SAN ANTONIO — The San Antonio Missions minor league baseball team could be playing in a new ballpark in the downtown area by 2028.
Bexar County and the City of San Antonio have been working with the team's owners to develop a plan to build a first-class minor league stadium near San Pedro Creek Culture Park.
The ballpark would be a multi-purpose venue for several community events, according to a letter and term sheet drafted by San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg and Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai. The letter, which is nonbinding, was recently sent to Major League Baseball to detail local plans to finance and construct the stadium.
"We went into executive session with consultation of attorneys to start discussing some of the details or some of the stipulations or conditions that at least the county would want to ask of in regards to the negotiations," said Sakai.
The letter states that Bexar County and the city agree to the funding, maintenance and operations of the ballpark on the same terms and conditions specified on the term sheet. The facility will have 4,500 seats and be able to fit 8,000 spectators.
While there's not yet an initial estimate of what the stadium will cost, Sakai emphasized that he wants little to zero property taxes to pay for the project. Right now, plans call for the project to be paid for by bonds, and for those bonds to be repaid through revenue from the area that gets redeveloped.
"We're looking for substantial equity by the private ownership, the baseball ownership," Sakai said. "What we are expecting is that we have a tax in the entity called a TRS, a tax reinvestment zone that will allow the property tax values of this particular area to help sponsor and support the payment of this facility."
The potential new home of the Missions would be right by Interstate 35, off Flores and Quincy Street.
"Obviously, anybody who's been out there knows that it needs economic development," Sakai said. "So this is what we call the north end of the downtown area. We're excited that it's an opportunity to develop and we're looking forward to hopefully seeing hotels, office buildings and multi-(unit) housing."
One of the steps the county and city must take for the development of the stadium includes the expansion and extension of Houston Street near the proposed stadium site, but specific details were not provided. Sakai said that while details are still being ironed out, local leaders plan to have a final proposal sent by this fall, by the end of the year at the latest.
In the meantime, the city is planning to discuss the stadium publicly for the first time at an August 14 City Council meeting. The Missions currently play at Nelson W. Wolff Municipal Stadium on the city's west side.