Downtown San Antonio Baseball Stadium
 

Apparently, the Missions (minor league team) and UTSA have had discussions about locating a shared facility downtown.

Here is the non-subscriber teaser paragraph from SA BIZ JOURNAL: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanantoni...h.html?s=print

Any subscribers with full access?

Thoughts?

Why do we need another baseball stadium? Wolff stadium may not be downtown, but it's still pretty nice/newish.

Why???
 

I just don't understand...let us build another stadium and not worry about getting water. Back when we voted for the Alamodome we voted down building a reservoir or building a damn (I forget exactly). The wells we drink from are going dry...who cares if we don't have water...we got baseball!

Texas has too many dams as it is, and they are horrible for the health of our natural water ways. They're certainly not the way out of this water crisis.

Regardless, we don't even know how this hypothetical stadium project would be funded, so I don't know if we should go down the path of "here's what the money should be spent on..." It's not necessarily an either/or proposition.

Also, I doubt a minor league/college baseball stadium would be as expensive as the 'Dome, though I could be wrong. SA knows how to screw these kinds of things up.

Not quite sure how concrete these plans were/are, but there were/are plans (back in July) to build 4 new fields near the Wolff....

http://www.mysanantonio.com/sports/m...nt-1468731.php
I think that Bexar County is going to invest in facilities for UTSA regardless; last year they(Missions) discussed partnering with UTSA so that the Missions could play on campus. I guess Wolff must see this as a bargaining chip to offer land near DT, probably some money (as some was already given to UTSA earlier this year) and let the Missions and UTSA work out the rest.

From: SA Business Journal
W. Scott Bailey


San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro has proclaimed this as the “decade of downtown.”

Wolff says a downtown baseball stadium could be an economic-development catalyst, driving other development and activity.

“I think it would attract more people to live and work downtown,” he says. “It would also draw more people who are living in the outer reaches of the county to the center city.”

The Roadrunners currently play their home games in a small stadium tucked into a corner of their far Northwest Side campus. The university will move all of its athletics programs up to the Western Athletic Conference beginning next year and is looking to improve its facilities to
The Missions, members of the Double-A Texas League, play in an aging stadium that was built in 1994 and is located on the Southwest Side, in a neighborhood that has endured a number of economic setbacks over the years.

“There is evidence that the current situation isn’t working for the fans,” says Deputy City Manager Pat DiGiovanni about the Missions’ ballpark, named for Wolff, who was instrumental in getting it built.

Cities that have invested in downtown ballparks have had success,” he adds.

Naming rights
Associate Athletic Director Brad Parrott says while UTSA’s preference is to build a new baseball venue that is part of a larger on-campus athletics complex, there are some economic challenges associated with such a plan.

“Ideally, if we are going to share a ballpark, it makes the most sense to us that it be (on campus),” Parrott says. “If that’s not possible for the foreseeable future, with the amount of fundraising that we need to do, we would consider moving downtown.”

Hickey was unavailable for comment at press time.

The Missions like the idea of a move downtown.

“It would be fantastic for baseball in San Antonio,” says Missions President Burl Yarbrough. “Downtown would be a great place.”

Wolff is not convinced that San Antonio needs to pursue a move up to Triple-A baseball now to build a new stadium. But he says a new ballpark should be built to accommodate future opportunities.
Branch Rickey III, president of the Triple-A Pacific Coast League, won’t comment on the prospects of San Antonio moving up the baseball ladder, citing concerns about territorial rights and respect for its sister Texas League as reasons. What Rickey does say is that the PCL is aware that “there is a stadium-related dialogue going on (in San Antonio) which has referenced Triple-A baseball.”

Wolff says San Antonio could potentially build a first-class minor league ballpark for as little as $25 million. He believes a good portion of that funding could come from naming-rights revenue because a shared downtown ballpark would have more dates and higher visibility than the Missions’ current home. The balance would likely have to come from public sources.

Great opportunities
Ben Brewer, president of Downtown Alliance San Antonio, says Wolff’s idea has merit.

“It’s absolutely doable,” he says.

“I’ve seen what a downtown ballpark did for Oklahoma City,” adds Brewer, who provided consultation to Oklahoma City officials for the development around their baseball stadium. “There are great opportunities to do something awesome here, to create a mixed-use development around a downtown ballpark.”

Wolff says there are multiple downtown sites that could accommodate a new ballpark. He lists the area immediately south of the Alamodome Alamodome

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Follow this company , land UTSA owns at nearby HemisFair Park, and the former Fox Tech High School campus as some of the possibilities.

“There are some viable places to do this,” he says.

Others at City Hall have explored such a plan. John Clamp was pursuing the idea of a downtown ballpark before his term as a member of City Council expired this spring. He, too, believes there are sites in the center city that would accommodate a new stadium.

Wolff says he became more fascinated with the idea of building a downtown ballpark that UTSA could share with the Missions after seeing the success of the Roadrunners’ new football team in attracting to the Alamodome 57,000 fans for their initial game.

“UTSA has shown that they can draw people downtown. So this has taken on a new dimension,” Wolff explains.

“We want to take baseball to the next level. So we need to improve the facilities,” Parrott insists.

He says UTSA officials will need to determine what is the “quickest way” to accomplish those goals. “We have proven that we can have a profound economic impact on the downtown area,” he adds.

Other universities have shared ballparks with minor league teams. The University of Nebraska, for example, shares Hawks Field at Haymaker Park with Lincoln’s minor league baseball franchise.

“We know the judge (Wolff) is interested in baseball,” says DiGiovanni, who believes that Wolff’s downtown ballpark idea has legs. “We’ll want a seat at the table. We will work with Wolff and the county and convene the appropriate parties to see how we can advance a plan.”

Out of the ideas thrown out, I kind of like this one based on the fact that if it were built anywhere else in DT, it would require lots of asphalt which the Alamodome already has.

The good and the bad.
 

Downtown = great idea.
Alamodome parking lot = horrible.

1. You can't build a field facing NW because of the sun, so you won't be able to see downtown unless you're playing center field (highly unlikely). Isn't one reason for having a downtown stadium for the view?

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5067/...9b040cfc68.jpg

Memphis = awesome.

Ex: San Diego, Minnesota, Detroit, St Louis, Baltimore. And SA's would be what? Bill Millers? Durango/ Cesar Chaves train bridge? That area isn't even "downtown."

2. Building there will not result in residential and commercial development. And if it did where would they go?

3. If you're going to build a downtown ballpark do it the right way
so we don't have a Wolff Stadiun #2 that we regret a decage later. Put it on a city block surrounded by some decent density buildings. Make it walking distance from most of the hotels and offices so people can walk to the game and grab a bite to eat after. Make it to where you can sit anywhere in the stadium and be able to feel like you're actually downtown, not on the east side of 37. Sure it's a better location but being surrounded by 37, the alamodome, train tracks and a low income neighborhood makes for a pretty crappy atmosphere. And I'm going to there to see Hamilton and Jeter play, 90% of the people going through the gates won't know who's on the mound for the Missions that night, that is why atmosphere is so important in MinorLB and you've got to do it the right way of else that new statium mood will die as soon as you know it. It needs to be unique... in a good way.

4. Just do it the right way SA, I know we like to be different and do everything differently than the rest of the world but if this happens please don't screw this up.

Why not the Cattleman Square area? There are multiple reasons it's an ideal area.

1. Undeveloped land.
2. Grid streets.
3. Near UTSA downtown campus
4. Near planned Westside Multimodal Transit Center.
5. Great skyline view to the east.

http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/8095/csbp.png

No such place exist. The city blocks in DT are all too small, only those out of the central loop are big enough (except for the current SAPD lot, which the Fed Courthouse has dibs on, and Pioneer lot, which would never happen.) If they are not in the central loop, you have no choice but to be in "crappy" neighborhoods, and east or west of DT would give you train tracks and bridges as a backdrop; the VIA lot north of town, gives you the skyline, but not density (yet.)
It's minor league.... would a field DT be better than Wolff Stadium and a new field near 1604? Yes. Even if the field is not in the "best" location? Still yes.

Some things to consider:

Here is some information about the ballparks in
Memphis: and Round Rock

And some numbers on attendance for Texas baseball parks.

A few of things to notice:

• 25 million basically gets a Dell Diamond
• naming rights would not pay for more than 10%
• San Antonio attendance is just about the lowest in the state.
• I imagine the numbers for UTSA baseball are also pretty low.

It seems like the missions are interested in moving up to AAA, but I can't see how they could really sell this to anyone with those numbers. Unless they say it's because of restrictions with the current ballpark. And, they certainly can't afford to develop it on their own.

I would not expect Baseball in San Antonio to be an economic generator. Downtown makes a ballpark much more expensive. The size tract needed is not available in the best locations. You could locate next to the UTSA downtown campus, but a better economic generator would be university expansion or student housing.

That said, I have been pleasantly surprised with the support UTSA football has received so far. I've been to a game and the crowd was basically students, alumni and visitors. Which is what you would hope for. It doesn't seem like the numbers from the general public are that strong.

The numbers from the first game were 56k paid seats and have dropped to about 32k since. That's the difference overall public support can make.

No matter how you feel about environmental issues,, there were strongenvironmental concerns that blocked the developement of a resevoir either south or NW of town. There are still some concerns that a dam may be built somewhere around Government Canyon.

A downtown Ballpark would be a good idea, especially in a city like SA. anything to draw the local population downtown is a good thing in a tourism centric city. UTSA football downtown is a great idea and so is Missions baseball.

THere is no way that Student housing can go there. The city is building a multi-million dollar radio tower on that site to replace the current one that will be torn down alog with SAPD HQ for the Federal Courthouse to be built.

Also...COSA IT department is located on that site (along with 70% of their server space) as well as the SAPD Central Substation.


And I highly doubt the the Municiple Court building will be leveled for a baseball stadium.

You can close off a street or two. How do you think Hemisphere park got here? The entire neighborhood was built over.

HemisFAIR....
and yes, I know it was built over an old neighborhood. However, inside the central loop, the opportunities are extremely limited and the odds of it happening are very slim. Yeah you could close Jackson St. and raze Fox Tech, or close Cameron and raze some apartments, purchase some land and build a stadium, but really? For a minor league team? Its not worth the time, space or money to do that.
So if you go outside of the central loop, you have to be surrounded by a highway, a "crappy" neighborhood, the Alamodome, or train tracks. If we are looking for a place inside the central loop that match your first set of criteria..... no such place exist.

Wolff has proposed Hemisfair Park and Fox Tech as locations.

Don't know how either would work but I'd be up for those two locations. No to the "next to the Alamodome" site.

I think that the reason for the low attendance has to do with being in the Texas League AA. SA, a city of over 2 million and we get the "excitement" of competing against Midland, Frisco, NW Arkansas, wherever that may be, Springfield, uhh,,, Missouri, or is it Illinois or Arkansas, or Alabama. I have no idea where some of these big "metro" cities are. I think playing against well known cities would have bigger interest. I think cities like New Orleans, Memphis, Nashville, etc will be bigger draws than NW Arkansas. Tell you what.... Get SA into the Mexican League and they will draw pretty big against cities like Monterrey, Mexico City, Vera Cruz. They used to draw pretty big many years ago when the Texas League teamed up with the Mexican League. Of course most of the crowds will probably be rooting for the Mexican Cities, but there will be large crowds, I guarantee.

There was talk some years ago of SA moving to AAA but didn't have a large enough stadium. I remember long ago, more than some of you can remember, the old Texas League, with the Dallas Eagles, Ft. Worth Cats, Houston Buffs, Shreveport Sports, Tulsa Oilers, Oklahoma City Indians. Dallas, Ft Worth and Houston moved up to AAA one year and left SA behind has it has been behind ever since.

Of course SA is always used as a bait to have Major League cities built a stadium for their city or they will move here, but I seriously doubt those owners ever have an intent to move here and do it just to tease SA and get what they want in their cities.

Attendance is important. A city with a population of around 2 million should not be at bottom compared to cities labeled as 'wherever that may be"s. That's not going to impress anyone. It says that people either don't care for the game or aren't willing to support it financially.

Would a AAA work better? There's always the excuse of "We would go to the game if it was MLB". At some point people need to prove that they would go.

As to the topic of this thread; UTSA needs to do what's best for them and their students. I feel like they should stay near their campus.

San Antonio is a city that demands top tier.

A DII college program gets little to no support city wide. A D-I college program gets the largest first game attendance in NCAA history and a 35,000 average home game attendance.

A minor league baseball team in double A isn't going to get the interest of cities in a metro area of 2.2 million.

Would attendance improve if the Missions were Triple A? Yes, but it still wouldn't get the full cooperating interest of San Antonio. Just mainly baseball loyalists and enthusiasts. A change of the stadium location more central would also help.

Bottom-line, SA is a pro team city, not minor league. :yes:

:previous:
Of course, that is obvious by all the top tier teams over the years.
You just proved my point.