After more than a year of analyzing Dallas sites for their planned multi-billion-dollar arena and entertainment district, the Mavericks have chosen Valley View, dealing a major setback to efforts to bring the project downtown.

The Mavericks on Monday executed option agreements to purchase approximately 104 acres of the 110-acre former site of Valley View Mall, the franchise told The Dallas Morning News in an emailed statement. 

It’s a seismic decision that could reshape Dallas’ sports and entertainment landscape for decades, upending the city’s NBA franchise from its 46-year epicenter by moving it and its games 13 miles to the north. From urban to near-suburbia. 

Though moving to Valley View would fulfill the NBA team’s stated goal of remaining in Dallas, Monday’s news is a lethal blow to city and business leaders’ yearlong efforts to woo the project for downtown, potentially on the current site of City Hall. 

“We have appreciated the enthusiasm from the Dallas city manager, elected officials and greater community to keep the team in Dallas,” the Mavericks said in the statement. “We look forward to continuing the collaboration toward that goal. 

“The Valley View site meets most of the criteria established at the outset of our evaluation process. It is our goal to stay in the City of Dallas and this is our best option to do so.” 

Terms of the option agreements were not released, but a person familiar with negotiations said the Valley View-or-downtown decision is final, with Mavericks CEO Rick Welts personally informing City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert on Monday.  

In a joint statement, Tolbert and Mayor Eric Johnson applauded the Mavericks’ commitment to Dallas and pledged to work with the team as it pursues a new arena at the Valley View site.

“We will continue working with the Dallas Mavericks throughout this process and will do everything we can to support the team’s enduring partnership with Dallas,” they said.

The purchase options are a routine safeguard pending a property’s zoning process, for which the Mavericks plan to submit applications in the near future.  

Though unmentioned in Monday’s statement, staying in Dallas isn’t the only viable option. Mavericks governor Patrick Dumont is chairman and CEO of Las Vegas Sands, which in 2023 bought 108 acres in Irving. Ensuing purchases have expanded the footprint to 259 acres. 

For now, the focus is Dallas. In January, Welts told The News the team had narrowed its potential Dallas sites to two — Valley View and an unspecified downtown location. 

The Mavericks were seeking at least a 50-acre footprint for the project, the centerpiece being a basketball-specific arena to be completed by the time its American Airlines Center lease expires on July 28, 2031. 

That timeline was a significant factor in Monday’s decision, multiple people familiar with the negotiating process told The News.  

The Mavericks already had pushed their site selection deadline from the end of 2025 to the first quarter of 2026 to an “absolute” July 1 cutoff. The Valley View purchase agreements were executed 29 days before that deadline.  

The only potentially viable downtown location the city pitched to the Mavericks encompasses the land that includes City Hall, the iconic 47-year-old structure designed by acclaimed architect I.M. Pei. But there won’t be a quick resolution about City Hall’s future, as the City Council continues to debate whether to invest millions in needed repairs or leave and redevelop the site. 

Multiple people inside negotiations say the City Hall site possibility was not broached by the Mavericks, but, rather, Tolbert and other city officials, as well as downtown landowners/developers. 

A city-affiliated nonprofit development firm has estimated it could cost up to $1 billion to update and fully functionalize City Hall, spurring the City Council in March to vote 9-6 to explore relocation options. 

Since then, conflicting repair estimates and questioned motives have mired the “what to do about City Hall” question in political debate and public consternation. 

In May, former Mayor Mike Rawlings launched a Say Yes to Downtown campaign, contending that updating City Hall would be a taxpayer waste and that the Mavericks project would be a vital catalyst to attract new downtown business and reinvigorate its southern edge. 

Multiple people close to Mavericks governor Dumont say he grew increasingly leery of becoming the face of a tear-down-City Hall movement, especially since it wasn’t the Mavericks’ idea in the first place. 

Along with availability, multiple people close to negotiations said the Mavericks had logistical concerns about the City Hall site’s ingress and egress on game and concert nights. 

Unlike the potential months, perhaps years, it would take to tear down and clear City Hall, the Valley View site has been vacant since 2015 and structure-free since 2023. There’s also no footprint-size concerns. The 104 acres are more than twice the amount the Mavericks said they needed for a downtown site. And there are ingress-egress options with I-635 to the south; Dallas North Tollway to the west; and Preston Road to the east.

“We have the opportunity to create a vibrant mixed-use destination anchored by a state-of-the-art arena, along with restaurants, entertainment options, public green spaces and family-friendly experiences,” the Mavericks’ Monday statement continued. 

“Done thoughtfully and with community engagement, a project of this scale will serve as a meaningful economic catalyst for Dallas and its residents. We believe in Dallas and our priority has been clear from the beginning: keeping the Dallas Mavericks in Dallas.” 

The Valley View site is owned by Dallas-based Beck Ventures, Seritage Growth Properties and health-club operator Life Time Inc — with Beck owning a large majority of the site outright.

Beck Ventures CEO Scott Beck declined to provided details regarding the group’s agreement with the Mavericks. However, he said the move could support future development projects across the city. The former Valley View mall site sits within in a tax-increment financing district built to redevelop underutilized malls in the city, including RedBird mall in southern Dallas.

Beck estimates the deal could unlock “over $100 million” in tax increment financing for the RedBird area.

“For 13 years, Beck Ventures has been honored to steward the Valley View property while working alongside the City of Dallas and North Dallas neighborhoods with the conviction that this site would one day anchor a transformation of our city,” Beck said. “The Dallas Mavericks are exactly the kind of transformational partner this vision deserves, and we look forward to seeing them build a world-class basketball arena and entertainment neighborhood that becomes the northern anchor of a stronger, more unified Dallas”

Beck Ventures purchased a majority of the 110-acre Valley View Center site at Preston Road and LBJ Freeway in 2012. Beck said the site would be replaced by a multi-billion-dollar, mixed-use development known as Dallas Midtown. The project was to include roughly 1.5 million square feet of retail storefronts, restaurants, residential units, office towers and even a high-rise hotel with condo towers.

While the Valley View purchase agreement seemingly paves the way to a Mavericks midtown relocation, Irving quietly — for now — has long loomed as potential competition.  

With downtown Dallas seemingly out of the picture, what will be Dumont’s incentive to pick the Valley View tract over the Irving site — which is closer to downtown Dallas (9.6 miles) than Valley View? 

Perhaps the answer depends on whether Dallas’ political and business leaders will, in a midtown Dallas vs. Irving scenario, shift support to the Valley View option. 

If planning, zoning and perhaps public dollars become antes in a billion-plus-dollar hand of poker, Dumont and Sands could be holding the ace of spades (Valley View) and the ultimate wild card (Irving). 

No matter where the arena and entertainment district are built, a gambling component will not factor into construction or design, Welts emphasized in a statement to The News last week. 

Along with the arena that also will be suitable for concerts, plans are for the footprint to include the Mavericks’ corporate headquarters and training facility; at least one luxury hotel; a separate 5,000-seat concert venue; and retail and dining. 

“What we’re envisioning is one of the biggest sports developments that’s ever taken place,” Welts told Mavericks reporters in late March, adding, “Wherever this is built, it spurs additional development in that area. And that’s a real benefit.” 

He hastened to add: “We are super excited about downtown.” 

Although downtown had been the Mavericks’ stated preference for more than a year, during an April interview with The News, Dumont seemed to caution that downtown was no slam dunk.  

“We’re committed to the city of Dallas,” he said then. “And we’re committed to working with the city to come up with the best location and the best structure that allows for all the different goals to be accomplished, that both the city has and the Mavericks have. 

“But I can’t tell you specifically now what that will look like because we don’t have a site yet.” 

Now the Mavericks control not one, but two potential sites, albeit one not in Dallas. 

Why, fans might be asking, did the Mavericks set a July 1 decision date? Since they already pushed back the date twice, can’t they do so again? 

Not if one considers the examples of the Mavericks’ I-35 rivals, Oklahoma City and San Antonio, who just met in the Western Conference finals. 

Spurs officials estimate their new $1.3 billion arena, scheduled to open in 2032 as the centerpiece of San Antonio’s Project Marvel development, will take 57 to 60 months to design and build. 

Oklahoma City has broken ground on its Continental Coliseum, scheduled for summer of 2028 completion, but voters passed the funding mechanism in 2023 and the site was picked in May 2024.   

Perhaps ironically, the Mavericks’ AAC co-tenant, the Dallas Stars, have been negotiating with the City of Plano to potentially build an arena on the site of Willow Bend Mall. 

The Stars probably had been thinking that come 2031, at long last, they would be well-separated from the Mavericks, their co-tenant since the early 1990s at Reunion Arena. 

But in the wake of Monday’s news, North Texas’ NBA and NHL franchises seem destined, starting in 2031, to be Dallas North Tollway somewhat-neighbors, 8.7 miles apart. 

Staff writer Nick Wooten contributed to this story.