The National Basketball Association (NBA) (US) team San Antonio Spurs are passing the ball to a pair of contractors to build their new home court.
Project Cost
‘CONSTRUCTION DIVE’ stated that the five-time NBA champions tapped Mortenson and Bartlett Cocke General Contractors to lead the construction management for the team’s planned downtown arena. The arena carries a project cost of $1.3 billion, according to the fiscal 2025-2026 annual budget document from Bexar County, Texas (US).
The San Antonio Spurs are an American professional basketball team based in San Antonio (US). The Spurs compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a Member of the Southwest Division of the Western Conference.
The 18,418-seat Frost Bank Center is a multipurpose indoor arena on the East side of San Antonio, Texas, United States. It is the home of the National Basketball Association (NBA) team San Antonio Spurs.
The San Antonio Spurs are planning a new $1.3 billion multipurpose downtown arena as the centerpiece of a broader sports and entertainment district (part of the city’s ‘Project Marvel’ development). The facility is intended to replace the Frost Bank Center ahead of the team’s lease expiration in 2032 with a tentative target opening around 2030–2031.
Minneapolis (US)-based Mortenson is a top-10 builder, developer and provider of energy and engineering services committed to helping the organizations move their strategies forward. Mortenson’s broad portfolio of integrated services ensures that its customers’ investments result in high-performing assets. The result is a turnkey partner fully invested in the business success of its customers.
The Bartlett Cocke General Contractors is a prominent, employee-owned construction firm headquartered in San Antonio, Texas (US). Founded in 1959, the company employs between 501 and 1,000 people and specializes in general contracting, design-build and construction management across Texas.
Funding
‘CONSTRUCTION DIVE’ further stated that the County will provide $311 million for the construction of the new arena and the city of San Antonio will provide another $489 million, according to the document. The San Antonio Spurs will fund the remaining portion including any cost overruns.
Minneapolis-based Mortenson has worked on several major sports venues including multiple NBA stadiums, according to the company. The local builder Bartlett Cocke, a San Antonio-based contractor, meanwhile has delivered several commercial projects in the region over the past six decades.
New York (US)-based the National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional basketball league in North America composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and one in Canada). The NBA is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada and is considered the premier professional basketball league in the world.
The selections expand on the project team announced in May where the San Antonio Spurs selected Creative Artists Agency CAA ICON as the Project Manager and Pape-Dawson as the Civil Engineer. The Overland International (Dallas [US]-based architecture and planning firm) will be the arena Architect, according to the announcement.
Denver (US)-based CAA ICON, a division of the leading entertainment and sports agency Creative Artists Agency (CAA – an American talent and sports agency based in Los Angeles), is the world’s-leading Owners Representative (a professional hired by a property or business owner to act as their trusted advisor and manage a construction or development project from start to finish) and strategic management consulting firm for public and private sports and the entertainment facility owners/operators, the professional franchises and leagues.
San Antonio (US)-based Pape-Dawson is an industry-leading, future-focused civil engineering and professional services firm. The company’s engineers, the surveyors, the planners, the landscape architects, the environmental scientists, the archaeologists, the data analysts, and the construction management professionals work together to achieve their shared success: Designing and delivering award-winning infrastructure and development projects with national impact.
Sports Projects
CAA ICON and Mortenson have worked on various sports projects in their history including in 2019 on the $1.9 billion 65,000-capacity Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas. On that build, CAA ICON implemented the project management services and Mortenson served as the General Contractor in a joint venture with McCarthy Building Companies (the oldest privately-held national construction company in America). The two worked together again in 2021 on the $1.15 billion 18,300-capacity Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle (US), a National Hockey League (NHL) venue.
‘Generational Project’
Remarked Logan Gerken, Vice-President (VP) and General Manager (GM), Mortenson, “Mortenson is honored to be selected by the San Antonio Spurs to help deliver this generational project. Together with Bartlett Cocke – a company that has helped shape San Antonio for generations – we bring the scale, resources and specialized expertise of one of the industry’s most experienced sports construction teams.”
Downtown Stadium
The planned downtown stadium will anchor a new sports and entertainment district in San Antonio, according to the city. Along with the stadium the other projects in the area include:
- The expansion of the 160,000-capacity Henry B. González Convention Center;
- A new convention center hotel;
- A land bridge over I-37 to connect the East Side to Downtown;
- Improvements to the 64,000-capacity Alamodome; and
- Renovation of the John H. Wood Jr. Federal Courthouse into a live entertainment venue.
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