and buried at San Fernando Cemetery. Juanita died in 1906 in Delta County, Texas.
1811–1853
Baptized in San Antonio in 1811. Sometime between 1841 and 1842, during the Republic of Texas, she married a man named Thomas Addicks. This is the marriage that brought the Addicks name into the line. More than a hundred and fifty years later I chose that name for myself, not knowing it would lead me back to the Hernández name, three hundred years deep.
Born May 20, 1811; died around 1853. Her husband is recorded across different documents as Thomas H.O.S. Addicks, Jacob T. Addicks, and Jacob T. O. Addicks, born 1812 in Pennsylvania to a German father and an Irish mother, most likely the same man under different parts of his name.
The only document found so far in Thomas’s own hand, not a record he filed as county clerk (1841–1848), is a map of “the route from San Antonio to Presidio Rio Grande,” dated September 20, 1846, at Yale’s Beinecke Library. He signed it “Interpr. to Genl. Wool, Comdg. Centl. Divn.”: interpreter to Gen. John E. Wool, commanding the Central Division, days before Wool’s army marched to Presidio del Río Grande. He drew it on the back of a blank Bexar County form. He knew that country. By his own sworn account, he reached the Beales colony on the Rio Grande in 1834 and was later imprisoned by Mexican authorities on suspicion of conspiring with Texans.
His notes on the route: “Rio Frio banks very steep, a road to be made. Liona Creek, a bridge required. Nueces River, a bridge required. Rio Grande, a boat required; in low stage fordable.”
b. 1790
Born in San Fernando de Béxar. Father of María Susana, the woman whose marriage changes the name.
Recorded in the family tree as José Felipe del Sacramento. Born 1790; Candelaria Vidaurre was born in 1792.
1744–1816
Son of Andrés and Juana de Hoyos, named for his father and carrying his mother’s surname: Hoyos. Two men named José Andrés, father and son, which is exactly how a generation can seem to disappear in these records.
Born 1744, died 1816. Married Antonia A. P. Zepeda (1747–1805), recorded as Anselma Zepeda on their son’s baptismal record, most likely the same woman under different parts of her name. Father of José Felipe.
A roll of Béxar ranchers from the years of the American Revolution, compiled by the historian Robert H. Thonhoff from Spanish records dated 1778 to 1782, lists a Joseph Andrés Hernández alongside a Francisco Hernández and a Joseph Placido Hernández. One of Thonhoff’s sources, an April 28, 1781 roundup record in the Bexar Archives, names the pastures of San Bartolo, the family ranch. If the family tree’s 1769 death date for the elder Andrés holds, the Joseph Andrés on that roll is this man, the son. That is not yet proven: it rests on the tree, and the roll itself doesn’t say which one it means.
fl. 1726–1765
In 1758 Andrés and Luís Antonio Menchaca settled their competing claims to the wedge of land where Cibolo Creek meets the San Antonio River. Their compromise is the oldest land grant on record in the Spanish Archives of the Texas General Land Office. Andrés took the eastern part and called it San Bartolomé. The deed itself says why Andrés had a claim at all. He was living at San Bartolomé and had settled it more than five years before, on land that Governor Carlos de Franquis had granted to “el difunto su padre,” his late father, more than twenty-two years earlier. That line, written down in 1758 and not assembled after the fact, is what ties Andrés to the man who came before him. The deed doesn’t name his father; Francisco’s 1751 estate papers do.
The deed was executed at San Fernando de Béxar on April 12, 1758, before the alcalde Joseph Manuel de Santa María. It sets out each side’s case before the terms. Menchaca had sued over San Bartolomé because it fell inside the fifteen sitios and twelve caballerías granted to him by sale through the crown’s land judge for New Spain (the Juez Privativo). Andrés’s defense, as the deed records it: “se defendió a causa de hallarse viviendo en dicho paraje, como es constante, y tenerlo poblado hasta la presente más ha de cinco años, por merced que le hizo el Gobernador Don Carlos de Franquis al difunto su padre, de cuatro sitios y ocho caballerías de tierra en el referido paraje de San Bartolo, más ha de veinte y dos años.” In English: he defended himself because he was living at the place, as was well known, and had settled it more than five years before, under a grant Governor Carlos de Franquis made to his late father of four sitios and eight caballerías there, more than twenty-two years ago. Franquis governed Texas in 1736–37, which fits. This is the deed’s account of Andrés’s position, not a separate sworn deposition. If he testified, it would be in the lawsuit behind the deed, “Heirs of Francisco Hernández vs. Luis Antonio Menchaca” (Bexar County Spanish Archives, Litigations no. 1, December 30, 1757), which hasn’t been pulled yet.
The grant is the Compromise Donation Between Luís Antonio Menchaca and Andrés Hernández, dated April 12, 1758. It referred back to earlier grants to the same two men. Thonhoff describes both as sons of soldiers of the Alarcón expedition that founded San Antonio de Béxar in 1718, and his Handbook of Texas entry names Andrés as the son of Francisco Hernández and a longtime soldier of the Béxar presidio. Rancho San Bartolomé, sometimes called San Bartolo, lay on the west bank of Cibolo Creek near present-day Panna Maria, Czestochowa, and Kosciusko, in what are now Karnes and Wilson counties: four leagues and eight caballerías, about 18,599 acres. Menchaca’s ranch, San Francisco, lay west of it, and between the two was Pataguilla, a ranch deeded to the Indians of Mission San Juan Capistrano.
The grant file itself, which the Land Office holds as file no. 98, shows how the deal was made. The land in dispute, fifteen leagues and twelve caballerías, had been sold at auction to Menchaca. Andrés accepted the sale, and in return Menchaca gave him four leagues and eight caballerías: San Bartolomé, “where he has his ranch,” the Rincón pasture beside it, and land up the Cibolo. The petition was received on February 25, 1758, by the captain of La Bahía acting for the governor, and the deed was made at Béxar that April. Menchaca signed it. Andrés did not; another man signed “at the request of Don Andrés Hernández.”
The same file carries the land’s later history. In 1834 José Casiano, a Béxar merchant, said he had bought the larger shares of “the Hernández grazing lands” and asked the court to call in anyone else with a claim to San Bartolomé. Notices went out, and the alcalde of Goliad reported that no one appeared. The papers were certified at Béxar in April 1840 and deposited in the Texas General Land Office that December.
Filed a herd declaration in 1765 protecting his own son’s cattle inheritance. Juana de Hoyos was born in Monclova, Mexico, in 1709. She made her will in San Antonio on April 13, 1785, the year she died; the county files it under her name, as Juana de Hollos, with Andrés named as her husband. The family tree gives his death as 1769, so whether he was still living when she wrote it is an open question. The family’s Ancestry-compiled tree records him as José A Hernández, the same man under a different part of his name.
1731
Thirteen years after the mission, in 1731, sixteen Canary Islander families arrived, were granted hidalgo status by the Spanish crown, and have been credited as San Antonio’s founders ever since, even though the presidio and the mission were already standing when they got here.
1731 San Fernando de Béxar
Canary Island families join the military and civilian community already living at Béxar and establish the villa of San Fernando de Béxar. Main Plaza, town lots and a civil government take shape between the San Antonio River and San Pedro Creek, while the San Pedro acequia carries water to homes and fields. Before San Antonio spread outward, it followed the water.
1718 Downtown
The San Antonio River and the surrounding landscape at the time Mission San Antonio de Valero was founded. Native trees such as cypress, cottonwood, pecan, mesquite, and live oak lined the river.
1717–1751
An alférez named Francisco Hernández, an ensign of the Presidio de los Tejas, enlisted with Alarcón in 1717 “with his family,” his sons Nicolás and Francisco beside him, and stood as alférez on the first roll of San Antonio’s garrison on June 14, 1718. By 1724 Francisco Hernández and Ana García were godparents at the presidio. He was buried at San Fernando on October 4, 1751, a widower. Every record points to one man; the document that would prove it hasn’t surfaced.
Proven from primary records: Ana García was his wife (godparent entries 1724–1734; his 1751 burial calls him her widower), and Andrés and Diego were their sons (1751 estate file, 1757 burial). Ana was alive on August 3, 1734 and dead by 1751; her burial has not been found.
Inference, labeled: that the alférez of 1717–18 is this Francisco. Same name, same company, a son Francisco “el mozo” at the same presidio, and the same founding families as godparents for thirty years. No record yet names Ana García as the alférez’s wife.
Birth years and birthplaces in online family trees (1677; Chihuahua; Tobarra, Spain) are unsourced and are not used here.
Three centuries on one stretch of river.
Drag the slider, or tap a year
The land, 1714–2026
How to read this
1714
Brush country along the San Antonio River. In 1718, Mission San Antonio de Valero is founded near the river’s headwaters. It reaches its present site in 1724.
The Spanish Crown decides where the missions and presidios go, and who gets the land around them.
My line enters the record here: Francisco Hernández, alférez (ensign), enlisted in 1717 “with his family” and on the garrison’s first roll, June 14, 1718. The church records that follow make him, almost certainly, mine.
1731
The villa of San Fernando de Béxar takes shape between the river and San Pedro Creek, around Main Plaza.
The Crown brings Canary Island families and gives them most of the titles and land: town lots, farm plots, and the rank of hidalgo. They are credited as the city’s founders, though the presidio and the mission were already here.
The question
Who got the land?
Mostly the Canary Islanders
The soldiers’ families and the mission already at Béxar did the founding. The newcomers got the titles, the lots and the credit.
1837–1841
Under the Republic of Texas, San Antonio is chartered as a city in January 1837. Land, records and power pass to a new government.
In 1841, Thomas Addicks is elected county clerk at Béxar: my family keeping the kind of records this site is built on.
1850s–1900s
Germantown forms south and east of downtown: families of German, Alsatian, Mexican, Polish and African American ancestry, in houses from 1850s caliche cottages to Victorian mansions.
German speakers outnumber both Tejanos and Anglos in the city until after 1877. The neighborhood grows for a century on its own.
1949–1955
Germantown is still a neighborhood. On the east side, Bexar County opens its Coliseum in 1949.
1951: a new city charter hands day-to-day power to an appointed city manager; the mayor keeps one vote of eleven. From 1955, the Good Government League recruits and funds the council for twenty years in the name of “growth, expansion, and economic development.”
1964
569 structures, 593 households, about 1,600 people on 140 acres. The agency’s own engineers rate 169 buildings sound or fixable.
March 12: the council declares the land “needed for convention center.” May 7: it approves surveys to see whether the area “may qualify” as blighted. August 27: it finds it blighted. Every vote unanimous.
$46M $433M today
$11M in city bonds (1964), up to $18.6M in federal grants (1966–73) and a $16.4M city share (1967).Ords. 32165, 32179, 32291, 32292, 32738, 34068, 35345, 42746
The question
Who decided, and who was moved?
Owners only
Only property owners could vote on the 1964 bonds. Three of every four households rented. Relocation money was capped at about $850 a person.
1966–1968
Germantown is cleared. An architect proposed saving 120 historic buildings; 22 survive.
The city buys 15.813 cleared acres from its own agency for $401,842.54. Then it pays $334,059 for 13 more acres and deeds them to the State.
$334,059
$165,797.45 (1966) plus $168,261.14 (1969) from the general fund, for land handed to the State. Not added to the total, since part may sit inside the 1967 city share.Ords. 34989, 35199, 37347, 45054
The question
Who got the land the city paid for?
The State, free
In exchange for a promise to put up a building: the Institute of Texan Cultures.
1968
HemisFair ’68 opens on the cleared ground: the Tower of the Americas, an arena, the Institute, a convention center.
The Tower is paid for with $5.5M from the city’s general fund. The fair runs April 6 to October 6.
$23M $207M today
$5.5M for the Tower from the city’s general fund, $10M for the Texas Pavilion from the State, $7.5M for the U.S. Pavilion from Washington.Handbook of Texas, “HemisFair ’68”
The fair closes October 6, 1968.
What the ground becomes next is decided by the people who cleared it.
Part II · The ground in play, 1973–now
1973–1988
The Spurs make HemisFair Arena home.
1988: the police contract gets an “evergreen” clause that keeps the old deal running when no new one is reached. A 2014 lawsuit to remove it fails.
1993
The Alamodome opens across I-37. The Spurs leave the ground. Four arenas in sixty years: see where the Spurs have played →
1995
HemisFair Arena, 27 years old, is torn down so the convention center can grow.
2001–2022
The convention center expands onto the old arena site in 2001 ($215M), and again in 2016 ($325M).
The bond machine: $550M in 2007, $596M in 2012, $850M in 2017, $1.2B in 2022. Every five years, bigger than the last.
$540M + $112M + $30M $806M + $136M + $32M today
$215M (2001) and $325M (2016) to expand the convention center, in bonds backed by hotel tax. Then $112M to rebuild Hemisfair: $30M (2012 bond), $36.9M (2017), $39.8M (2022), and $5.4M in Tower repairs. And $30M in 2022 for convention center escalators, elevators and building systems. Refinancings of the old convention center debt are not counted again.City ACFRs; San Antonio Current (2012); city bond program data; KSAT (Dec. 2024)
2026
The Institute of Texan Cultures comes down. The city buys the ground back for $60M.
About $800 million in public money is committed to a new Spurs arena on it.
$860M committed not yet spent
The $60M buyback and the ~$800M public share of the arena: the city up to $489M, Bexar County up to $311M.KSAT (Sept. 11, 2026); San Antonio Express-News (Sept. 30, 2026)
2030 Projected
If it’s built: a new Spurs arena opens on the Institute of Texan Cultures site, inside the 1964 line. The Spurs’ goal is July 2030; the city’s 2025 timeline said 2032.
$2.47B on this ground, if built
$1.61B already spent, plus $60M for the buyback and up to $800M for the arena: the city up to $489M, Bexar County up to $311M.Interest on the new debt is not included, so this is a floor. Spent figures in today’s dollars; committed figures as announced in 2025–26.
I chose a family name and found eleven generations on this river. This is what happened to the ground while they were here.
The question
Who benefits now?
Sixty years, $1.61 billion and counting, one parcel of land.
Sources: City of San Antonio ordinances and council minutes (Municipal Archives); Urban Renewal Agency, Format for Public Hearing (1964); Handbook of Texas, “HemisFair ’68” and “San Antonio, TX”; the family record on The Story. Images are illustrated reconstructions, not photographs.
Now check it on the real ground: the 1964 line, the parcels, and the records behind them.
Ground
Government
Development
Tap a year. Tap anything on the map to see the record behind it.
Streets, parcels, historic districts and parks: City of San Antonio open GIS and Bexar Appraisal District (2026). River: U.S. Geological Survey, National Hydrography Dataset. The 1964 line is traced from the Urban Renewal Agency’s July 1964 boundary plan (R-213) and drawn on today’s streets; the plan itself is overlaid as a document, aligned to surviving intersections to within about 15 meters. The map begins in 1964, with the Urban Renewal Agency’s boundary plan. For the ground before 1964, see the slider above. Owners are named only for public bodies. The 1964 figures come from the Urban Renewal Agency record and City ordinances.
In 1964 the city drew a line around 140.3 acres and called it “for the use of the general public.”
The buildings change. The governments change. The names change. The ground remains. This investigation follows what happens when the city acquires it, clears it, finances it, redevelops it, gives it away, builds on it — and decides what comes next.
The parcel
Urban Renewal Project V, Tex. R-83: 140.3 acres southeast of downtown, roughly from Market Street south toward Durango and from South Alamo east to the I-37 line. Designated “as needed for convention center and other municipal purposes” by Ordinance 32291, May 7, 1964. Today it holds Hemisfair, the Tower of the Americas, the convention center and the old Institute of Texan Cultures site.
The river timeline counts what went in. This is what the ground costs and returns every year, next to the neighborhood that was never cleared.
$1.61 billion in public money spent on this ground since 1964, in today’s dollars. In fiscal 2025 it took in about $40 million less than it cost to run the convention center and pay its debt.
The convention center, year by year
What the convention center took in each year, next to what the city paid on its debt. That’s before paying anyone to run it.
Running it costs more on top
The city budgets the convention center and the Alamodome together. Their operating costs ran $5.4M to $19.3M a year more than both venues brought in, every year from 2017 through 2026. Hotel-tax transfers covered most of it. In 2021–2024, $48.1M in federal pandemic money and $7.6M from the general fund went in too.
Where the annual reports split them out, the convention center alone cost $26.6M to run in 2018, $37.2M in 2024 and $39.1M in 2025.
Is this normal?
Partly. Big-city convention centers get a major project about every 11 years. San Antonio’s has averaged one every 9.6, among the most frequent of 28 cities I checked. Several Texas cities are now tearing theirs down to start over: Dallas for $3.8 billion, Austin for $1.6 billion.
Whether it pays is the open question. UTSA professor Heywood Sanders found that the city counted 336,966 convention attendees in 1989. After the 2001 expansion, consultants forecast 662,000. In 2019 it drew 365,850. The industry argues his data is too narrow. San Antonio is studying a sixth expansion.
Sources: opening and expansion years for 28 U.S. convention centers from city, venue and news records (my count; sources list projects unevenly, so the ranking is approximate). Heywood Sanders, “Space Available” (Brookings, 2005) and his San Antonio Current column of May 9, 2022, citing city and Arthur Andersen figures. Dallas: Dallas Morning News via NBC DFW, Sept. 2026. Austin: Conference & Meetings World, May 2025. Industry rebuttal: HVS, May 2005.
| Fiscal year | Convention center income | Debt payment | Short | Venues’ gap (both) |
|---|
Sources: City of San Antonio Adopted Budgets FY2019, 2021, 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026 (Community & Visitor Facilities Fund; Convention Center Lease Payment Fund); annual financial reports for 2018, 2024 and 2025. Each budget reports actuals two years back; 2018, 2020 and 2025 are city estimates, and 2026 is the adopted budget.
The hotel next door
Sources: City of San Antonio 2012 and 2022 official statements (FY2021 annual financial report, Note 22); Moody’s (May 2005); San Antonio Report (Feb. 23 and Mar. 11, 2022); Bexar Appraisal District.
The tower
Sources: City of San Antonio Ord. 2007-05-17-0570, First Amendment to Lease and Development Agreement, and staff memo (May 2007); City of San Antonio FY2025 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, p. 256.
The ground cleared in 1964
140 acres · convention center, Hemisfair, the Tower
−$40M
every year
Lavaca, next door
138 acres · never cleared · 437 homes
+$6.8M
every year
Fiscal 2025, the latest full year, from the city’s budget and annual financial report. Lavaca’s taxes are its appraised taxable value ($276M, Bexar Appraisal District) at this year’s rates, before homestead exemptions, so actual bills run somewhat lower. Neither side counts ordinary city services like police, fire and streets, which both get. Hotel taxes that visitors pay across the city are not counted as coming back, because they can’t be traced to this ground.
THE PAPER
The Urban Renewal Agency had assembled and cleared the property for the Civic Center project. In January 1966, it conveyed 15.813 acres to the City of San Antonio for $401,842.54. The City paid for that land with proceeds from the 1964 convention-center bonds, and the same ordinance accepted the deed and approved the redevelopment agreement that governed what came next.
The land the city gave away
$334,059the city paid for the land it gave away, 1966 and 1969 (about $3M today)
$25,500per acre, both times (about $247,000 in today’s dollars)
$4.4Mper acre to buy the same land back in 2026: $60 million for about 13.5 acres
Not verified
The condition above is what the 1966 and 1967 deeds say. Whether it was still attached when the land passed to the University of Texas has not been verified. The recorded 1969 deed for the second tract (Ord. 37347), a later deed, or the law that moved the Institute to UT could have released it. Until a title search or a real estate attorney confirms it either way, treat it as an open question, not a finding.
Are you a real estate attorney or title examiner who can help answer it? Reach me through Substack →
Who decided, who moved
Who could vote, Jan. 1964
Owners only
in the bond election
Who lived on the land
76%
of households rented
Bond election rules: Texas State Historical Association, “HemisFair ’68.” Households: the Urban Renewal Agency’s own survey, Format for Public Hearing, 1964 (in the Ord. 32291 file).
The people vs. the ground
Relocation money, per person
$850
at most
Public money into the ground, per person moved
$1.0M
since 1964
Relocation cap: Ord. 42746 (1973). Total: the receipts below. Figures in today’s dollars (CPI-U, 2024).
The debt vs. the income
What it takes in, a year
$26.5M
fiscal 2025
What its debt costs, a year
$30.2M
fiscal 2025
Revenue: fiscal 2026 adopted budget and FY2025 annual financial report. Debt: FY2024 annual financial report (bonds outstanding, final maturity) and the Lease Payment Fund (fiscal 2025 estimate). The debt is paid mostly from hotel taxes, not property taxes, but it is still public money.
One spot, the whole city
0.04%of the city’s land
3.7%of its 2017 and 2022 bond money ($76.6M of $2.05B)
Bond money per acre
Nearly 90 times as much, per acre, as the rest of the city.
Count what’s been spent and this one spot carries about $11.5 million in public money per acre, in today’s dollars. Add the buyback and the arena and it’s about $17.6 million an acre.
For scale: the clearing displaced about 1,600 people. That is roughly $1 million in public money for every one of them, in today’s dollars, spent on the ground they were moved off of, before the arena.
Spent, as spent$751M
Spent, in today’s dollars$1.61B
Committed, not yet spent~$860M
Amounts are nominal unless noted. Funding sources are labeled on each row: they come from different governments and different taxes, and are added together only to show the scale on one piece of ground. This is a selected public-investment ledger, not a complete accounting.
Next bond Hemisfair is already asking for $37.8M more. Not yet approved, not counted above. City staff also want $35M from the May 2027 bond for improvements around the arena site, down from up to $250M floated in 2025. If voters say no, the city manager says the arena deal gets “reexamined.”
The ledger
The convention center, year by year
It has not covered its own operating costs in any year on record here, before a dollar of debt. From 2018 to 2025 its costs rose 47% while its revenue rose 25%.
2015, the last year before the expansion opened, is shown for revenue only: that year’s audit reports the convention center and Alamodome together. Debt payments on the expansion come on top of every year shown: $28.8M in 2024.
Hemisfair owes the city. In 2016 the city borrowed $18.1M for Hemisfair park improvements, to be repaid by the Hemisfair nonprofit out of rent from private development on its northwest corner. That development was delayed. Payments were deferred, $8.8M in missed payments and interest has built up, and repayment doesn’t resume until 2028. The balance runs through 2037.
Beyond hotel taxes. Most of the gap is covered by hotel taxes, which visitors largely pay and state law limits to tourism and convention uses. When those fell short, the city also moved $5.9M from its General Fund (2021) and $6.99M in federal COVID relief money (2024) into the fund that runs the convention center and the Alamodome.
Not counted yet: what the Hemisfair tax zone actually collects, the Hemisfair nonprofit’s lease income, property tax on private parcels inside the line, and convention center costs for the years not shown. None is likely to change which way this ledger points, and each will be added when it’s in hand.
City of San Antonio Annual Comprehensive Financial Reports: FY2018 (Community and Visitor Facilities budget-and-actual schedule, “Total Convention Center”), FY2024 (same schedule; long-term debt table, Texas Public Facilities Corporation bonds), FY2025 (same schedule, p. 342; Tower of the Americas agreement, p. 256; Hemisfair interfund borrowing, p. 119; convention center revenue, introductory section). City of San Antonio FY2026 Adopted Budget (Hotel Occupancy Tax Fund, p. 262; Community and Visitor Facilities Fund, p. 264; Convention Center Lease Payment Fund, p. 267). City of San Antonio FY2021 Proposed Budget, Hotel Occupancy Tax Fund work session, Aug. 26, 2020 (revenue by year, slide 4; General Fund transfer, slide 10). City Council item 20-3442 (Tower antenna leases). Ordinance 42746 (1973), relocation grant. All amounts are nominal dollars for the year shown.
Public money from every level of government: city (including its utility boards), county, state and federal. Figures are before financing. “Today’s dollars” converts each year’s spending to 2024 dollars with the national consumer price index; money from 2024 on is shown as is. The federal figure is the maximum authorized in the 1973 agreement. The arena figure is approximate: about $311M county venue tax, $245M state hotel taxes through a city finance zone and $244M from the Hemisfair tax zone, under a term sheet that is non-binding until final agreements are signed. The 1967 city share leaves out the convention center and arena, so the 1964 bonds are not counted twice.
Not yet counted, so the total can only go up: the 1977 and 1986 convention center renovations, any 2007 bond money, Hemisfair tax zone spending, the city’s yearly funding for the Hemisfair nonprofit, rent the city paid on the fair site (about $347,000, 1966–69), the fair’s reported $7.5M loss, and the city’s two payments for the land it gave the State ($334,059, 1966 and 1969; the 1966 payment may already sit inside the 1967 city share).
City records (City of San Antonio Municipal Archives): Ordinance 32291 (May 7, 1964), the 140.3-acre boundary and map; Ordinance 34989 (Nov. 23, 1966), the ITC land purchase and deed to the State; Ordinance 35199 (Feb. 16, 1967), the second tract; Ordinance 35345 (April 20, 1967), the city’s share; Ordinance 41144 (1972), the land price cut; Ordinance 42746 (Sept. 6, 1973), the federal share; Ordinance 37347 (March 20, 1969; text and vote in that day’s council minutes), the second tract bought and deeded to the State; Ordinance 45054 (March 21, 1975), the exchange with the University of Texas System; Ordinances 31829 (Oct. 17, 1963), 32165 (March 12, 1964), 32179 (March 19, 1964) and 32292 (May 7, 1964), the boundary changes.
Other sources: Texas State Historical Association, “HemisFair ’68,” Handbook of Texas (Tower, state and federal pavilions); San Antonio Current, “Revisiting the great Convention Center black hole” (2012); Henry B. González Convention Center (2016 expansion); Hemisfair, “Our History” (2012 bond); City bond project data (2017, 2022); KSAT, Tower repairs (Dec. 2024) and “Council approves $60M in TIRZ debt to buy land for Spurs arena” (Sept. 11, 2026); San Antonio Report, ITC site acreage (2024), arena public share (Jan. 2026) and Hemisfair’s $37.8M request (2026); San Antonio Express-News, “City staff proposes $442 million bond…” (Sept. 30, 2026), arena shares and the 2027 bond. Land area: U.S. Census, 2020. Per-acre figures use the 139.5 acres inside the 1964 line as drawn on this site’s map.
Who holds the power over this ground, and who chose them.
Pick a piece. Follow the address. Check the record.
San Antonio’s ten council districtsEvery piece is an institution, and its position is geographic, not symbolic. Select one to open its record. The full roster below shows the institution and its stated authority in one place.
The map is the geographic view; the roster is the record view. Pick a question above the map, or tap any piece on it. “Walk me through it” takes you through the record one step at a time.
2 of 9
answer to voters.
And 6 of the 9 have their offices in one council district: District 1. Most of the people shaping this ground work inside a district that elects one of eleven council members.
Tap any district on the map to see who represents it, what it got, and which players sit there.
Beyond San Antonio
Austin every season since 2023. Mexico City six times. Europe nine times, with Paris and Manchester next, in January 2027. The NBA counts those as the Spurs’ 10th and 11th games in Europe, broadcast to more than 200 countries and territories.
My read
The road is good for the brand. Every game the Spurs take to Austin, Mexico City or Paris puts San Antonio’s name in front of fans an arena on the East Side, or downtown, can’t reach. With a French star, Paris plays like a second home crowd. That reach comes from the team and the schedule, not from the building, which is worth remembering before the city pays for a new one.
Sources: NBA Communications, “Pelicans and Spurs to play regular-season games in Paris and Manchester in 2027” (May 2026); NBA Events, Paris Games 2025; Texas Public Radio, 2026–27 schedule (Aug. 13, 2026); KSAT (Apr. 7, 2023); Air Alamo, Spurs Global Games history. Ordinary road games are not shown.
Walk the record1 of 8
Ask the map
Public record layers
City of San Antonio open GIS data. Turn on a layer, then tap or hover a shape.
No layer on
Seven layers, all from the city’s own records.
Start with TIRZ (tax increment zones, where new property-tax growth is kept for projects inside the line) or bond projects to see where public money is pointed.
Pan the map → select a marked place
District lines, Loop 410 and Loop 1604 come from the city’s own GIS data. Each piece sits at its real address, except SAWS, moved slightly so it doesn’t cover the police union. The six downtown offices are too close together to tap here; use the names under the map.
Downtown close-up, not to scale: the six offices inside the dashed circle above, nudged apart enough to click, each still on its true compass bearing from Main Plaza. All in Council District 1 (Sukh Kaur).
Power on paper
Power in practice
1999 · THE QUESTION OF PLACE
The new arena was not inevitable in its eventual location. The Spurs and the city had reached a deal for an arena next to the Alamodome, including its south parking lot. At the same time, Bexar County was advancing a proposal for an arena next to Freeman Coliseum.
In a last-minute reversal, the Spurs went with the county. In August 1999, the county, the Spurs and the livestock show signed a letter of intent for a $175 million arena next to Freeman, paid for by raising the county’s hotel tax 1.75 points and its car-rental tax 5 points. Voters approved it that November.
Sources: The Battalion (Associated Press), Aug. 25, 1999; Frost Bank Center history.
Open one to see which ledgers name it.
Stay on the record
One email when something new goes up. Nothing else in between.
Subscribe by email →The same pattern every time: a public purpose, public money, a new purpose, more public money.
Where the ground went
Then the city gave the ground away. It paid $334,059 to the city’s Urban Renewal Agency, whose board the council appointed, for 13 acres the agency had taken from Germantown, and deeded them to the State of Texas for a promise: the Texas State Exhibits Building, later the Institute of Texan Cultures. It built the Tower, then paid Landry’s to run it: from 2007 to 2013, up to $9.1 million in rent credits covered nearly all of its roughly $1 million yearly rent. Landry’s still holds it, on a contract that runs to 2031. The Grand Hyatt sits on city land, pays no property tax on its parcel, and paid the city no ground rent from 2008 to 2022. Neither do 19 of the 20 parcels in the Hemisfair district, or the convention center.
And the public keeps paying. In fiscal 2025, the ground generated about $40 million less than the documented costs of operating the convention center and servicing its debt. Separately, about $800 million in public money is committed to a new Spurs arena on the Institute of Texan Cultures site, within the former 1964 project area.
This part tracks it deal by deal: who held the power in the room, what they promised against what they delivered, and the rules that would make the next deal different. Better people won’t break the pattern on their own. Different rules will. Sourced and laid out so it can be checked.
Don’t take my word for it. A news story asks you to trust the reporter; this hands you the documents. Each ledger follows a single deal through the public record.
Filed 2026
San Antonio's “independent” economic study on the Spurs arena traces back to the Spurs' own ownership group in four passes, the same move the stadium-subsidy industry has been running for twenty years.
Filed 2026
Two streets, same bond, years over schedule and millions over budget.
Filed 2026
Four arenas in fifty-seven years. Every time, the public was told this deal was different. This ledger checks the paper.
Filed Oct. 2026
Set aside for livestock shows in 1949. Home to an NBA arena by 2002. Who decided the purpose could change, and where is it written down?
Working title
Older than the country, still paying to be picked: a fair, a dome, two arenas and a bigger convention center, beside the bonds residents vote for themselves.
Filed Oct. 2026
The campaigns for the 2022 bond and the arena were paid for by a few, and many of them build what passes.
Filed Oct. 2026
The public owns the ground and carries the debt. The team, the hotels and the operators keep what it earns.
Next
The next deal is being pulled from the record now. Want to know when it posts? Subscribe on Substack.
Not yet in the ledger: Alamodome and Frost Bank Center public costs; 1977 and 1986 convention center renovations; who covered the fair's $7.5M loss; whether the ITC reversion clause survived the transfer to UT (needs a title search).
I built Gatekeep San Antonio with an AI assistant, Claude, made by Anthropic. The research and the argument are mine. I followed my family through the archives, pulled the ordinances, deed records, bond data and council votes, and decided what this site says and why it matters.
Claude wrote the website’s code, built the interactive maps, processed the public data (Census figures, the city’s bond records, the county deed index), ran the numbers and checked facts against the sources. Where a figure is an estimate or a reconstruction, the site says so.
The writing. I brought a very rough first draft. Claude cut away what I didn’t need, and we went back and forth from there. Most of the time, what I typed back was better than what it sent me, and that back-and-forth is what sharpened this. In the end, it’s my voice. When a claim is my interpretation and not a documented fact, I label it that way.
The pictures labeled “illustrated reconstruction” were made with AI image tools. They are not photographs. For much of this ground and these years, no photograph I can use exists yet, so in the meantime the illustrations stand in. Where an AI illustration can be replaced with a real archival photograph, it will be.
Every figure traces back to a public record you can check yourself. If you find a mistake, email gatekeepsanantonio@proton.me or message me on Substack, and I’ll fix it.
Part III · Working title
San Antonio is older than the country. It keeps paying to be picked anyway: by a world’s fair, the NFL, the NBA and the convention trade. Meanwhile the bonds residents vote for themselves run late.
Sources: Ords. 32067, 32291, 35345, 42746; Handbook of Texas, “HemisFair ’68”; San Antonio Current (Sept. 2006); Big City Small Town (Aug. 30, 2025); Fitch Ratings (Oct. 2000); San Antonio Business Journal (Dec. 1998); SA Current (2012); 2012 and 2022 convention center official statements; Bexar County (2015); City–Spurs term sheet (Aug. 2025); Bexar County election results (Nov. 2025); KSAT (Sept. 11, 2026); City Capital Delivery bond dashboard (Sept. 1, 2026); Express-News (Sept. 30, 2026); BLS CPI-U.
Part III · Filed Oct. 2026
The campaigns asking voters for public money are paid for by a few. Many of those few do the work once it passes.
The 2022 bond
Build SA PAC ran the yes campaign for the May 2022 bond. It took in 121 contributions. About a third of the money, roughly $262,000, came from about 40 firms that design or build public works: engineers, contractors and architects.
| Contributor | Gave |
|---|---|
| San Antonio Chamber of Commerce | $137,000 |
| Heriberto Guerra | $30,000 |
| H-E-B, USAA, NuStar Logistics, Gordon Hartman Enterprises, Embrey Partners, John Nau, Eugene Dawson | $25,000 each |
| Joeris General Contractors, S&B Infrastructure | $25,000 each |
| E-Z Bel Construction | $15,000 |
| Graham Weston | $15,000 |
| Zachry Corporation and Zachry Enterprise Solutions | $20,000 |
| Sundt, HDR, Michael Baker, Pape-Dawson, Halff, Raba Kistner, Vickrey & Associates, Quiddity Engineering, KCI, CivilTech Engineering, Ardurra | $10,000 each |
| Landry’s Management (runs the Tower of the Americas) | $5,000 |
Shaded rows: firms that design or build public works.
Two of the builders
Gave $15,000 to the 2022 bond campaign on April 1, 2022. A year later the city brought it in as the second contractor on North St. Mary’s Street, a 2017-bond project.
That street had a $7 million bond budget. It has cost $15.1 million from all sources, and the city’s dashboard still calls it “On Schedule.” See Under Construction →
Gave $10,000 to the 2022 bond campaign on May 9, 2022, while building two downtown street projects for the city.
South Alamo Street had $9 million authorized in the 2017 bond. The cost estimate rose from $36.6 million at the 2021 start to about $48 million. The Zona Cultural streets contract grew from $37.7 million by $2.7 million.
The arena vote, November 2025
Win Together PAC ran the yes campaign for county money toward the Spurs arena. By Oct. 25, 2025, it had reported more than $7 million: $5.3 million in checks from the Spurs and nearly $1.3 million in in-kind help, plus gifts from USAA, Valero, H-E-B, Zachry Corporation, Oxbow Development Group, Silver Ventures, Pearl Real Estate and Bartlett Cocke General Contractors.
The opposition, a PAC formed by COPS/Metro Alliance and funded mostly by member dues, reported $219,000. Prop B passed with just over 52%. At $7 million, that’s about $55 for every yes vote.
After the city’s vote
Seven council members voted yes on the arena terms on Aug. 21, 2025. In the spring of 2026, David Zachry, of the family that runs Zachry Corporation, gave $500 each to six of them: Sukh Kaur, Phyllis Viagrán, Marina Alderete Gavito, Ivalis Meza Gonzalez, Misty Spears and Marc Whyte.
Zachry companies and family members gave to city ballot campaigns in 2022 (the bond, $20,000), 2023 (San Antonio Safe PAC, $35,000), 2024 (Renew San Antonio, $35,000) and 2026 (the pre-K campaign, $25,000). In 2025 Zachry Corporation gave to the county arena campaign.
The status quo isn’t broken. It works for the few people who gain from it, and they have every reason to keep it that way.
Sources: City of San Antonio campaign finance filings (Build SA PAC, 2022; candidate reports, 2021–2026; San Antonio Safe PAC, 2023; Renew San Antonio, 2024; Renew Pre-K 4 SA, 2026), webapp1.sanantonio.gov/campfinsearch; San Antonio Business Journal (Apr. 18, 2023); City Bond Project Dashboard, project 23-01600 (saved Oct. 25, 2026); San Antonio Report (June 14, 2025; Oct. 27, 2025; Nov. 2025); KSAT (Oct. 29, 2025); San Antonio Current and Community Impact (Aug. 21, 2025).
Part III · Filed Oct. 2026
The public owns this ground and carries its debt. Private operators run the businesses that earn on it. Here’s where the money goes.
Money made on the ground
| What earns money here | Where it goes |
|---|---|
| The new Spurs arena | The Spurs keep all of the arena’s revenue, and hold the naming, advertising and broadcast rights. They pay the city $4 million a year in rent, rising 2% a year, about $160 million over 30 years. |
| New property taxes in the Hemisfair tax zone | Kept inside the zone. All of it currently pays for HPARC’s operations: about $663,000 in 2025 and $927,000 projected for 2026. Under the arena deal, it’s pledged to the arena bonds. |
| Hemisfair rentals, events and ground leases | To HPARC, a board of 13 appointed members. It doesn’t publish its rental rates. Lease payments meant to repay an $18.1 million city loan are deferred until 2028. |
| Grand Hyatt rooms and events | Hyatt runs the hotel under a 30-year contract on city land. The city gets about $0.5 million a year in ground rent. The hotel parcel pays no property tax. |
| Tower of the Americas | Landry’s runs it. The city got $1.08 million in 2025, against a guarantee of $984,000 a year. |
| The convention center | To the city, but it doesn’t cover itself: $26.5 million in revenue against $39.1 million in operating costs in 2025, before $32.4 million a year in debt payments. |
| Convention center debt | To bondholders: about $259 million in future interest, through 2042. |
| The only taxable parcel in Hemisfair | The Zachry Park Hotel, 222 S. Alamo, built in 2024 and valued at $40.6 million. The other 19 parcels in the district pay no property tax. |
Shaded rows: private businesses earning on public ground or public deals.
Follow the arena dollar
The city’s share of the arena, up to $489 million, will be borrowed. Four things repay it: the Spurs’ rent, ground rent from the private buildings around the arena, the Hemisfair tax zone, and state hotel taxes from a special finance zone. The first three cover 52% of the payments; the hotel taxes cover 48%.
So the rent the Spurs pay doesn’t reach the city budget. It goes back into paying off the building they use. The tax growth on this ground does the same. The Spurs keep the tickets, suites, concessions, naming rights and broadcasts.
The ground makes money. The public’s share goes back into paying for the ground.
Sources: City–Spurs Sports & Entertainment District Term Sheet (Aug. 2025); Texas Public Radio (Aug. 21, 2025); City TIRZ budget briefings (Sept. 3, 2025; Sept. 1, 2026); City FY2025 annual financial report (Tower, Hemisfair loan) and FY2024 report (convention center debt); FY2026 adopted budget (Hyatt ground rent; convention center debt service); Bexar Appraisal District (Hemisfair district parcels, pulled Sept. 30, 2026).
What council should demand before voters decide the arena bond in May 2027.
Your district
San Antonio asks voters for a bond every five years. The next one is expected in May 2027. Pick your district and see what the last two promised, next to what the city’s own records say happened.
Report card
| Subject | What I measured | Result | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paying its debts | Credit ratings: S&P, Moody’s, Fitch | AAA / Aaa / AA+ | A |
| 2017 bond: finished on time | Projects completed by 2022, the end of its five-year window | 115 of 177 (65%) | D |
| 2017 bond: telling the truth | Of 58 projects that ran past the window, how many the city still calls “On Schedule” | 55 of 58 | F |
| 2017 bond: stayed in budget | Bond money spent within 2% of the bond budget | 170 of 177 (96%) | A* |
| 2022 bond: on track | Projects scheduled to finish by 2027 | 134 of 187 (72%) | C |
| 2022 bond: delivered so far | Bond dollars in finished projects, with about four of five years gone | 17% | F |
| 2022 bond: telling the truth | Of 49 projects already scheduled past 2027, how many are labeled “On Schedule” | 36 of 49 | F |
*The bond amount is a cap; overruns get paid with other money. North St. Mary’s stayed “in budget” on its $7 million of bond money while costing $15.1 million in all. The dashboard’s total-budget field is too unreliable to grade full cost, so this A really means incomplete.
How it’s graded: 90% or better is an A, 80% a B, 70% a C, 60% a D, below 60% an F. The five-year windows are how the city sells each bond (2017–2022, 2022–2027). “On Schedule” may mean a revised schedule; the city doesn’t say. Counts are from the city’s Bond Project Dashboard, saved Oct. 25, 2026; the scale and grades are mine. Ratings as reported in August 2025: S&P AAA and Moody’s Aaa, both top marks, and Fitch AA+.
By district
| District | 2017 bond, finished on time | 2022 bond, on track | Late projects labeled honestly | 2017 bond, in budget* | 2022 bond dollars delivered | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| District 1 | F | 11 of 28 | C | 17 of 22 | F | 2 of 21 | A | 26 of 28 | 35% |
| District 2 | D | 12 of 18 | B | 12 of 14 | F | 1 of 8 | A | 17 of 18 | 22% |
| District 3 | D | 15 of 22 | B | 17 of 20 | F | 2 of 10 | A | 22 of 22 | 14% |
| District 4 | B | 13 of 15 | C | 11 of 15 | F | 0 of 6 | A | 14 of 15 | 23% |
| District 5 | F | 8 of 14 | D | 11 of 17 | F | 2 of 10 | A | 14 of 14 | 24% |
| District 6 | B | 13 of 16 | B | 12 of 15 | F | 0 of 5 | A | 15 of 16 | 28% |
| District 7 | B | 12 of 14 | B | 13 of 15 | F | 1 of 4 | A | 14 of 14 | 11% |
| District 8 | D | 6 of 9 | A | 13 of 14 | F | 0 of 4 | A | 9 of 9 | 48% |
| District 9 | B | 9 of 11 | D | 9 of 14 | F | 0 of 7 | A | 11 of 11 | 21% |
| District 10 | D | 10 of 15 | D | 9 of 15 | F | 1 of 8 | A | 15 of 15 | 10% |
| Citywide projects | F | 1 of 6 | F | 4 of 12 | F | 3 of 13 | B | 5 of 6 | 1% |
| Spanning districts | F | 5 of 9 | F | 6 of 14 | F | 4 of 11 | A | 9 of 9 | 8% |
Same scale and sources as the report card above. “Labeled honestly” combines both bonds: of the projects whose construction runs past their bond’s window, how many the city labels anything other than “On Schedule.” Some districts have only a few late projects, so the counts are shown beside every grade. The last column is the share of each district’s 2022 bond money in finished projects.
Where this comes from. Every number is the City of San Antonio’s own, from its Bond Project Dashboard, saved on Oct. 25, 2026 (the dashboard was last updated Oct. 20, 2026). How I count it: “behind schedule” means the city labels a project “Off Schedule,” or labels it “On Schedule” while its construction runs past the end of its bond’s five-year window (2022 for the 2017 bond, 2027 for the 2022 bond). “Over budget” means bond spending more than 2% over the project’s bond budget. “Cancelled” is the city’s own label. The scope under “Promised” is the city’s own project description. “Spent, all sources” includes money from outside the bond, such as utility or partner funds. Years are calendar years from the city’s date fields. Found something wrong? Email me.
The museums
| Building | Opened | Since then |
|---|---|---|
| Convention center | 1968 | Expanded 1977, 1987, 1996, 2001 and 2016, with a $30M systems upgrade in 2022. A sixth expansion, proposed at about $900M, goes to council for a feasibility briefing Oct. 28, 2026. Is this normal? → |
| HemisFair Arena | 1968 | The Spurs played there 1973–93. Torn down in 1995, at 27 years old, for a convention center expansion. |
| Alamodome | 1993 | The Spurs left after nine years. $109M in upgrades through 2028, and the city is studying about $125M more over the next decade. An overhaul past $1 billion is pushed to about 2035. |
| County arena | 2002 | $101.5M renovation in 2015. The Spurs plan to leave by 2032, at about 30 years. |
| New Hemisfair arena | 2030 (Spurs’ goal) | $1.3 billion, on the ground where HemisFair Arena came down. |
Sources and full accounts are in the ledgers: The Arena Cycle, Ethical Wall, and the convention center records. The 2030 opening goal, the Oct. 28 briefing and the Alamodome study: San Antonio Business Journal, Oct. 22, 2026.
42,704 households in this city don’t have a car.
The first plan for the arena district asked for 10,000 more parking spaces and leaned on about $250 million in city bonds for a garage. That’s about what District 5 got from four bond programs in fifteen years: $246 million. One in seven households there has no car. The one piece that would have tied the East Side to the district, a land bridge over I-37, was shelved. The garage is still being studied.
Only about 1 in 10 of the city’s car-free households lives within a half mile of VIA’s two new rapid lines. The only east–west one was designed to run out to Frost Bank Center, the arena the Spurs are leaving.
If the district is for the city, why is the plan built for the people who drive in?
The term sheet is non-binding until the final agreements are signed. Before then, a study that doesn’t trace back to the team’s own owners. See The Ethical Wall →
Bexar County’s up to $311 million went to voters. The city’s up to $489 million never went to a ballot.
Before paying $60 million for the old Institute of Texan Cultures site, settle whether the 1966 deed’s “shall revert” clause already returns it to the city.
On the arena and the entertainment district around it. Of the 25 parcels inside the 1964 line, 24 pay no property tax today.
Public money comes back if the team leaves early or the promised district isn’t built.
A block of low-price seats at every game. Cheap obstructed-view seats made the old arena everybody’s building.
Plazas and parks built with bond money around the arena stay open on game nights and event days, with published rules for when and how much can be fenced. Hemisfair already closes parts of its bond-built lawn for ticketed festivals, under rates and terms it doesn’t publish. And a way to get there without a car: transit service on event nights, planned before the parking.
No new arena while this one is still being paid for. HemisFair Arena came down after 27 years, and the debt on this ground runs to 2042.
No displacement, and housing nearby that working San Antonians can afford. The last project on this ground moved about 1,600 people.
Who funds the Hemisfair Conservancy, which gave HPARC $2 million for operating costs in 2024, and the terms of HPARC’s deals, before the bond money moves.
Now
The building the State put up on the 13 acres the city gave away was torn down in 2025 (KSAT, Jan. 16, 2026). The Institute now operates from rented space in the Frost Tower downtown. The city paid $60 million to buy the land back.
Mid-October 2026
City staff have proposed a $442 million bond. Seven council members asked for $1 billion.
By early February 2027
Staff want $35 million of it for improvements around the arena site at Hemisfair, down from “up to $250 million” disclosed in 2025. HPARC, the nonprofit running Hemisfair, has asked for $37.8 million.
May 2027
If voters reject it, the city manager has said the city would have to “reexamine the deal.”
July 2030
The city’s 2025 timeline said 2032. On the old Institute of Texan Cultures site. Populous was named architect in May 2026; no final design had been released as of September 2026.
Every one of these is decided in public, by people who answer to voters or are appointed by people who do. That’s where the rules can change: who gets a seat at the table before the deal is made, not after.
Pick your district Not sure? Call 311.
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Sources: San Antonio Express-News, “City staff proposes $442 million bond” (Sept. 30, 2026); San Antonio Report; City of San Antonio budget and council records, as cited elsewhere on this site.
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