SAN ANTONIO – Nearly a decade after San Antonio partnered with the Spurs on a bid to bring a Major League Soccer team to the city, officials say the Spurs\u2019 repayment tied to that effort is now long overdue \u2014 and the amount owed has grown to more than $2 million with interest.<\/p>\n
Negotiations began in 2015 when the city and county entered a public facility corporation, along with the Spurs, to purchase Toyota Field in hopes of obtaining a professional soccer team. Under the agreement, the Spurs would repay $5 million if a team was not secured by 2021.<\/p>\n
After the deal was made, MLS said San Antonio\u2019s territory rights were sold off to another team owner, effectively ending the city\u2019s hopes of landing a team.<\/p>\n
The Spurs paid an initial $250,000 in 2021, but have missed $1.7 million worth of payments since then. With interest, the amount owed has climbed to more than $2 million.<\/p>\n
Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones said she is glad negotiations are moving toward a resolution.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m thankful that we\u2019re, you know, finally moving toward resolution on this,\u201d Jones said.<\/p>\n
Jones said the county previously agreed to remove the reimbursement clause from the agreement in 2022, but the city never did. She said recovering the money could help as inflation rises and services face cuts, including Medicare and Medicaid.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe people of San Antonio, my bosses, they really expect us to make sure that we\u2019re being as thoughtful as possible with their resources,\u201d Jones said.<\/p>\n
Jones said the funding could support a range of local needs.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhether you\u2019re talking about street improvements, or whether you\u2019re talking about improvements to senior centers…this money could help us understand what we can have more of. There\u2019s lots of things our community needs and deserves, and so we want to make sure we\u2019re investing smartly in those things,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Spurs Sports and Entertainment Group said it has had discussions with the city and the public facilities corporation and \u201cremain aligned with our partners on delivering a community-focused path forward for the venue.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jones confirmed the city attorney and city manager are working with the Spurs to ensure an agreement can be reached.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN ANTONIO – Nearly a decade after San Antonio partnered with the Spurs on a bid to bring…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253577,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[82,84,83],"class_list":{"0":"post-253576","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio","8":"tag-san-antonio","9":"tag-san-antonio-headlines","10":"tag-san-antonio-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253576\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}