Editorial: Is Project Marvel Worth it?

After voters’ approval, Project Marvel is now in full swing. Project Marvel promises a large-scale downtown redevelopment project in San Antonio, focusing on building a new Spurs arena and revitalizing the area around the Hemisfair. Spurs managing partner Peter J. Holt and ex-San Antonio mayor Ron Nirenberg are the main promoters of the project, and they promise it’ll be a beneficial project for San Antonio.

However, the Spurs’ organizations aren’t strangers to broken promises. In fact, this project is not ideal for the people of San Antonio and the negatives of this plan outweigh the positive benefits so they shouldn’t expect anything crazy from Project Marvel.

The transparency of this project is very visible. When Project Marvel was presented by City Manager Erik Walsh, Assistant City Manager Lori Houston, and Mayor Ron Nirenberg, people still questioned the economic requirements for it. Even the mayor of San Antonio, Gina Ortiz Jones, questioned the economic reliability of the project in the first place throughout many interviews. The proposers of this plan have been untrustworthy with the details of their fidelity on how the guarantees are going to be guaranteed. For example, the Spurs promised to pay $500 million in contributions and then, less than a week and a half later, the guarantee changed to $900 million. This is good but the inconsistencies are concerning. If they knew it was a $1.4 billion evaluation versus $1 billion as listed in the original proposal, why was that not presented in the first place? Moving forward with a plan that even the proposer doesn’t know what to expect is not a good look.

One of the biggest issues this project is proposing is gentrification. The project’s development could lead to rising property values and displacement in surrounding neighborhoods. Most of these homes’ rising costs will price out many residents, particularly Latinos and communities of color, from the neighborhoods. The Spurs propose to help the people, yet they remove the homes of residents of the city from the place they have long called home. This is very unjust and unfair to the people of San Antonio, who never even asked for a new Arena. 

Not to mention the poor conditions of accessibility and public transportation at the Frost Bank Center. What was once promised to improve never occurred, and now transportation around the designated area for Project Marvel will also fall back throughout the time of construction. The arena itself is projected to take 5 years and the project as a whole is estimated to take a whopping 15 years to complete. The traffic will be unsettling for workers in the area. Transportation in this city has not been at its finest. 

Project Marvel promotes an ‘upgrade’ for the core of San Antonio and an economic benefit for the city. They seek to gain attention to tourist attractions, which is absurd since it’s San Antonio and considering the state of the country, and all around, it seems like a logical plan from an entrepreneur’s perspective, but not ideal for the people. When the Spurs’ current home was built on the East Side in the early 2000s, a community plan for the surrounding area included a “town center” with shops, restaurants, and interconnected parks, with an estimated $250 million in projects. And in classic Spurs style, these plans never came to fruition. This led to some local activists and residents, who cite it as a warning regarding new proposals. Why trust now? If they failed to fulfill their promises before, why should the citizens of San Antonio continue to trust them? Citizens shouldn’t allow this to happen again; it is not the best for what the people need. The focus shouldn’t be on the entertainment industry when even a regular Spurs game doesn’t sell out seats. There are many greater issues that the city should focus on, like the Loop 1604 North Expansion Project, which has been going on for years. The amount of trust this project needs is wrong, and to expect these goals to be reached is absurd.