A rendering of a new ballpark for the Missions downtown surrounded by mixed-use development.
Courtesy of the San Antonio Missions
A rendering of a new ballpark for the Missions downtown surrounded by mixed-use development.
Courtesy of the San Antonio Missions
A rendering shows a 27-story residential tower that would be built near a new ballpark for the Missions.
Courtesy of Work5hop and Weston Urban
A rendering shows a new ballpark for the Missions that’s slated to be built downtown.
Courtesy of Populous
A rendering shows a 160-room hotel that Weston Urban plans to build at the corner of West Martin and North Flores streets.
Courtesy of Weston Urban and Work5hop
A rendering shows a 27-story building with 410 apartments that Weston Urban plans to build on the banks of San Pedro Creek.
Courtesy of Weston Urban
A rendering shows a 14-story building Weston Urban wants to build at 327 W. Martin St. with 271 apartments and a 389-space parking garage.
Courtesy of Weston Urban, Work5hop and Gensler
A rendering shows apartments and a hotel that Weston Urban plans to build near a new ballpark for the Missions.
Courtesy of Weston Urban
A rendering shows the redone facade of the Sunshine Laundry building at a new ballpark slated to be built for the Missions.
Courtesy of the San Antonio Missions
A rendering shows the entrance to a new ballpark slated to be built for the Missions.
Courtesy of the San Antonio Missions
A rendering shows a new ballpark slated to be built for the Missions.
Courtesy of the San Antonio Missions
A rendering shows the entrance to a new ballpark slated to be built for the Missions.
Courtesy of the San Antonio Missions
The owners of the San Antonio Missions unveiled designs Thursday for a new ballpark downtown surrounded by apartments and hotel rooms.
The Double-A baseball team’s owners plan to build the $160 million ballpark on mostly-empty lots between Camaron and North Flores streets, just south of the San Antonio Independent School District’s headquarters.
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The stadium would have about 4,500 fixed seats and room for 7,500 people altogether, compared with 6,200 fixed seats and a berm that can seat around 3,000 people at the Missions’ digs at Nelson W. Wolff Municipal Stadium on the West Side.
Just south of the ballpark, which is expected to open in 2028, development firm Weston Urban wants to build a 14-story building at 327 W. Martin St. with 271 apartments and a 389-space parking garage, according to plans submitted to the city. The complex, dubbed The Yard Residences, would have a rooftop lounge, gym and third-floor pool deck for residents along with offices for the Missions’ operations.
RELATED: As Missions’ departure looms, what will happen to Wolff Stadium?
Next to the apartments, the developer plans to build an eight-story hotel at the corner of West Martin and North Flores streets with about 160 rooms, meeting space, a coffee shop and a rooftop bar. Weston Urban co-founder Randy Smith has said the hotel — named The Yard Hotel — would host visiting teams and could also accommodate families receiving care at the Christus Children’s Hospital nearby.
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Smith and Graham Weston, Weston Urban’s other co-founder, are investors in the Missions.
Kitty-corner to The Yard Residences, the firm is demolishing part of the Soap Factory Apartments to make way for a 27-story building with 410 apartments on the banks of San Pedro Creek.
Weston Urban would rehabilitate the historic San Fernando gym at 319 W. Travis St., one of the properties the developer acquired in a 2015 land swap with Frost Bank and the city. The firm plans to refurbish a basketball court and turn part of the building into an exercise area for tenants of its adjacent apartments.
“This community gathering place, in tandem with the adjacent mixed use residential developments, is truly the culmination of well over a decade of public and private effort to breathe vibrancy into the San Pedro Creek Culture Park,” Smith said in a statement.
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The city’s Historic and Design Review Commission is scheduled to weigh in on the designs on April 1.
The projects would make up the first of potentially four phases of $1 billion worth of development erected through 2031 — projects that are integral to financing for the ballpark.
RELATED: No more ‘splitting hairs’: City Council toughens policy after Soap Factory outcry
The apartments and hotel would be built within a tax increment reinvestment zone, and the city of San Antonio and Bexar County would use revenue from rising property values within that zone to repay bonds for their $126 million contribution to the ballpark.
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The city is requiring Weston Urban to design and finance the first stage of development, which must have a taxable value of at least $300 million, before it issues the bonds.
The timeline for putting out the bonds has been pushed back from November to late spring or early summer because of economic headwinds making it harder to line up financing. The acquisition of the last piece of land for the footprint of the ballpark — a parking lot from SAISD — is taking longer than expected.
Designated Bidders LLC bought the Missions from California-based Elmore Sports Group in 2022, returning ownership of the team to locals for the first time since 1987.
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They planned to move the team downtown, the area that Weston Urban has focused on revitalizing. The firm is a major landowner in the urban core and has developed the Frost Tower offices, 300 Main apartments and the Continental Residences, among other projects.
The team owners said they were under pressure from Major League Baseball to either bring Wolff Stadium up to new league standards or build a ballpark. Upgrading the 31-year-old facility would be too costly, they said.