The Spurs Arena District Returns to City Council on Wednesday, With the Financing Plan on the Briefing List
Wednesday's 2 p.m. B Session is a briefing, not a vote — but for the first time this year, the downtown district's proforma and financing plan are named on the agenda, alongside the Alamodome and convention center work.
The proposed downtown Sports and Entertainment District — the plan built around a new downtown arena for the Spurs — returns to the San Antonio City Council on Wednesday, Oct. 28, at 2 p.m., when the B Session takes up a single briefing on the project. Ben Gorzell Jr., the city's Chief of Financial & Administrative Services, and Shanon Miller, the Chief Downtown Officer, are the listed presenters on the posted agenda, Puro SA reported. It is a briefing only: nothing is up for a vote, and the agenda's fiscal impact line reads "briefing purposes only."
What makes this briefing different is the list. According to the agenda memo, the update covers seven topics: the Convention Center Expansion Program, Alamodome Improvements, the Proforma and Financing Plan, the Cost of Services Study, the Mobility Study, the Reconnecting Communities Planning Grant, and Community Engagement. It is the first of this year's three B Session district memos to list the financing plan by name — and the memo itself contains no dollar figures, so the presentation slides, if the city posts them, would be the first public document with the plan's numbers.
The paper trail behind the briefing runs two years: the city unveiled the district plan in November 2024 as eight pieces — a convention center expansion, a new convention center hotel, an I-37 connection between the East Side and downtown, Alamodome improvements, the John Woods Courthouse renovated into a live entertainment venue, mixed-use development, enhanced infrastructure, and a new NBA arena. On Aug. 21, 2025, Council authorized a non-binding term sheet with San Antonio Spurs Holdings, LLC, and the county venue-tax measure the term sheet depended on passed on Nov. 4, 2025. In May, Council approved a MuniCap cost-of-services study ($316,350 plus a $33,650 contingency, through April 2027) and Accenture as the district's Executive Program Manager, up to $6 million for Phase I. The current memo says the arena would sit on roughly the footprint of the former ITC property, and that "guaranteed revenue from new mixed-use development is a critical component to the financing plan for the Arena as outlined in the term sheet."
The district also sits near the top of the city's ask of Austin: it is one of the four top priorities in the proposed State Legislative Program the Council votes on Thursday, Oct. 29. The B Session lists no public comment period; accommodation requests, including translation, go to the Office of the City Clerk at 210-207-7253, with at least 72 hours' notice recommended.
