for San Antonio

BY HEYWOOD SANDERS

Editor’s Note: CityScrapes is a column of opinion and analysis.

In a recent press release, San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg praised one of our city’s prominent fixtures as a “valued asset that has put our community on the map, time and again, and improved our quality of life on so many levels.”

So, what was Nirenberg praising in such effusive terms? The Spurs perhaps, with their record of national championships? The South Side’s Toyota plant, with its high-paying jobs and promise of a growing local automotive industry? The UT Health medical school that spurred the creation of the Medical Center and our booming health care industry?

Nope. None of those.

Instead, that boon to our “quality of life” — the one that put San Antonio “on the map,” no less — is the Alamodome. Yes, our Dead Armadillo aside Interstate 37. The mayor’s impressive assessment came in a press release from San Antonio’s Convention and Sports Facilities Department celebrating the 30th anniversary of the dome’s opening.

In time for that celebration, the city commissioned an impact study from local economist Steve Nivin. You may recognize him as the same economist who’s produced innumerable city-funded impact studies of large gatherings we use to tap the state’s Event Trust Fund or the guy who authored the economic impact studies of the proposed downtown streetcar and the 2018 city charter amendments.

Nivin’s Alamodome study — the result of a host of assumptions and multiplications — puts an impressive number on the cumulative “economic impact” of the domed stadium: almost $4 billion over its 30-year life. Of course, any number — even one’s annual salary — multiplied by 30 is going to look big. But Nivin assumed that nearly half of the attendees at dome events, after excluding local high school graduations, were visitors.

That means half of the folks at the Monster Jam, the Bad Bunny concert, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus and Disney on Ice hailed from out of town, got hotel rooms and spent money on their trip. A bit generous perhaps.

Still, the truly relevant question for us today isn’t how big an “economic impact” number someone can come up with for the Alamodome. It’s whether the dome really delivered on all those grand promises from January 1989 when San Antonians voted to spend almost $200 million in sales tax dollars on a “multipurpose convention and sports facility” with the dulcet tones of Henry Cisneros’ rendition of “Come Dome with Me” ringing in our ears.

First, there was that “multipurpose convention and sports facility” moniker. Everyone in town knew the reason Cisneros and other community leaders pushed for a 65,000-seat stadium was that was the magic number the NFL demands for a stadium. It was really, absolutely about getting San Antonio an NFL team.

Even so, Cisneros and other promoters insisted that even without big-time football, the dome would be a great deal. It would attract lots of new conventions and move sleepy San Antonio “into the big-leagues of convention-center cities,” according to Steve Moore, then-head of the San Antonio Convention and Visitors Bureau. Of course, the dome did manage to attract an occasional convention. Some may recall the visit of the Lutheran Youth or Narcotics Anonymous.

But, at the time, I argued that most meeting planners wanted to hold their events in a convention center, not on the floor of a domed sports stadium. As a result, we’d have to expand San Antonio’s convention center anyway, I pointed out. Lo and behold, even before the dome opened, the city commissioned a study of an expansion of the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, which was used to justify spending many more millions in public dollars in the hopes of attracting visitors.

Then there’s local boosters’ infatuation — perhaps “delusion” would be a more appropriate term — with luring the NFL to San Antonio. The Greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce put together an assessment that we were the natural home for an

NFL expansion team. Except the league decided that Charlotte and Jacksonville were better prospects.

Failing that, we became convinced we were going to show the Houston Oilers so much love when they held their training camp here that the team would decide to relocate. Needless to say, that didn’t work out. Them, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, we thought that we were so nice to the New Orleans Saints that they’d choose to stay. Again, nope.

So, as we mark the 30th anniversary of the dome, let’s finally wake up to the reality that we’ve been waiting for that bus to arrive for three decades. It’s just not coming.

And one final note on the latest “economic impact” analysis we were gifted. It puts the total job creation by the dome at 1,108. Interestingly, the 1989 economic impact study offered up by the Greater Chamber and authored by economist M. Ray Perryman put the job forecast at a far rosier 6,000.

You’d think, 30 years on, some politicos in town would be capable of dealing with reality. Yet it may well be that this whole “on the map” business is about something else entirely.

A bill pushed by city leaders to create a “project finance zone” around the HBG Convention Center is making its way through Texas Legislature right now — we’ll see if it slides through by the end of the session, which occurs just after this column’s deadline.

That zone would generate some $473 million in tax dollars over the next 30 years to renovate and expand both the convention center and the Alamodome. After all, we need to compete with other cities. Plus, it would attract new and bigger conventions to town.

Sound familiar?

Only this time San Antonians don’t get to vote on it. The lawmakers in Austin do.

Heywood Sanders is a professor of public policy at the University of Texas at San Antonio.