Spurs Sports & Entertainment this week hired a slate of firms to help steer the planned downtown arena and the larger development around it, moving ahead with work on a project that has already drawn millions in public and private consulting costs. The company said CAA ICON will oversee construction of the arena and surrounding development, while the other hires will handle engineering, design, planning, finance and legal work.
Pape-Dawson will lead environmental, civil and traffic engineering and surveying. Overland International will design the new arena at Hemisfair. Marquee Development will focus on retail and hospitality space around it. Sasaki will prepare the master plan for the sports and entertainment district, Stafford Sports will provide advisory and strategic planning services, Jorge Rodriguez Financial Consulting will handle financial consulting, Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP will provide legal consulting and Goldman Sachs will serve as financial advisor. SS&E did not disclose the value of any of the contracts. RC Buford, in a statement, said the company was bringing together the right partners to deliver something San Antonio could be proud of.
The hiring spree came as the San Antonio City Council agreed days later to spend another $6.3 million in consulting fees on Accenture Infrastructure and Capital Projects and Municap, adding to a public bill that has already reached about $10 million. Municap’s $350,000 contract will pay for a cost-of-service study for the district, while Accenture’s $6 million deal will coordinate and manage development as an executive program manager. The city has still not purchased the land where the arena is expected to be built, leaving much of Project Marvel in limbo even as planning costs keep climbing.
Project Marvel is the $4 billion sports and entertainment complex proposed for Hemisfair and anchored by a new basketball arena, but the city’s spending has moved faster than the ground it needs to build on. In August, the council approved a term sheet with SS&E, setting the framework for the deal before the land was secured. Geoffrey Proheter said the sequence raises questions that should have been answered before the city got this far, arguing that asking them now feels like catch-up on transparency and accountability. CAA ICON also brings recent experience from Raleigh, North Carolina, where it served as the city’s representative in the 2025 renovation of the Lenovo Center. For now, San Antonio Spurs players and the rest of the organization are pressing ahead with the people and plans that could define the district, even as the biggest decisions remain unresolved.
The next test is not another round of branding or consulting hires, but whether the city can turn a paper project into land, financing and a construction path before the public loses patience with the cost of preparing for a deal that still is not finished.
