SAN ANTONIO -- With 75 acres, 13 professional-sized soccer fields, and 8,000 playing hours, the STARR Soccer Complex is roomy.
Roomy enough, says Gordon Hartman, to allow the San Antonio Independent School District to play its games on them… for free.
“Come over and use these facilities. That’s what we built them for. It’s for the community. Let’s let the community use them,” Hartman said in a letter sent to Superintendent Robert Duron last week.
Hartman even pledged to use his foundation’s funds to refurbish the school district’s own soccer fields -- again, at no cost.
“I’m hoping the board will give it serious consideration. We sent it because it makes good common sense.”
This new offer comes as the school board considers a controversial plan to renovate historic Alamo Stadium through a new bond initiative.
The stadium is expected to receive $35 million in renovations, along with the nearby Convocation Center. The money is part of a larger $515 million bond passed by voters.
In the plan, there’s a proposal to tear out the stadium’s running track and replace it with turf, big enough to hold a professional-sized soccer field.
That would allow the district to rent it out, say, to the Spurs parent company, which is looking for a soccer field for a possible future pro team. The board has been in talks with the Spurs Sports and Entertainment group in the past.
Hampering efforts to lease Alamo Stadium to professional teams is a decades-old deed restriction on the stadium’s property.
Hartman has his own tier-2 soccer team coming to San Antonio next year: the San Antonio Scorpions.
Hartman said his offer to the school district makes budgetary sense by keeping one of the state’s best high school tracks in place and serving the students’ interests.
“The last thing I think SAISD should do is spend millions of dollars to make an adjustment to something that the dollars aren’t there to do, and it can be simply resolved by using something that already exists in San Antonio,” said Hartman.
SAISD spokesperson Leslie Price told KENS 5 that Hartman’s offer has been sent to the school board and will be considered in a “specially called” Board of Trustees meeting on Jan. 5.
