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Community members create a vision board during an open house to discuss a new downtown Spurs arena at the Pope Francis Center. Spurs Sports & Entertainment hosted the event. A planned sports and entertainment district needs a long-term mechanism for community input and oversight, Council Member Ivalis Meza Gonzalez writes.<\/p>\n
Katina Zentz\/San Antonio Express-News<\/p>\n
Over the past several months, San Antonio’s conversation<\/a> about the proposed sports and entertainment district downtown has become increasingly fragmented. One discussion centers on the community benefits agreement<\/a>. Another focuses on housing. Others debate transportation, neighborhood impacts, financing or the future of the Spurs.<\/p>\n These are important conversations. But they share a common problem: We’re debating outcomes before agreeing on the process.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The question before us is no longer whether this project should move forward. Voters have already approved a key funding mechanism<\/a>, and our responsibility now is to ensure this district, and a new downtown arena for the Spurs, reflects San Antonio’s values and serves the community.<\/p>\n Before we decide what the district becomes, we must decide how San Antonio will make those decisions.<\/p>\n Too often, the conversation surrounding this project has been framed as a choice between competing priorities: economic development or affordability, downtown investment or neighborhood protection, growth or preservation. Those are false choices. When we bring the right people together early, we produce projects that are stronger, more equitable and more broadly supported than any one interest could have achieved alone.<\/p>\n Fortunately, San Antonio has solved challenges like this before \u2014 not once, but many times.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n As Suzanne Scott, former general manager of San Antonio River Authority, recently wrote in an Express-News guest commentary<\/a>, the San Antonio River Oversight Committee helped guide one of the most transformative public projects in our city’s history through years of planning, changing administrations and competing priorities. Its success came from public participation and creating a trusted governance structure that brought stakeholders together and maintained continuity.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n