The real estate developers who are among the owners of the San Antonio Missions minor league baseball team have been quietly acquiring properties that can be combined into a new stadium for their team.
According to a San Antonio Express-News report sourced from an unnamed person “familiar with the matter,” companies and partnerships linked to the development firm Weston Urban have either purchased or leased at least 19 acres spanning several blocks in the city’s downtown. The company is also seeking to buy the former Fox Tech High School baseball field from San Antonio Independent School District.
Weston Urban co-founders Graham Weston and Randy Smith are part of an investor group that acquired the Missions for approximately $28 million in 2022 with plans to move the Double-A team from its 30-year-old, 6,200-seat Nelson W. Wolff Municipal Stadium in San Antonio’s West Side. The developers would still need to acquire a 0.83-acre site now occupied by a nonprofit arts program to have an unbroken stretch of land for a new stadium.
It is uncertain whether the Missions’ owners would seek city and county funds to finance the stadium’s construction. Wolff Stadium is owned by the city and leased by the Missions, a Minor League Baseball team of the Texas League and the Double-A affiliate of the San Diego Padres. The team is under pressure from Major League Baseball to either make significant upgrades to Wolff Stadium or relocate to a new stadium – failing to meet these mandates could result in the team losing its MLB affiliation.
Photo courtesy San Antonio Missions
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In 1994 i served on the Baseball Advisory Team known as BAT for the city when we were first looking to build the new stadium. The BAT was tasked to help with ideas on the site and the design of which i was a greater part of. I spent a day traveling with the Mayot Nelson and City council person H. Ayala and the city manager and the manager of the team flying to look at stadium designs. when we got back, we shared with the BAT our findings. This site was Perfect because it had an additional 20+ acre tract next door for expansions. Why? move it
What happened to the tract I know it didn’t Move! The BAT even had a newsletter to keep the community informed what was going on from the beginning. What happened to keeping the community involved? Yes, i know it has new Multimillion dollar owners but most of them made their money here from local community fans of baseball and other sports like the Spurs.