duncan228
01-31-2010, 11:21 PM
Spurs get another chance to fulfill AT&T Center's promise (http://www.mysanantonio.com/sports/spurs/Spurs_get_another_chance_to_fulfill_ATT_Centers_pr omise.html)
Scott Stroud - Express-News
The San Antonio Spurs have a chance to deliver on a decade-old promise.
Emerging plans to bring streetcars and perhaps even light rail to the city could spark some of the East Side development that building the AT&T Center was supposed to have brought about more than a decade ago.
To help make that happen, the Spurs might have to offer up the fruits of their most recent political victory, the May 2008 election in which voters approved putting $100 million in revenue from the venue tax on hotel rooms and rental cars toward unspecified improvements to the AT&T Center, the Freeman Coliseum and the rodeo grounds.
The opportunity arose last week, when VIA Metropolitan Transit trustees directed staff to apply for a $25 million federal grant to put a streetcar plan in motion. The grant would fund the beginnings of a 2.2-mile, north-south segment along Broadway and South Alamo Street, which officials estimate would cost $90 million, with an east-west route stopping short of the AT&T Center to follow.
It's part of a larger plan that Mayor Julián Castro, Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff and VIA Chairman Henry Muñoz are pushing to re-think public transit, an ambitious effort they hope eventually will include light rail.
VIA board member Rick Pych, president of business operations for Spurs Sports & Entertainment, wondered why an east-west route wouldn't come first and, without mentioning the AT&T Center specifically, whether planners had considered extending the proposed east-west route to Brooke Army Medical Center. Coincidentally (or not), that would take it past the arena.
Castro and Wolff appeared together before the board, vowing to raise public and private money for the project as it unfolds. Wolff, the driving force behind the 2008 venue tax campaign, said afterwards that using venue tax money was worth considering if the AT&T Center were on the streetcar line. “If you were going east and west, some of that could be available,” he said.
Less enthusiastic was Leo Gomez, the Spurs' vice president of corporate communications and public affairs.
“My understanding is the Prop 3 money is pretty well defined in the ballot language as such to be utilized for the arena, the coliseum and the rodeo grounds,” he said.
The ballot language approved by voters included all of those things, but it also allowed for “improvements to roads adjacent to the Coliseum and the AT&T Center, and related infrastructure.”
That's a definition you can drive a streetcar through.
The good news is, the Spurs have been enthusiastic about recently revived efforts to bring new life to the East Side, and Gomez said streetcars would be a huge step forward for the area around the arena.
“We're excited enough about the possibility that we are willing to sit down and figure out what's the appropriate mechanism.”
So maybe this can be worked out in a way that suits everybody, but the Spurs have to help make it happen. Whether that involves venue tax money or other funds doesn't matter all that much, not as long as they do their part to fulfill the arena's original promise.
Scott Stroud - Express-News
The San Antonio Spurs have a chance to deliver on a decade-old promise.
Emerging plans to bring streetcars and perhaps even light rail to the city could spark some of the East Side development that building the AT&T Center was supposed to have brought about more than a decade ago.
To help make that happen, the Spurs might have to offer up the fruits of their most recent political victory, the May 2008 election in which voters approved putting $100 million in revenue from the venue tax on hotel rooms and rental cars toward unspecified improvements to the AT&T Center, the Freeman Coliseum and the rodeo grounds.
The opportunity arose last week, when VIA Metropolitan Transit trustees directed staff to apply for a $25 million federal grant to put a streetcar plan in motion. The grant would fund the beginnings of a 2.2-mile, north-south segment along Broadway and South Alamo Street, which officials estimate would cost $90 million, with an east-west route stopping short of the AT&T Center to follow.
It's part of a larger plan that Mayor Julián Castro, Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff and VIA Chairman Henry Muñoz are pushing to re-think public transit, an ambitious effort they hope eventually will include light rail.
VIA board member Rick Pych, president of business operations for Spurs Sports & Entertainment, wondered why an east-west route wouldn't come first and, without mentioning the AT&T Center specifically, whether planners had considered extending the proposed east-west route to Brooke Army Medical Center. Coincidentally (or not), that would take it past the arena.
Castro and Wolff appeared together before the board, vowing to raise public and private money for the project as it unfolds. Wolff, the driving force behind the 2008 venue tax campaign, said afterwards that using venue tax money was worth considering if the AT&T Center were on the streetcar line. “If you were going east and west, some of that could be available,” he said.
Less enthusiastic was Leo Gomez, the Spurs' vice president of corporate communications and public affairs.
“My understanding is the Prop 3 money is pretty well defined in the ballot language as such to be utilized for the arena, the coliseum and the rodeo grounds,” he said.
The ballot language approved by voters included all of those things, but it also allowed for “improvements to roads adjacent to the Coliseum and the AT&T Center, and related infrastructure.”
That's a definition you can drive a streetcar through.
The good news is, the Spurs have been enthusiastic about recently revived efforts to bring new life to the East Side, and Gomez said streetcars would be a huge step forward for the area around the arena.
“We're excited enough about the possibility that we are willing to sit down and figure out what's the appropriate mechanism.”
So maybe this can be worked out in a way that suits everybody, but the Spurs have to help make it happen. Whether that involves venue tax money or other funds doesn't matter all that much, not as long as they do their part to fulfill the arena's original promise.