Covered basketball court honoring Mccombs to be built at Hemisfair
An outdoor covered basketball court honoring the civic leader who helped bring professional basketball to San Antonio will be built at Hemisfair with $1.8 million in funding from the Mccombs Foundation and Spurs Give.
The Red & Charline Mccombs Community Court will be 100 steps from the location of the original Hemisfair Arena, where the Spurs played for the team’s first 20 seasons after B.J. “Red” Mccombs led the effort to bring the then-american Basketball Association franchise to the city. It will replace a pond at Tower Park built during the 1988 renovation of Hemisfair.
“We are grateful to the Mccombs family and Spurs Give,” Andres Andujar, CEO of the Hemisfair Park Area Redevelopment Corp., said in a statement. “Through the creation of the Tower Park vision and use plan, we heard from the community that a shaded basketball court would be used and loved, and we can deliver thanks to the funders’ dedication to enhancing recreational opportunities for our residents.”
Construction of the court, designed by Gomez Vazquez International, is expected to begin this spring and conclude in spring 2025.
It will be open from 5 a.m. to midnight, the same hours as the rest of Hemisfair, and be managed through a partnership between the city’s parks department and Hemisfair, a spokesperson said. It is also expected to be rented out for competitive events and programming, the spokesperson added.
Tower Park, near the Tower of the Americas, is the last of three public parks to be designed at Hemisfair.
Yanaguana Garden, an area with a splash pad, climbing structures, swings and other play equipment, opened in 2015.
The first phase of Civic Park was completed last fall, adding an expansive lawn and water features next to the Henry B. González Convention Center, and a long-delayed mixed-use development with apartments, a hotel and retail space is slated to be built around it. Construction is underway on the 17-story, 200-room hotel, which is expected to open in early 2026.
Marsha Shields, daughter of Red and Charline Mccombs and CEO of Mccombs Enterprises, expressed enthusiasm that the outdoor court will continue her parents’ legacy.
“From their leadership roles with Hemisfair ’68, to helping bring the Spurs to San Antonio, my parents were always focused on lifting their community,” Shields said.