Worth to be read
An Arena Wasteland
Web Posted: 11/04/2007 12:54 AM CDT
John Tedesco
Express-News
When Bexar County asked voters in 1999 to approve a $175 million arena for the San Antonio Spurs, officials promised it would spark "economic development opportunities" for the neglected East Side.
Today, few businesses have opened their doors near the arena — even as the Spurs ask for more tax dollars to upgrade the 5-year-old AT&T Center.
A new tattoo parlor on Houston Street appears to be the latest investment in the neighborhood. It opened in a stretch of boarded-up buildings in early 2006, said David Leon, the shop's ornately tattooed owner.
Business is good, Leon said. But no customers stop by after a Spurs game.
"I think they're too scared to even stop, because of how bad the label of the East Side is," Leon said.
Despite a lot of talk and studies, the neighborhood around Leon's shop hasn't changed much since Nov. 2, 1999, when voters overwhelmingly agreed to subsidize the arena with a venue tax on hotel rooms and car rentals.
The team wants to tap into the venue tax again, a move that will be up to voters. The Spurs started with a wish list of $164 million in improvements for the AT&T Center. The county told the team to whittle their proposal to $75 million.
More coverage
Talk Back: Do you think the AT&T Center has improved life for the people who live and work nearby?
Bexar County Community Arenas Masterplan
Bexar County Community Arena Project's 1999 FAQ
But so far, the arena has failed to accomplish everything voters were once promised by the county. Sluggish growth near the AT&T Center has troubled those who argued against the location.
"It's been disappointing to me that there hasn't been more development in that area," said former Mayor Howard Peak, who tried unsuccessfully to have the arena built downtown.
Peak is a member of a San Antonio River committee that, like the Spurs, is seeking venue tax dollars. Peak said he's not trying to spoil the team's efforts to improve the AT&T Center. And he insisted he has no desire to reopen old wounds from the heated arena campaign of 1999. In fact, Peak said he likes the arena and believes it serves a vital purpose.
But a lack of change in the aging neighborhood near the arena gnaws on the former mayor. African Americans and Hispanics are the majority on the East Side, and many residents there feel left out of the city's booming growth.
(Bob Owen/Express-News)
The run-down neighborhood around the AT&T Center hasn't changed much since the venue was built.
"The thing that bothers me the most is, the East Side is one of the areas that needs lots of help," Peak said. "There are good people there who want better things for the neighborhoods they live in. Lots of money was spent. And except for some relatively small instances, the area is much the same as it was."
Empty promises?
County Commissioner Tommy Adkisson, a staunch supporter of the arena, insisted voters were never assured of an East Side revival.
"We never promised a rose garden, so to speak, because we knew going in, it wasn't going to be the end all, be all," said Adkisson, who debated Peak on local television in 1999 about the merits of where to build the arena.
Adkisson said if the AT&T Center had been built downtown next to the Alamodome, as Peak proposed, it would have cost taxpayers more money, and it would have created nightmarish traffic jams.
And Adkisson said the arena clearly improved the East Side, despite the lack of visible growth. The arena draws large crowds for concerts, special events and the annual Stock Show & Rodeo.
Women and minorities owned many companies that helped build and operate the 18,500-seat arena, he said.
"It was the great mother lode of economic opportunity" for those companies, Adkisson said.
During the intense campaign for the arena plan in 1999, the county's sales pitch included many promises. The arena was built primarily to keep the Spurs in San Antonio. But part of the pitch said the venue also would be a "new node for economic development."
The county's Web site offered voters a "frequently answered questions" page regarding the arena proposal. Under the question of "who benefits," the county's FAQ sheet said the new arena "spreads the wealth" by bringing "the potential of spin-off economic development opportunities to an underdeveloped part of the community."
One of those opportunities was an entertainment district, according to then-County Judge Cyndi Taylor Krier, who spearheaded the push for the site's location.
Three months before the November 1999 election, Krier told the San Antonio Express-News that civic and business groups had discussed ideas about how to develop the area.
Those ideas, Krier said, included "restaurants, a hotel, an entertainment district, recording industry facilities, an ag industry showcase and sports training facilities."
In the years after the election, local officials and the Spurs held out cautious hope that the arena would be a catalyst for growth.
Spurs owner Peter Holt estimated it could take a decade or longer.
"We have purposely tried not to over-promise," Holt told the San Antonio Business Journal in October 2002, a month before the Spurs first played in the new arena.
"We can't change this neighborhood overnight," Holt said. "However, there is the beginning of some momentum here. Now we have to keep it going."
No change
Krier was on her cell phone with a reporter last week, answering questions about the AT&T Center, when she had an idea.
"Why don't we go over there together?" she asked.
Krier had fought hard as county judge to give the East Side a new arena. She clashed with then-Mayor Peak about the venue's tax funding and location.
The bitter fight left scars that, eight years later, have yet to heal. On the phone, Krier suspected — incorrectly — that Peak had tipped off a reporter about the arena's failures.
"He absolutely refused to work with the county in any way on this," Krier said.
A few hours later, Krier drove to the newspaper building in a gray Ford Taurus she calls her "mobile office," picked up her passenger and turned left on Houston Street, the main corridor to the arena.
It was a sunny autumn afternoon, and as she drove toward the AT&T Center, Krier pointed out how the street had been repaved and cleaned up.
"It's clearly become safer, and its appearance has been upgraded," the impromptu tour guide said. "That's often a first step to get folks to come back in."
Krier sees potential for growth beyond the arena's immediate area. The stretch of Houston Street leading to the East Side, for example, could be redeveloped to offer an attractive link between the arena and downtown, she said.
Within view of the arena, the drive was interrupted by a Union Pacific train rumbling across Houston Street. The spot where Krier stopped, off the southwest corner of the arena's sprawling parking lots, offered a snapshot of the chaotic mix of land uses surrounding the site.
The nearest buildings were Leon's tattoo parlor, a tiny funeral home, an auto repair shop, a vacant liquor store and a quiet, aging neighborhood.
Beyond the tracks on Houston Street, a Coca-Cola bottling plant operates south of the arena. Directly to the east, golfers hit the links at the city-owned Willow Springs Golf Course. A Ryder truck rental office and similar companies do business in an industrial zone north of the arena.
Few, if any, businesses appear to complement a state-of-the-art sports arena.
A 2003 study conducted for the city, the county, the Spurs and a community group noted that the "disorganized area" surrounding the AT&T Center challenged redevelopment. The area is an "incongruous mix of industrial, commercial and residential uses, as well as underutilized and vacant land."
Cake, no icing
In Krier's eyes, opportunity fills the area. Salado Creek flows east of the arena, and she said it could be a beautiful spot for development outside the flood plain.
She noted sparks of new investment. At the Willow Springs Golf Course, former Spurs player George "The Iceman" Gervin opened a restaurant in 2003.
Northeast of the golf course, Bill Tidwell, president of Cardell Cabinetry, bought the luxurious Red Berry Mansion in 2002 and remodeled it for special events, such as weddings and corporate meetings. The mansion is about a mile from the AT&T Center.
As the last of the rattling Union Pacific cars rolled by, Krier shifted the Taurus into gear. The arena loomed into view and Krier pulled into the parking lot.
She checked the odometer.
"OK, 3 miles," Krier announced.
To critics who felt the arena should be built downtown to bolster the tourist-dependent economy, here was evidence that they nearly got their wish, she said.
"It really is closer than I think folks realize," Krier said.
As Krier explored the streets and neighborhoods around the arena, she occasionally dwelled on the unhappy possibility that more shops and restaurants won't be built near the AT&T Center.
She acknowledged there's not much for Spurs fans to do after a game. Police direct the flow of traffic away from the center as efficiently as possible. Krier wondered if more restaurants could be built on the property for fans who want to stay, maybe for dessert or coffee.
Looking back on the 1999 arena campaign, Krier said County Commissioner Adkisson was right — the county had been careful to refrain from grandiose pledges of an East Side revival.
When reminded of her comments before the election about an entertainment district, Krier said: "That absolutely was something that's been discussed. It just hasn't materialized.
"That would have been icing on the cake," she added. "We still have the cake — in the AT&T Center."
A bad choice?
Critics of publicly subsidized sports stadiums say the venues are poor economic generators.
Neil deMause, co-author of the book "Field of Schemes," said the only successes he's found are in areas that started taking off before the sports team arrived — places like the SoMa District in San Francisco, the Gaslamp Quarter in San Diego, Calif., and Baltimore's Inner Harbor.
"What you want to help promote development is something that will bring people there to shop 365 days a year," deMause wrote in an e-mail to the Express-News.
"And sports facilities, which are dark more nights than not, only open for a few hours a day when they are, and encourage fans to spend as much as possible inside their gates, don't fit the bill very well."
The Colorado Rockies disappointed fans in the World Series this year. But their Coors Field, built in Denver's thriving LoDo, or lower downtown, area, has won many supporters.
Asked to describe business during the World Series, bartender Michael Derben answered: "It was insane."
Derben serves drinks at the El Chapultepec jazz bar in Denver, a block away from Coors Field.
"Pretty much every bartender I know is begging for a vacation right now," Derben said.
LoDo was on an upswing before Coors Field opened in 1995. Civic boosters said pedestrians walking to games and hanging out downtown afterward have helped LoDo thrive. Public transit solves some potential parking problems.
"It's a case of the stars aligning — Coors Field definitely being one of those stars," said Sarah McClean, spokeswoman for the nonprofit Downtown Denver Partnership.
In San Antonio, the California-based HollyHills Group has bought land around the arena and announced plans for a complex of shops, sports fields, a hotel and even a NASCAR track. Some county officials were openly skeptical.
"We have not walked away from the East Side vision," said T.J. Connolly, the company's spokesman.
But he criticized the county for lacking a vision of its own.
The county paid more than $200,000 for a study last year that examined how to revamp the AT&T Center property and the surrounding neighborhood. That research is now "collecting dust," Connolly said.
The study recommended that a 200-room hotel and sports field be built near the golf course at Willow Springs, with the goal of attracting people seven days a week, not just during events at the AT&T Center.
One chapter of the study is titled "Fulfilling the Promise."
Has it been fulfilled?
"I think it's a work in progress," said former Mayor Ed Garza, whose firm helped write the study.
No clear answer
County Judge Nelson Wolff said it could take years for anything significant to happen near the arena. He noted that the hotels, condos and restaurants built near the Alamodome were a long time in coming — and it doesn't hurt that the Alamodome is downtown.
"Stadiums, in and of themselves, do not create economic development," Wolff said. It's going to take an investor with deep pockets and government backing to reshape the neighborhood, he said, and so far the most promising discussion he's had is with Tidwell, the owner of Red Berry Mansion and other properties near the arena.
"He's a businessman. I said, 'You need to bring somebody in who's a developer, who will work with you,'" Wolff recalled. "I don't know what he's done with that."
Messages left at Tidwell's office last week weren't returned. City Councilwoman Sheila McNeil, who is working on bringing new entertainment venues to the East Side, also did not return repeated messages.
From the Spurs' perspective, spokesman Leo Gomez said the NBA team is proud of its neighbors. But he emphasized the Spurs never promised a new arena would bring them an economic boom.
"We know better than that," Gomez said. "It hasn't worked in any other community in the country. And it's not going to happen here."
Gomez said the real question for voters is simple: Should the AT&T Center continue to be a top-notch facility for San Antonio? If so, he said, it needs more tax dollars to keep it that way.
Within view of the arena last week, a woman stood across from Leon's tattoo parlor, hawking purses to passing motorists.
Denise Nobles, a lifelong East Side resident, seemed surprised by this question: Has the arena improved life for the people who live and work nearby?
Nobles noted that the many potholes of East Houston Street have been paved over. The repairs probably wouldn't have happened, she said, without the AT&T Center.
"I feel like, they wouldn't have done it just for the blacks," Nobles said.
Trying to think of other possible benefits, Nobles remembered that a friend works at the arena.
"A lot of people got jobs over there," Nobles noted, referring to the small army of employees that sell concessions and maintain the cavernous structure.
"They're not paying jack," she said of the arena jobs. "But when you're not doing nothing, anything helps."
When it came to whether the arena has ever drawn new investment to neighborhood, Nobles kept hitting a dead end. Finally, she gave an answer.
"You know what?" she said. "I really don't know. Maybe it is helping, but I just don't see it."
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