Local leaders and Spurs officials are hoping to one day build an arena downtown, most likely in the same spot where the ITC now sits.
SAN ANTONIO — A San Antonio group says it’s filed a lawsuit in an effort to halt the demolition of the vacant Hemisfair pavilion that until last year housed the Institute of Texan Cultures.
The Conservation Society of San Antonio says the 57-year-old, 180,000-square-foot building sitting at 801 East Cesar E. Chavez Blvd. holds an “incredible significance” that deserves to be preserved. Over the last 16 or so months, the organization has tried rallying support to keep the UTSA-managed building standing ever since the initial headlines that the San Antonio Spurs were potentially eyeing the land to build their next arena.
Fast-forward to April 2025, and those conversations have now been made public between the team, the City of San Antonio and Bexar County. The University of Texas Board of Regents in February 2024 approved handing first dibs of the 13.9-acre parcel to the City of San Antonio, which has the option to sell or lease the plot. And, in December, UTSA received permission from the state to demolish the structure amid the university’s plans to relocate the Institute of Texan Cultures museum elsewhere.
The expectation is the building will be razed at some point this year and that a new Spurs arena – if the team does move downtown – will most likely take over that spot.
But a timetable hasn’t been publicly announced, nor have concrete funding frameworks for a new Spurs arena been fully determined (it’s expected to cost anywhere from $1.2 billion to $1.5 billion). Those plans are expected to start publicly taking shape this summer, but the Conservation Society says it’s too early to consider the building’s demolition in the meantime.
“What is the rush to tear down this building?” Conservation Society President Lewis Vetter said in a press release. “It has the potential for many other spectacular uses, so why tear it down when there are so many undecided issues about the proposed Spurs arena, such as public financing, the existing Spurs lease at the Frost Bank Center; tepid public support for Project Marvel; and uncertainty of state and federal transportation funds.”
The Conservation Society offered up that the building could be used for education, culinary instruction or as a Spurs practice facility.
But the society is also claiming rules weren’t followed when UTSA’s demolition was OK’d by the state. They say a mandatory federal review didn’t happen and that requirements laid out in the Texas Antiquities Code and National Historic Preservation Act weren’t given their due diligence.
It also says the structure has historical and cultural significance due to its architect, William Peña, being a Mexican American. It was built for the 1968 World’s Fair, after which the state “entrusted UTSA to maintain and house the state’s museum of diverse Texan cultures,” according to Preservation Texas.
“I think San Antonians will agree that our city is a better place to be because of those historic sites,” Vetter is quoted as saying in the release. “When necessary, the society has sued in the past to halt demolitions, and we are prepared to do that again to save the Texas Pavilion.”