Monday Musings #40: Go, San Antonio, Go!

317 W. Jones Avenue was a fitting address for supporters of Bexar County’s Propositions A & B on the Nov. 4 ballot to gather and await vote returns Tuesday night. A former dilapidated warehouse is now the city’s new icehouse, simply named River North Icehouse. Icehouses, like the Spurs and the Stock Show & Rodeo, are puro San Antonio. 

I approached the once-vacant building for the first time around 6:30 pm that evening, not sure what to expect, but having to park blocks away suggested I wouldn’t be alone. Tuning the corner, I was greeted by an energized crowd spilling out of the space onto the patio and into the street. It was a rocking reflection of the city we are building, a moment that felt like we had gone deep into the playoffs and anything was possible.

Still, there was a quiet tension amid the pounding music and the mix of voters from every corner of the county, Spurs fans, and civic and business leaders. Everyone expected a close election.

Shortly after 8 p.m., way later than necessary, Michele Carew, the Bexar County elections administrator, released the early vote results. The River City Icehouse elevated amid a roar as the numbers hit home. With almost one in 5 registered voters turning out over 10 days of early voting and on Election Day, considered a strong turnout for an off-election year, 52% of the county’s voters had voted Yes to Prop B, making a generational investment in keeping the Spurs in San Antonio. Another 55% voted Yes to Prop A and made a long-overdue transformative investment in the city’s Eastside and the plan for the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo to grow from a much-anticipated February event to year-round programming. That should attract the kind of surrounding mixed-use investment that never materialized when the Spurs moved to what is now the Frost Bank Center in 2003.

Chants of ‘Go, Spurs, Go!’ rang out. Abrazos, high fives and handshakes were everywhere. A small democratic mix of citizens, Spurs execs, campaign volunteers, and city and county leaders celebrated. Mayor Gina Jones, an opponent who tried and failed to pause the project, showed up early and greeted Peter J. Holt, the Spurs’ chairman and managing partner.

Could there be post-election peace and greater unity in the days ahead? Let’s hope so.

Among all the winners, Holt, in particular, emerges as a San Antonio champion after an intense, often divisive campaign. With a 4% margin, voters gave him, the team on the court, and the team off the court, an unequivocal show of support. Holt made the campaign his own and appeared at countless venues in the months preceding the vote. It wasn’t an overwhelming win Tuesday, but it wasn’t razor-thin, either. A win is a win.

A longtime champion of Prek4SA and early childhood education as the founding co-chairman of Early Matters San Antonio, Holt saw his family’s multigenerational commitment to San Antonio pay dividends this election. He also saw his own status as a business leader who cares deeply about San Antonio elevated. It was especially impressive to see him keep his cool after Proposition B opponents turned the election into class warfare. Many uninformed voters were falsely led to believe the public funds augmenting the Spurs’ multi-billion dollar investment plan for Hemisfair were somehow being siphoned out of their neighborhoods and their pockets. 

Count me as one among many impressed by Holt’s navigation of the campaign and election and the 30-year commitment the team made, not to mention the hundreds of millions of dollars it will pay over that time period in rent to the city, which will own the arena, and tens of millions of dollars more it will invest in community projects over and above the substantial philanthropic efforts it has long championed in San Antonio.

Holt and the Spurs are not the only winners in a city where time will prove, I believe, that we all won on Tuesday. Generational investment downtown and on the Eastside will create thousands of new jobs, add tens of millions of dollars in annual tax collections, and represent major advances in building a city more attractive to residents and visitors alike. San Antonio remains a city on the rise. A different vote could have rebranded San Antonio as the city that lost the five-time world champion Spurs to a richer market. 

Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai, facing a 2026 re-election challenge from former mayor Ron Nirenberg, will realize a significant boost from the successful election. Sakai campaigned hard to separate fact from falsehood. He deserves significant credit for negotiating the future use of visitor tax revenue to benefit both the Eastside and downtown. In effect, he accomplished what county leaders failed to do 25 years ago.

Nirenberg is expected to move soon from teasing social media posts to an official announcement that he is seeking to unseat Sakai. The race will pit Democrat against Democrat and place many who have supported Nirenberg and Sakai in a very uncomfortable position. It’s not evident yet what issues will drive Nirenberg’s challenge and campaign, but having defeated incumbent Mayor Ivy Taylor in 2017 and seeing no path to stateside office, he will now seek to follow in the footsteps of longtime former Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff.

Another winner is City Manager Eik Walsh and his senior team. Speaking of uncomfortable, it could not have been much fun to endure the opening months of newly elected Mayor Jones and her misguided efforts to "pause" negotiations with the Spurs while campaigning alongside COPS/Metro against the election, claiming that she could negotiate a better deal for taxpayers.

I am among many who do not believe she could have done so, and I hope she will now work to build unity on City Council and support Walsh as he moves to take the non-binding term sheet and carry it forward to a formalized agreement.

There was a divisive campaign in 1989 before San Antonio voters approved building the Alamodome, which opened in 1993 and has since generated $4 billion in economic development in San Antonio. Events there have put the city on the map again and again. The new Spurs arena and entertainment zone, along with the expansion of the Convention Center and other improvements, will have an even greater economic impact over the next 30 years. So the real winners Tuesday were all of us, everyone who calls San Antonio and Bexar County home, and that includes everyone who cast No votes.