Voters said yes to funding Project Marvel.
The ownership of the National Basketball Association’s San Antonio Spurs franchise scored its two biggest wins of the season on Election Day. Voters in Bexar County, Texas said yes to two propositions and with that Spurts’ ownership will be getting public funding to help to pay the cost of building a mid-21st century state-of-the-art venue. Spurs’ ownership needed a double header sweep and claimed there was no Plan B. Voters had to say yes to Proposition A: which ‘Would authorize the use of up to $192 million in county venue tax revenue for upgrades to county-owned facilities, such as Freeman Coliseum, and the San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo grounds’. Voters had to say yes to Proposition B which ‘Would allow up to $311 million in county venue tax revenue to help fund the construction of a new downtown Spurs arena, estimated to cost at least $1.3 billion’. A no vote on either Proposition would have ended the Spurs’ ownership quest for a new arena and probably would have sparked talk of the franchise moving to Austin or elsewhere.
The Project Marvel plan includes renovations to the 31-year-old Alamodome. The plan also calls for the adding of 150,000 square feet to the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center as well as building a 20,000-square-foot University of Texas at San Antonio School of Hospitality. Additionally, the empty John H. Wood Federal Courthouse would be turned into a 5,000-seat concert venue. A convention center hotel would be part of Project Marvel. The price tag of Project Marvel is estimated to be around $4 billion. In the late 1990s, Spurs’ ownership pushed for a new arena and local voters had to say yes to building a new venue that opened in 2002. Local voters came through again and approved public funding of an arena for private business.
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