If the Hemisfair TIRZ is expanded, you're looking at the potential for a forever loophole for private developers to spend $1.4 billion on projects virtually anywhere in central SA, without any mechanism of accountability. Nobody to blame if the promise of revitalization goes unfulfilled. The argument is that the private developers were going to spend this $1b, regardless, and should not be given a tax break that was intended to incentivize deals that otherwise wouldn't have been made. Those projects need to be taxed.
https://www.sacurrent.com/news/cityscrapes/cityscrapes-project-marvels-open-ended-term-sheet-will-cost-every-san-antonio-property-taxpayer/
Here are some more concrete problems:
The only specific development commitment outline in the document calls for “a boutique hotel meeting the NBA’s requirements for visiting teams.”
The $500 million doesn’t have to come just from the Spurs. It can also come from unspecified “private developers.”
Same thing with the balance of $900 million. Not necessarily from the Spurs, just from “private developers.”
They could be any developer building in the area defined by the term sheet. And that area doesn’t have to be in the immediate vicinity of the new arena, convention center and the Alamodome — defined as the “sports and entertainment district.”
The Hemisfair TIRZ goes from Commerce Street to the north to Lavaca Street beyond César E. Chávez Blvd. to the south, from I-37 on the east all the way to Navarro Street on the west.
and its boundaries could change in the future (and City Council has a history of changing them since the TIRZ was first conceived in 1999)
The term sheet also doesn’t define when the period for the new development starts.
Would it include
the longstanding but unrealized plan for converting the former CPS Energy headquarters on Navarro to a hotel?
the estimated $750M for the city’s plan for a new convention center hotel on the site of the SAWS chilled water plant between Commerce and Market Streets?