January 24, 2012

U-T San Diego covers own stadium plan, mayor hates it

And we have our first glimpse at how U-T San Diego (the former San Diego Union-Tribune, renamed by its new developer/right-wing activist owner Doug Manchester) plans on covering the $1.5 billion Chargers stadium/convention center/kitchen sink plan proposed by its own publisher in Sunday's paper. Today, reporter Matthew T. Hall takes a look at the viability of the waterfront stadium plan, albeit under the somewhat self-aggrandizing headline "Waterfront stadium plan revives debate." Among the highlights:

• Chargers stadium czar Mark Fabiani says the team remains focused on a stadium at a bus yard in East Village, but that the waterfront site could be a fallback option.
• Union leaders, who would face the displacement of dockworker jobs, are "willing to listen."
• San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders "declined to comment."

Not included in the piece: Any attempt at analyzing where on earth the money would come from for this plan. (Manchester made some suggestions of his own on Sunday, but they didn't add up to $1.5 billion.) Sanders' position, meanwhile, was reported very differently in other news outlets:

Mayor Jerry Sanders said Monday he opposes U-T San Diego's proposal for a new Chargers stadium and expanded convention center...

Sanders has expressed support for the stadium being part of a wider entertainment district, but not the way it was proposed Sunday.

"The city is ready to move forward now on a realistic plan to create thousands of jobs, protect our convention business and increase revenues for neighborhood services," Sanders said in a statement to City News Service. "We have to address these important priorities in a responsible way."

But at least the UTSD is all over the story of how much Twitter traffic its plan generated.

January 23, 2012

San Diego paper proposes own damn $1.5B Chargers stadium plan

The right-wing businessman who bought the San Diego Union-Tribune (since renamed U-T San Diego) has made clear what he meant in saying local newspapers should be "cheerleaders" for stadiums, penning an editorial yesterday that proposed spending $1.5 billion on a waterfront stadium, expanded convention center, sports arena, parks, and beaches.

To pay for it, U-T owner Doug Manchester proposes a mix of funding sources: the $520 million currently slated for use to expand the convention center, $200 million from the sale of the Qualcomm Stadium site, $90 million by diverting funds currently used to maintain Qualcomm (no word on how the new stadium would be maintained), $50 million from selling the Valley View Casino Center arena, $50 million from the sale of naming rights, and $63 million from ticket fees. "These are only some of the many innovative ideas" for funding the project, writes Manchester (or his editorial minions — it's tough to tell, since much of the editorial package is unsigned). They had better be, since by the numbers provided here, Manchester's plan is still more than half a billion dollars short of paying for itself.

The public reception of the plan so far is hard to tell, given that the only daily paper in the city is the one stumping for it, so understandably isn't sending its reporters out to discern whether it's viable. With any luck, the independent Voice of San Diego will soon remedy this, but for now we'll have to make do with its recent profile of Manchester, with its memorable blind quote: "If there is a hell, Doug Manchester is the face of it."

January 10, 2012

Chargers staying in San Diego for 2012 ... but you knew that

This shouldn't really be news to anyone, but since everybody else seems to think it's news: The San Diego Chargers have announced that they'll be staying in San Diego this fall, and not moving to ... um, a stadium in Los Angeles that won't be built for at least another three years, if ever?

The Chargers have an annual window in which they can opt out of their lease by paying off remaining bonds on the Qualcomm Stadium expansion (about $24 million currently), a clause that mostly serves as an opportunity to create headlines every winter about how the team could be moving if it wanted to. Barring either an unexpected breakthrough in the Chargers' plans for a stadium attached to the San Diego Convention Center — which, as ESPNLA points out, the convention center wants no part of — or the sudden achievement of this, expect to see more of the same headlines next January.

December 30, 2011

California's RDA ruling could affect A's, 49ers, Chargers stadium plans

As if the umpteen stadium and arena battles ongoing in California needed more drama, the state's supreme court handed down this yesterday:

The court ruled unanimously in favor of a state law passed last summer that abolished redevelopment agencies and voted 6 to 1 to strike down a companion measure that would have allowed the agencies to continue if they shared their revenues.

More than 400 redevelopment agencies will cease to exist after Feb. 1. Authorized by law since 1945, the agencies have been responsible for such success stories as Old Pasadena and San Diego's Gaslamp Quarter but also plagued by projects that some argued had little public benefit.

First, some brief backstory: After Gov. Jerry Brown declared his intentions earlier this year to stop allowing city redevelopment agencies to siphon off property tax proceeds for local development projects, the state legislature offered a compromise of sorts: If RDAs would cut the state in on a share of the boodle, they'd be allowed to continue. Yesterday's court ruling struck down that deal, saying that while the state could shut down RDAs it couldn't attach strings to them; and so, as of a month and two days from now, all RDAs will cease to exist. (Ironically, the court was ruling on a lawsuit filed by a bunch of cities and their RDAs, which were trying to knock down only the piece of legislation that would eliminate RDAs, not the one that would allow them to continue. Whoopsie.)

This is big news for the sports world because, as you might imagine, cities have been thrilled to hand out development dollars when it's not really their money they're spending. (While technically RDA spending is just a straight-up TIF — any new tax revenue gets diverted to pay for the project — in practice, at least according to Brown, the state has ended up filling the gaps in school spending and other local services that have resulted.) So pretty much every sports construction project now underway or in the planning stages in California has involved RDAs, which means many of them may now be in jeopardy.

A quick scorecard, from north to south:

• Oakland's Victory Court plan for an A's stadium appears to now be out the window, since that relied on an RDA-based TIF. However, its second "Coliseum City" plan for the A's and Raiders could still move ahead, according to Newballpark.org, as Oakland's existing stadium site is "part of a separate joint-powers agreement which allows the Coliseum Authority to raise money for its own projects."
• Any thoughts of moving the Golden State Warriors to a new arena in San Francisco will likely be hampered by the ruling.
• Santa Clara's stadium funding was thought to be already in place — barring a last-minute petition drive — but $40 million of that was supposed to come from the city's RDA, which now must turn it over to the state instead. (I'm not clear on what happens to the $4 million the city RDA already pre-paid to the 49ers last March.) That's not a huge sum to be made up on a $1 billion project, but given how the whole financing plan is already held together by spit and baling wire, you never know what could turn out to be its striped bass.
• San Jose's RDA already completed its part in the city's proposed A's stadium plan, giving team owner Lew Wolff an option to buy RDA-owned land for the project last month. Yet a lawsuit filed earlier this month by the Giants-funded Stand For San Jose charges, among other things, that San Jose illegally jumped the gun by agreeing to sell the land before going before a public vote; if a court agrees, then San Jose could be forced to go back and hold a referendum before selling the land — except at that point the RDA would no longer exist to do the sale.
• AEG's downtown Los Angeles football stadium project would use a TIF, but it seems that it's one that doesn't require an RDA. (I think this is because rather than actually redirecting the money, the city would just be totaling up the new tax benefits and hoping they're enough to pay off the stadium bonds, but don't quote me on that.) Still, this could give a minor boost to Ed Roski's City of Industry stadium plan in the race for first place among L.A. stadium plans that don't have a snowball's chance in hell of getting approved by the NFL or attracting an existing team owner.
• The San Diego Chargers, whose stadium chief previously said that without RDA money, their stadium plans are "done, finished," are indeed completely hosed. But they kind of knew that already.

In any case, before anyone gets too excited about it being a new day in Baltimore, the state legislature — which, you'll recall, started off this whole mess by trying to save RDAs while reclaiming a share of their money — can always pass new legislation reestablishing some form of local redevelopment agencies. This being the California state legislature, of course, that will inevitably be a long and painful process — which is why I told the San Diego Union Tribune that my prediction is for "gridlock," as team owners wait to see how the new world order shakes out.

The interesting bits here in the short run will be how the 49ers (and, if necessary, the A's) handle the potential new speed bumps in their stadium campaigns. More news to come in the new year, I'm sure.

December 22, 2011

Naming-rights musical chairs!

Maybe it's just end-of-year contract cancellation time, but this week has seen a relative whirlwind of naming-rights reversals: A national pizza chain announced it was taking its name off of FC Dallas' soccer stadium, while the Indiana Pacers' arena got a new name thanks to a corporate renaming, the Miami Dolphins' stadium is getting one thanks to its namesake company closing up shop in the U.S., and the Sacramento Kings' arena could get one depending on how its sponsor's bankruptcy proceedings go.

All of which is pretty much old hat in the sports world by now — this will be the eighth name for the Miami stadium in 25 years — but it does make you wonder how much brand value a stadium name when nobody can remember what it's called. (Quick, anyone: Where do the Oakland Raiders play?) So far, companies still seem willing to throw their name onto any building that might get it on the lips of national sportscasters — just look at the San Diego Chargers' stadium, which got a new name that will last only from last Sunday through next Wednesday in order to promote its usual sponsor's new cellphone chip at three major football games. But how long will it last, especially if announcers stop making as many references to stadium names-of-the-week.

It's possible to imagine, even, a world where entire articles could be written about stadiums without ever bothering to mention who has paid to advertise on their sides. But no, that could never happen.

December 20, 2011

NFL establishes "G-4" stadium fund, there is much rejoicing

Just realized I never recapped last week's NFL owners meeting to formally re-establish the exhausted G-3 stadium fund, as previously pre-announced last summer. And so, without further ado:

• The new loan program — which actually will be called "G-4" — ups the maximum loan level from $150 million per team under the old plan to a maximum of $200 million under the new one. Only projects costing at least $400 million, and with a "private contribution" from the team of at least $200 million, will be eligible for the top loan level
• As under G-3, teams can repay the loan with club seat money they normally would have had to share with the league. They can now also use incremental regular ticket revenue, defined as the difference between ticket sales in the new stadium and average sales in the last three years of the old one.
• "The project must not involve any relocation of or change in an affected club's 'home territory.'" That's in keeping with the old G-3 plan's goal of aiding teams in building new stadiums in their existing hometowns (to avoid the kind of city-hopping that gave us the St. Louis Rams and Tennessee Titans). Still, it's worth noting that this means the Minnesota Vikings, for example, can access $200 million in G-4 loans for a new stadium in Minnesota, but not for one in, say, Los Angeles.

Teams looking to build new stadiums without paying for them themselves are, naturally, thrilled — since this is money that they wouldn't normally get to keep anyway, it's effectively a grant, not a loan. (Unless club seat and ticket sales come in below projections, in which case they're on the hook for the difference.) San Francisco 49ers owner Jed York tweeted that he was confident his team would be first to get a cut of the G-4 boodle, San Diego Chargers stadium czar Mark Fabiani called it "great news for the team and our fans," and Vikings stadium chieftain Lester Bagley called it "good news," though he quickly added the caveat that the Vikings still don't have a deal for the other $800 million it takes to build a stadium these days.

And that's the catch: Most of these teams were counting on NFL funds as part of their stadium deals already, so while the establishment of G-4 comes as a relief to them, it doesn't really do much to fill the funding holes that most of these teams (except for the 49ers) still have in their plans. And while it'd be nice if the teams used this free league cash to reduce their demands on taxpayers, it looks like most of them instead intend to use it to replace their own share of stadium costs.

For more on all this, the San Diego Union Tribune has helpfully posted a document containing a brief summary of NFL commissioner Roger Goodell's press conference and the actual G-4 document language. Highly recommended for anyone who finds discussion of "tranches" to be compelling reading.

September 22, 2011

Chargers: It's not just a stadium, it's a convention center!

With their stadium plans still in a holding pattern, San Diego Chargers execs are trying a new tack, suggesting that they could incorporate convention facilities into their new football stadium, which would presumably allow the team to grab a chunk of the $550 million slated to go toward expansion of the San Diego Convention Center:

"We're looking at several options right now, and this is one of them," [Chargers stadium exec Mark] Fabiani said, noting that convention center elements were also part of pro football stadium projects completed in Atlanta, Indianapolis and St. Louis, among other cities.

Yes, though those facilities haven't exactly led to booming convention business. Also, those stadiums are adjacent to existing convention facilities; the Chargers stadium wouldn't be.

In any case, the San Diego city council is now looking into this proposal, with councilmember Carl DeMaio yesterday asking for a list of conventions that have skipped San Diego, and which ones did so because they wanted bigger space, versus those who went elsewhere because the convention center was already booked. "I think that will get to the heart of the argument about contiguous space versus two separate facilities," said DeMaio.

One additional problem with using an NFL stadium as a convention center (aside from that it's a football stadium, not a convention center), notes convention center board member Steve Cushman: Conventions need to be booked years in advance, and the NFL schedule is only set a few months before the season starts. Details, details...

September 16, 2011

Architects say renovation of Chargers' stadium would be cheaper, better

Renovation of old stadiums must just be in the air today: A bunch of San Diego architects is pushing a plan to renovate the Chargers' Qualcomm Stadium, which they say would cost only one-quarter as much as building a new stadium.

Historic preservationist John Eisenhart said the matter is simple.

"Twenty years from now, you can have a new stadium that will look old or an old stadium that will look new," he said.

Both city and team officials said they've ruled out renovation, with Chargers stadium czar Mark Fabiani citing a 2003 study by stadium architects HOK that concluded that renovating Qualcomm would cost $353 million, while building a new stadium would cost only $10 million more. Of course, even discounting the possible conflict of interest here — HOK is in the business of designing new stadiums, so stands to earn a lot more from one of those than from a renovation — the estimated cost of a new Chargers stadium is now up to $800 million, which is a good bit more than even $353 million.

(I emailed Fabiani, and he replied that renovation would cost more now, too — notwithstanding that the architects claim it could be done for $250 million. He also noted that the Citizen's Task Force on Chargers Issues report — also from 2003 — was skeptical of a Qualcomm renovation, in part because the building's foundation has settled differently in different places, something it claimed would be tough to easily repair.)

Fabiani also notes that if Qualcomm is renovated, you can't help pay for it by building housing in the parking lot as you could with a new stadium, but then, you also wouldn't need new land to put the new stadium on, on top of saving $450 million or so.

Just like in Minnesota, this is an idea whose time hasn't come yet, but it'll be interesting to see what happens if it's another couple of years down the road and the Chargers are still beating their heads against the financing for a brand-new building — and, of course, haven't moved to L.A.

September 12, 2011

Cal legislature okays fast-track for all stadiums and arenas

The bill to fast-track Los Angeles' $1.2 billion downtown football stadium indeed passed the California State Senate on Friday, by a 32-7 margin. And later the same day, the senate also passed president pro-tem Darrell Steinberg's bill allowing all development projects to be exempted from lengthy lawsuits — which, depending on how you look at it, either puts all of the state's big projects on equal footing, or uses a loophole granted to one developer as an excuse to grant loopholes to all developers (so long as their projects are worth at least $100 million).

Assuming Gov. Jerry Brown signs the bills — no word from the governor's office at last check — this will obviously smooth the path for AEG's L.A. stadium, as well as proposed buildings for the San Francisco 49ers, Sacramento Kings, and San Diego Chargers, among others. Still, the main holdup in all of those cases is money: The 49ers still haven't firmed up their share of construction costs, the Kings arena finance plan right now mostly amounts to wishful thinking (the latest involving selling off future parking revenues for up-front cash), and AEG needs to find an NFL owner who wants to give up either a hefty annual rent, a hefty share of stadium revenues, or a hefty share of the team itself in exchange for moving to L.A. Not having to worry about pesky lawyers is a nice plus, but pesky bankers are still the main reason why stadium deals do or don't get done.

September 07, 2011

L.A. Times: Chargers! Chargers! Chargers! Wooooot!

It looks like the Los Angeles Times has declared this to be "When are the San Diego Chargers moving to L.A. already?" week:

• On Monday, it was an article speculating (with no specific evidence) that the Chargers are soon to move north to a new L.A. stadium, complete with an over-the-top metaphor about how going to L.A. is like being deployed to Afghanistan. (And this from the hometown paper.)
• Yesterday, the intent to move was apparently a fait accompli, with the headline reading, "San Diego divided on whether to fight Chargers run to Los Angeles." Included were quotes from the same two stadium proponents as in Monday's article, City Club of San Diego president George Mitrovich and San Diego Mesa College professor Carl Luna, the latter of whom intoned doomfully, "The Chargers' leaving town will be another sign that America's Finest City just might not be so fine anymore."
• Today, it's just a throwaway line from columnist T.J. Simers: "You're going to love General Manager A.J. Smith when he brings his Chargers to Los Angeles next year."

Not that it's exactly unprecedented for a newspaper's sports section to become a booster of bringing a team to town — it guarantees them more readers, after all, not to mention more jobs for gameday reporters — but this is still pretty remarkable, especially when the Chargers' official stance is still that they're planning to get a new stadium built in or around San Diego. It'll be interesting to see what shows up in tomorrow's paper — you have to figure their reporter has a couple more Mitrovich or Luna quotes in his notebook that he still has to burn off...

September 02, 2011

The Chargers and the gravy theory of stadium finance

For your consideration, we present today an article at the awkwardly named ESPNLosAngeles.com that begins like this:

In our romanticized view of football, all a team really needs to play a game is a field, a ball and an opponent. Everything else is gravy.

In the big-money world of the NFL, however, it's the gravy that pays the bills.

If all an NFL team needed to be lucrative was a solid field, nice uniforms and good weather, the San Diego Chargers would be the most profitable team in the league.

Sadly, perfectly trimmed Bermuda sod, crisp powder-blue-and-gold uniforms and sunny 75-degree afternoons don't pay the bills in the NFL. State-of-the-art stadiums complete with luxury suites, club seats and plush corporate lounges do.

The article — by columnist Arash Markazi — goes on to talk about how the Chargers' Qualcomm Stadium is a dump, how the Chargers need a new stadium in San Diego or they'll leave for Los Angeles, and so on.

Only one problem: The "gravy pays the bills" argument is 100% wrong. First off, this is the NFL we're talking about here: What pays the bills, first and foremost, are the league's mammoth TV contracts, which are shared by every team equally regardless of whether they play in a state-of-the-art palace or a shopping mall parking lot.

Still, corporate suites and the like do account for the main differences between the revenues of NFL teams, which is why team owners are so aggressive in pursuing new stadiums. So exactly how much more would a new stadium be worth to the Chargers?

Markazi's article cites a study by Conventions Sports & Leisure International that asserted that annual operating income for a team playing at Los Angeles' as-yet-unbuilt downtown stadium could be $53 million, more than double the Chargers' current estimated $24.7 million in annual profit. That sounds impressive. But even an extra $28 million a year wouldn't come close to paying off construction costs on the $800 million stadium that the Chargers want to build — which is why the team is asking for public money to do so.

Going back to that lede, then, it really should have read: "In the NFL, it's the gravy that pays the bills. So long as it's someone else paying for the gravy, that is. Because otherwise you'd have to be crazy to pay that much for friggin' gravy."

August 17, 2011

San Diego mayor launches tour of crappy stadium deals

San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders has announced that he's going to step up his Chargers stadium efforts by taking three advisers on a tour of other cities that have recently built new sports facilities. And which cities did Sanders pick? That'd be:

• Indianapolis, which spent nearly $1 billion on a Colts stadium that overwhelmingly benefits the team, and whose sweetheart lease with the Indiana Pacers has been declared "the worst of all taxpayer-funded bailouts."
• Kansas City, which built a money-losing arena to lure an NBA or NHL team, then agreed to a sweetheart lease with AEG that all but guarantees it will never get one.
• Denver, which is just your run of the mill city that built a whole bunch of sports facilities near its already-gentrifying downtown entertainment district and then tried to retcon the stadiums into being responsible for the economic revival.

The common link, it looks like, is that all three cities pursued sports facilities as downtown revitalization efforts, though they haven't all been very successful.

San Diego Union Tribune columnist Tim Sullivan writes today that Sanders "should complete his three-city due diligence, perform his polling, assemble his staff, tweak the numbers, and then tell us where in the name of Waldo is enough money to build a stadium for the Chargers." That'd sure be nice, but don't hold your breath — typically in stadium deals, it's breathless tales of urban renaissance first, financial details later.

July 26, 2011

The NFL's new stadium fund explained (sort of)

With the NFL lockout finally over, the blogwaves are afire with talk of how the league's new collective bargaining agreement will affect various teams' stadium campaigns. We've already seen a report that the San Diego Chargers could get up to $150 million in NFL stadium funds, another that the San Francisco 49ers and Raiders could pool their stadium credits to get $300 million for a shared stadium, and still others that AEG's planned Los Angeles stadium could get a cut. (The Minnesota Vikings could also be in line for funds, though apparently they've already been counting that particular chicken before it hatched.)

So how much money is really available, and where is it coming from? The press reports are maddeningly incomplete and contradictory, but this is, to the best of my knowledge, what's going on:

• Back in olden times, the NFL had a program called "G-3," which allowed home teams to keep the visitors' share of club seat revenues to use to help pay off new stadium costs. Initially implemented to help convince NFL teams to remain in large markets — it was originally concocted, in fact, by New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, who limited it to the top six media markets, of which he just happened to play in #6 — it was eventually expanded to the whole league. Then the program ran out, and the flow of funds stopped.
• The successor to G-3 — which, sadly, won't be called G-4 — instead takes a 1.5% cut off the top of NFL revenues, and allocates it to stadium projects. (Sources disagree over whether this comes entirely out of the players' share or the owners would contribute as well.) At $9 billion a year in total league revenues, that would imply $135 million a year in stadium credits — though apparently the math isn't nearly so simple, which may explain why this article says only $95 million. Still, that's a huge amount of money, enough over ten years pay off about $734 million in stadium bonds. (It's not $950 million in stadium bonds because payments ten years from now aren't worth the same as payments now.)
• That huge number notwithstanding, scuttlebutt is that only three teams will be allowed to tap the new stadium loan fund, with rumors putting a cap at $150 million per team. That'd mean that from among the 49ers, Raiders, Vikings, Chargers, any team moving to L.A., and maybe the Jacksonville Jaguars, at least a couple of teams would get left out in the cold. Unless the NFL expanded the program again, which it seemingly would have the money to do.

All in all, this is a good thing for both teams wanting to build stadiums and for taxpayers not wanting to put their own money into stadiums, as this is the NFL recognizing that — because of its weird status as a league where the vast majority of revenue comes from national TV contracts — if it wants to encourage teams to stay in big markets and avoid killing the Fox golden goose, it needs to subsidize stadiums with its own money. Of course, it also could end up helping grease the wheels for some otherwise stuck stadium projects that would still involve some taxpayer money — $150 million per stadium doesn't go all that far — so in that sense, not so good. But in the grand scheme of things, billionaires voting to spend some of their own billions on projects to increase their billions is nothing to sneeze at.

July 22, 2011

Oilers, Chargers funding gaps remain unfilled

Another week, another batch of stadium and arena projects that lack nothing except for somebody willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build them:

• The Edmonton city council held another hearing about the proposed $400 million Oilers arena on Wednesday, and came to the same conclusion as last time: It's $100 million short, and nobody knows who'll pay for it. (The city has asked the province for the money, and Alberta premier Ed Stelmach has said no way.) Also, Northlands, which owns the Oilers' current Rexall Place arena, is (unsurprisingly) refusing to sign a non-compete clause with any new arena. "We basically have two parties here that are refusing to cooperate and we are stuck here in the middle," councillor Kim Krushell told reporters. "All I can say is everything seems to be a bit of a gong show." Which either means Krushell watched a lot of TV in the 1970s, or perky Canada has its own metaphors.
• The San Diego Union Tribune ran an interview with San Diego Chargers stadium campaigner Mark Fabiani yesterday, in which Fabiani revealed that the team needs a new funding plan now that the state is forcing the city to hand over tax money that was otherwise redirected to regional development authorities. Fabiani said that "[we] need to find a way to bridge the financing gap between now and 2024 -- possibly with the help of other government agencies in the region that may see long-term benefits from this kind of multi-faceted downtown project." Which sounds a heckuva lot like "we have no idea."

June 13, 2011

AEG outs five NFL teams as L.A. relocation targets

AEG president Tim Leiweke, not content to be dropping arbitrary deadlines for his company's downtown Los Angeles stadium plan, let loose another media salvo on Thursday by declaring that his boss, Philip Anschutz (the "A" in "AEG"), was prepared to buy an NFL team to move it to L.A. — and then naming names about which teams he was considering:

"St. Louis, Jacksonville, not extensively, certainly Oakland, San Diego, Minnesota are still in the mix," Leiweke said listing the teams AEG has met with before adding: "We're not packing any [moving] vans right now."

Now, "met with" doesn't necessarily mean the current team owners are actually considering AEG's offer (or that there's a solid offer to consider). Still, it was enough to set off media mayhem in the listed cities. A San Diego Chargers blog declared that "The Hit List Is Out"; Oakland Raiders CEO Amy Trask issued a statement denying that her team was for sale; and Minnesota Vikings execs insisted that their only meetings with AEG were over possibly operating the new stadium they want built in Minnesota.

Meanwhile, though the St. Louis Rams probably aren't for sale, ESPN noted this would give their owner welcome leverage in his own stadium campaign. And that's the main upshot here: For Leiweke to come out with a statement like this is a win-win for all the bigwigs involved — AEG gets a carrot to dangle alongside its July 31 deadline stick, and the owners of all the rumored move targets get a threat to use against their own localities, plus plausible deniability against being blamed for threatening a move.

And as for us? We get to play the home version. (Currently leading: The Jacksonville Jaguars, by a sizeable margin over "nobody" and then the Raiders.)

March 16, 2011

Chargers to stop paying rent during lockout

Now that NFL owners don't get to collect TV money during a lockout, apparently they're looking for other ways to save money while they're not paying their players. In the latest, Voice of San Diego reports that the San Diego Chargers are interpreting a clause in their lease saying they're absolved from paying rent in the event of a "force majeure event" — normally interpreted as an "act of God" — to mean that they can skip this year's $2.5 million rent during a lockout.

As our old friend Chargers stadium honcho Mark Fabiani told the paper, in the original Chargers lease that the new one modified, "Force Majeure Event explicitly includes lockouts":

"Force Majeure Event" shall mean any of the following events which prevents a party from performing its obligations hereunder: any act of God, strike, lockout, etc.

The punchline: Voice of San Diego's Andrew Donohue notes that the city could actually come out ahead on the deal, because in some past years "the city actually sends the Chargers more money than it receives from the team because the team gets rent credits for things such as property taxes on skyboxes and compensation for lost ticket sales because of the addition of disabled seating." The NFL: The only business where it can be cheaper to have no tenant at all than one that's actually playing games.

March 08, 2011

Chargers, San Diego meet about stadium funding, agree that they could use some

San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders met with Chargers CEO Dean Spanos (son of owner Alex) yesterday to "explore alternatives" for stadium funding, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune, in case neither the NFL nor redevelopments come through, as looks increasingly likely. And after the meeting, the two sides excitedly announced:

"The Chargers and the Mayor's Office will continue to work together as these important issues are resolved," the statement said.

A mayoral spokesman said no further meetings have been scheduled but staff will stay in close contact in coming weeks.

Now that's unbridled enthusiasm. The most positive post-meeting statement came from acting San Diego development corporation president Fred Maas, who said, "I think there's a lot of novel things that can be done. I'm not a person who just decides to lie down and throw up the white flag because we've been confronted with hurdles we never expected." No, he told the Union-Trib, he's prepared to attend more meetings. If any are ever held, that is.

January 24, 2011

Brown's RDA plan would hit Chargers funding, too

I was so focused on what California's Gov. Jerry Brown's death-to-RDAs proposal would do to the Oakland A's stadium plans, I neglected to consider what it would mean for the San Diego Chargers' stadium plans. Fortunately, Tim Sullivan of the San Diego Union Tribune is on the ball:

"We're done, finished (if Brown's proposal becomes policy)," Chargers spokesman Mark Fabiani said Friday. "Redevelopment money is an essential part of the downtown concept and without it, the project is dead."

Both Brown and [AEG exec Tim] Leiweke have hurdles left to clear — for the governor, there's the state legislature and assorted special interests; for Leiweke, there are regulatory requirements and L.A.'s labyrinthine politics — but the success of either man's initiative would significantly raise the risk of the Bolts relocating.

"We will look at every other possible option if the redevelopment dollars go away," said Darren Pudgil, spokesman for San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders. "But that certainly doesn't bode well for a new stadium ... We don't want to overreact, but the bottom line is losing redevelopment dollars would be devastating for San Diego."

Sullivan also reports that Ed Roski, who is competing with AEG to build an L.A.-area NFL stadium, charged that AEG's plan would cost "well over a billion dollars" in taxpayer subsidies. No reference to what he was talking about, but it presumably stems from this quote, which seems to have gotten much play in the blogoverse. For now, it's probably safe to toss all three Southern Cal stadium plans in the "nobody's quite sure who'll end up paying for them" bin.

December 27, 2010

Stadium news from around the snowy globe

Slowly getting back up to speed here — it still looks like this outside. Let's start with a quick news roundup:

• Quebec Mayor Regis Labeaume has set a December 31 deadline for getting funding in place for a new NHL arena, but that surely ain't happening, especially not with Prime Minister Stephen Harper having pretty much ruled out using federal cash for sports facilities. Labeaume said earlier this month that he had a "Plan B" for arena financing, but according to a federal government negotiator, "right now we have nothing on the table."
• The 49ers signed a lease extension committing them to play in whatever the hell Candlestick Park is called these days through the year 2014. This isn't really much of a surprise given that team officials had already pretty much said a new stadium in Santa Clara couldn't open until 2015 at the soonest. But it is a reminder that leases are made to be extended.
• It looks like that plan for San Diego to build a new Chargers stadium with TIF district dollars isn't likely to happen, now that everyone involved has noticed that there isn't enough redevelopment district money left to build both a stadium and other planned projects. TIF money could still be a piece of the puzzle, of course, but somebody's going to need to find some more cash before any San Diego stadium deal can proceed.

December 08, 2010

Chargers not moving to L.A. non-stadium for next non-season

The San Diego Chargers have informed Mayor Jerry Sanders that they won't be opting out of their lease for the 2011 season, the San Diego Union-Tribune reports. Why should this not even be news? Let us count the ways:

• Nobody could build a new stadium in time for the 2011 season, and the only reason the Chargers would move would be to occupy a new stadium, so what would be the point?
• There probably isn't going to be a 2011 season anyway, thanks to the looming lockout.
• As previously reported, nobody's moving forward with new stadiums until after the lockout, because the league's financial structure could dramatically change depending on how the labor situation is resolved.

So, there's your non-story. But it does allow Chargers officials to deny they're making a move threat while also getting them a scare headline like "Chargers commit to S.D. for 2011, but not beyond" — a win-win!

December 01, 2010

Chargers deny that AEG is buying piece of team

What, is this "Take Your Football Team to L.A. Week"? Barely had Minnesota Vikings exec Lester Bagley finished saying that his team had had contact with Los Angeles football interests than a report popped up (from Canadian sports radio host Bob McCown) of would-be L.A. stadium-builder (and AEG honcho) Philip Anschutz buying 35% of the San Diego Chargers with the intent of moving them up the coast.

Chargers stadium czar Mark Fabiani immediately denied the rumor, writing in an email, "There is no truth to the rumor out of Toronto that the Chargers have agreed to sell a portion of the team to Mr. Anschutz."

Fabiani also said he knew nothing about Magic Johnson's involvement in a potential Anschutz bid for an NFL team, something that Johnson announced last night "Jimmy Kimmel Live!"

November 16, 2010

SD columnist: If you build it, Super Bowls won't come

San Diego Union-Tribune columnist Tim Sullivan, who I've cited (and has cited me) before, picks up the issue of Roger Goodell's attempted Super Bowl extortion plot today and runs with it:

As San Diego wrestles with the question of how much to prostrate itself for the preservation of pro football, Atlanta's experience ought to be instructional. The notion that building a new playpen for the Chargers will ensure multiple Super Bowls in reasonably short order is neither guaranteed nor probable. Too many other cities are chasing that plum to expect that the NFL would confer special status on any second-tier market, however wondrous the weather. ...

Nailing down a couple of Super Bowls would be nice, but protecting the taxpayers should be paramount. Much as pro franchises are prized, a city must be prepared to say no when a team's demands become excessive.

Exactly where that point falls is subjective. But when an 18-year-old stadium is too old, we're probably in the ballpark.

My only gripe: Sullivan stole my line about the Georgia Dome being "older than Miley Cyrus." Dude.

UPDATE: Sullivan just emailed to inform me that he actually came up with the Miley Cyrus comparison independently. Apologies to him for any aspersions cast, and you know what this means: It's not plagiarism, it's a meme.

July 23, 2010

San Diego columnist: If Chargers won't threaten move, I'll do it for them

Sports columnists carrying water for sports teams' stadium plans are nothing new, but it takes a special level of chutzpah to pull off what the San Diego Union-Tribune's Nick Canepa did on Wednesday:

Throughout their choppy, meandering eight-year voyage to discover welcome land for a new football stadium, the Chargers have fired no shots across bows and issued no threats. Nor have they asked for clearance at other ports, such as L.A.

The ultimatum, that they will find somewhere else to dock, has been provided courtesy of the media and those who see an NFL pirate under every shovel of dirt.

But, clearly, this is a passage nearing its conclusion, even if no destination has been clearly determined. My gut is that, if the efforts to get a downtown stadium built fail, this is it.

Follow the bouncing logic: 1) The Chargers haven't issued any move threats. 2) That's just media speculation. 3) I, a member of the media, speculate that they're going to move.

To top it off, Chargers stadium czar Mark Fabiani then asserts: "I defy anybody to look at this process and identify a threat by us. But, the reality is, after eight years and $10 million spent cycling through site after site, we’re not left with a lot of alternatives." Which may not be a direct threat, but it's certainly a non-threat threat.

UPDATE: I emailed Fabiani to ask what the Chargers would do if the downtown San Diego site falls through; he said, "We would try to revisit our options in Escondido although recently the site has been talked about as a new home for the Padres minor league team." And if that failed, "you'd have to sit back and take a long, hard look at where you are" and whether anything "might turn downtown into a success if you waited a couple of years." So, no threats there, for the record.

June 24, 2010

San Diego okays Chargers stadium study

The San Diego city council voted unanimously Tuesday night to approve a $500,000 study of their "downtown's redevelopment future," which is apparently code for "are we gonna build a Chargers stadium?" Though mayoral aide Phil Roth said the study — which will include a look at kicking back property taxes to fund redevelopment — "could be used to finance all sorts of different projects, hundreds of miles of sidewalks, all affordable housing, a stadium, a zoo, whatever you would like to do."

This isn't huge news — city councils typically authorize feasability studies at the drop of a hat — but Chargers stadium czar Mark Fabiani called it "pivotal" (the San Diego Union-Tribune's word, not his), on the grounds that without it, a San Diego stadium project couldn't move forward.

In other news, the sun rose in the east today, marking a key step in BP's efforts to stop the Gulf oil spill.

May 27, 2010

Chargers: We're such a crappy deal for San Diego, even paying to build a new stadium would be an improvement

The slowly simmering San Diego Chargers stadium campaign has shown signs of heating up of late, with our old friend Mark Fabiani showing up on local radio to tout the team's latest plans for an $800-million-ish downtown stadium. Among Fabiani's arguments for the plan:

One, it costs, according to the grand jury, $17 million a year to operate and maintain that stadium. The City loses that amount of money every year. And, second, the City owns that 166 acres of land which could be put to better uses. It could be developed. It could be a park created along the riverfront. So there are all sorts of things that could be done that would be better for that piece of land.

These are legitimate arguments: There's always something else you could do with land and money, what economics geeks like to call "opportunity costs." Of course, though, a new stadium would take land and money as well, so the real question should be: Which is a better deal, the current one or spending upwards of $500 million to build a new stadium?

Right now it's hard to say without knowing more of the numbers — how much is the old stadium land worth, for example, as compared to the land that would be needed for the new stadium? — but Fabiani's case isn't helped by the revelation that the city's losses on Qualcomm Stadium are really only $12 million a year. Apparently his $17 million figure was what it would cost to run the old stadium if the Chargers left and no other events were held there, not even college football or monster truck rallies. At which point the city could always just knock down the place and build a park along the riverfront if they wanted.

Possibly the best summation of the situation comes from Voice of San Diego writer Liam Dillon (author of the last article linked above), who told KPBS radio that "the argument for a new stadium is simply coming down to the fact that taxpayers have such a lousy deal with the Chargers that they basically need to make a new deal with the Chargers. ... If the City keeps making bad deals with the Chargers, who's to say that this time the City is going to make a good deal with the Chargers?"

At this point, you have to wonder if the best option for San Diego would be for the Chargers to just move to Los Angeles, letting them keep their city money and reclaim the Qualcomm site as well. And anyway, a 116-mile drive is just a trip to the grocery store for most Southern Californians, right?

January 28, 2010

Consultant to San Diego: All the other cities fund NFL stadiums, you should too!

The San Diego Chargers have announced they won't be opting out of their Qualcomm Stadium lease this fall, an action that comes as exactly zero surprise, since no new stadiums (including the proposed one east of Los Angeles) would be ready in time for them to move this year anyway. Add in that the penalty the Chargers would have to pay to break their lease plummets from $53 million this year to $26 million in 2011 and ... why is this worthy of a 600-word news story again?

Also falling in the dubious news category is the report given by "sports financing consultant" Mitchell Ziets yesterday to San Diego development officials, in which he concluded that significant public financing would be needed for a new Chargers stadium. His evidence? The 11 NFL stadiums built since 2002 had an average of 55% of their costs paid for by the public. He added that a new stadium would only work "if it makes sense for everybody," but apparently didn't actually attempt to calculate, say, what a stadium would cost or how it would benefit the city.

Given that the city of San Diego is paying Ziets $160,000 for his consulting services, you have to hope Ziets bought a really nice calculator to come up with that 55% figure. Though I suppose it's still more exhaustive research than reading Bret Easton Ellis.

December 14, 2009

San Diego poll: No public money for Chargers

The San Diego Chargers public-money-for-a-stadium campaign got off to a shaky start last week, as a TV news poll found almost 3-to-1 opposition to spending any taxpayer dollars on a new football stadium. This isn't unusual for early in a public-funding campaign, but the depth of opposition is a bit notable — if nothing else, Chargers ownership is going to need to start saving up to meet the 100-1 rule.

December 11, 2009

Chargers bait-and-switch: Oh, yeah, we want money, too

After years of saying they'd build a new stadium with no public money, just free land, San Diego Chargers officials did a public about-face yesterday, saying when they said "no" they actually meant "some." "It's almost certainly going to involve some sort of taxpayer money," with team stadium czar Mark Fabiani told a local chamber of commerce, adding that it was better to get this out on the table now rather than during a voter referendum campaign: "We have no interest in spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, even into the millions, on this site, and then finding out that nobody wants to support it."

To be fair, some form of public funding has been on the table for a while: In addition to the free land, the Chargers had talked up kicking back property tax money to help pay for stadium construction. Still, it's worth noting that in a post to this very website, Fabiani argued that renovating the Chargers' current home of Qualcomm Stadium wasn't feasible because in San Diego "there is no public funding for stadium improvements" and "there is simply no way to privately finance such a renovation." It's 6 am in San Diego right now, but I have an email in to Fabiani; I'll post a followup here if he gets back with an explanation of how this jibes with his new stance.

UPDATE: Fabiani replied to my email (still not even 7 am in San Diego!), though he didn't respond directly to my question of whether it still makes sense to argue against Qualcomm renovations because they'd need public funds, instead writing: "No one, so far as I know, has expressed any interest in renovating Qualcomm." On the switch to a public subsidy demand, Fabiani said this was because San Diego's proposed stadium site wouldn't include land for additional development, as the team was previously seeking; as for the type of public subsidies that would be required, he wrote that that's "the subject of a CCDC-sponsored study by stadium finance expert Mitchell Zeits," and so "too soon to say."

Fabiani added that voters would need to "agree that an investment downtown will result in significant returns for taxpayers elsewhere" such as reusing the Qualcomm site to "generate hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue" for the city. Hey, I remember that one!

December 03, 2009

L.A. Threat Watch: NFL cities hitting "panic button"

A nice rundown by San Diego Union-Tribune columnist Tim Sullivan of how the approval of a new NFL-ready stadium in Industry, California is helping NFL teams in other cities leverage new stadium demands of their own:

Every city with an NFL tenant and without an ironclad lease is feeling intensifying pressure from Ed Roski's City of Industry initiative. Every team within range of an escape clause has been wielding newfound leverage since October, when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenneger signed a bill exempting Roski's project from the California Environmental Quality Act. ...

The threat of extortion is always implicit in professional sports. Any business owner has a right to maximize revenue and to seek concessions from the landlord, rights that are obviously accentuated when that business is immensely popular and limited to 32 outlets in 50 states. Still, the shortcut granted Roski has caused a discernible shift in the balance of power, providing NFL owners a tangible relocation threat at a time when public financing is deeply problematic.

"It's not a coincidence," said David Carter, executive director of USC's Marshall School of Business. "I think it's a combination of the economic environment and the political realities that cities are facing right now (and) the Southern California option that is very real."

Sullivan goes on to note that Roski still faces some potentially steep hurdles in acquiring a team: He's part-owner of a casino, a big no-no with sports leagues, and wants to be majority owner of whatever team relocates (and, let's not forget, pay for it with development rights, not cash). Still, that hasn't stopped San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders from suddenly devoting attention to building a new stadium for the Chargers, or the Florida Times-Union from running an editorial begging fans to buy tickets to Jacksonville Jaguars games because "Los Angeles doesn't have a pro football team and doesn't need one, but Jacksonville does."

Noting that the Chargers haven't explicitly threatened to move to Industry, Sullivan rightly proclaims one of the rules of stadium politics to be: "You don't need to announce a threat that is already perceived." Still, there are always ways of hinting...

November 18, 2009

California NFL stadiums creep forward

California may be setting records for budget deficits, but that isn't stopping it from also setting records for most NFL stadium projects all at the same time. Some recent developments:

• The city of San Diego is about to hire a stadium consultant to explore ways to pay for a new downtown stadium for the Chargers near Petco Park. Chargers stadium czar Mark Fabiani told the San Diego Union Tribune yesterday that the total cost at that site could be less than $800 million, though it's unclear if he was including land costs — the Union Trib notes that Fabiani had previously indicated that revenue from developing land around a new stadium "would play a big part" (their words) in funding construction.
• Zennie Abraham, a former economic advisor to the city of Oakland, notes that San Francisco came out with an economic environmental impact report for its 49ers stadium plan the same time as Santa Clara issued its EIR, and claims the S.F. report looks better. (Abraham derides the Santa Clara report as "written as if by a snickering, snipping bureaucrat who had no patience with questions.") Abraham further notes that with two cities in the running, "the NFL will use Santa Clara as a, well, pawn, in the creation of a deal that ultimately works for both the league and the 49ers." Of course, he could just as easily have said that San Francisco will be used as a pawn to get a better Santa Clara deal. It's how whipsawing works.
• "Walnut's most high-profile resident" came out in favor of the new NFL stadium proposal in neighborhing Industry, calling it "a great opportunity to provide a lot of jobs and to be an economic boost for the area." This famous Walnuttian? Charlie Beck, who was just appointed to be the new chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, notwithstanding that he lives 20 miles from the city limits. (Also, Lance Parrish and Taboo may argue this designation.)

November 12, 2009

San Diego floats $1B Chargers stadium

And the new front-runner for a new home for the San Diego Chargers is ... San Diego? The city, which had mostly left new stadium talks to various suburban towns the last few years, this week jumped back in with both feet, proposing a $1 billion NFL stadium near the Padres' Petco Park that would be paid for, well, they'll get back to us on that. Redevelopment of the Chargers' current stadium site could pay for part of it — insert the usual caveats about the value of development rights in 2009 California here — and while the San Diego Union Tribune reports that the potential site is within the city's downtown redevelopment area, which could allow for tax increment financing, where property tax dollars are kicked back to pay for construction costs.

The Union Trib wasted no time in declaring itself thrilled by the prospect of a new stadium, which would apparently be "gleaming." It also left no doubt about the reason behind San Diego's sudden revival of interest in wooing the Chargers:

[R]epresentatives of [Ed] Roski's real estate company have made it clear that if a stadium is built [in Industry], the Chargers will be among the NFL franchises they will woo.

The Chargers are an asset to this region on many levels, and not just for football fans. It would be a painful loss if the team ultimately accepted the promise of greater revenue from a 21st-century stadium in L.A. or elsewhere.

Right on cue. If this keeps up, Roski should demand a cut of all the new stadium subsidies he generates for the NFL in other cities.

October 07, 2009

L.A. developers target six (or seven) NFL teams

Majestic Realty stadium czar John Semcken has officially announced his hit list for NFL franchises to lure to Los Angeles, and it looks like the L.A. Times guessed right:

Semcken said new talks would begin after the Super Bowl in February, and may involve the Jacksonville Jaguars, the Buffalo Bills, the Minnesota Vikings, the St. Louis Rams, the Chargers and the Oakland Raiders.

The San Francisco 49ers could also be pursued if a vote for a new stadium in Santa Clara fails.

Semcken said a new stadium could open in 2013, but a team could be relocated as early as next year or the year after, playing at a temporary site for the first couple of years.

In related news, Majestic owner Ed Roski has lost $1 billion of his $2.5 billion net worth in the last year, according to Forbes, thanks to the California real estate crash. Stadium consultant Marc Ganis calls this "significant"; Majestic says it's just a flesh wound.

September 28, 2009

Media playing "Guess who's coming to L.A. stadium?"

With an Industry NFL stadium looking more likely, newspapers are busying themselves with the game of figuring who'd play there. The Los Angeles Times declares the San Diego Chargers the frontrunner "because the Chargers have a window each year to get out of their Qualcomm Stadium lease without the threat of a lawsuit." The Jacksonville Jaguars, who are blacking out their entire season on TV thanks to poor ticket sales, are considered next most likely, with the Minnesota Vikings, St. Louis Rams, Buffalo Bills and Oakland Raiders earning honorable mention.

Of course, the Times also notes that Industry developer Ed Roski wants to own part of whatever team moves to his new building — but wants to pay for it not with cash, but with development rights to other parcels in Industry, which is a bit dicey, considering that "California development rights" is the new "swampland in Florida."

The Chargers, meanwhile, are rushing to take advantage as their newfound belle of the ball status, meeting today with Escondido officials to discuss a new stadium there. Ironically, the team's main demand there is development rights, though a North County Times estimate shows that they'd actually want a huge swath of the city's property:

In order to generate $400 million in revenue, the ancillary development would have to be either 1,400 condos, a retail complex significantly larger than the Westfield North County mall or about 2 million square feet of office buildings, which would nearly double the amount of office space in the city.

Escondido, the paper notes, currently has two half-built condo complexes sitting empty, and a 30% vacancy rate on its existing office space. I know it's old-fashioned, but the Chargers really might want to hold out for actual cash.

September 05, 2009

Goodell rattles Vikes move threat saber, goes off message on Chargers

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell did what sports league commissioners are good for during a TV interview on Thursday:

"We have a franchise that is owned by someone that really cares about the Minneapolis community [and] wants to get something done that is responsible," Goodell said. "We understand the challenges that exist not only in that market but more broadly in how to finance these projects. But it is something that we need to get done because the Vikings belong in Minnesota and I know the ownership feels that and the public leadership feels that."

Goodell also addressed the San Diego Chargers stadium situation, saying, "It's clear the stadium needs to be either completely renovated or a new stadium built." Whether he was hinting a change in policy (renovation hasn't previously been on the table for Qualcomm Stadium, at least not according to the NFL) or merely misspoke, Goodell was immediately slapped down by Chargers stadium czar Mark Fabiani, who told the San Diego Union-Tribune that it's "been proven over and over again by anyone who has looked at it over the years" that renovation is "just not feasible, either technically or financially." Well, except for a bunch of local architects and the former chair of the city's stadium task force.

The interview, incidentally, was conducted by sports consultant Rick Horrow, who knows a thing or two himself about the stadium-grubbing game. It airs next week on the cable channel Versus (not to be confused with the far better Versus).

May 29, 2009

Chargers reject $1B stadium plan

You know you're having a bad day when you offer to build a $1 billion stadium for your local football team, and they tell you to shut up and mind your own business. That's what happened to San Diego developer Perry Dealy on Wednesday, when he told the Chargers of his plans for a mammoth development project on the site of their current home of Qualcomm Stadium, and immediately got a fax back from the team telling him thanks but no thanks, as the project doesn't have "a realistic chance of being implemented."

The plan does sound a bit dubious, relying on San Diego designating the site a "redevelopment zone" based on a plume of polluted water under the current stadium, then kicking back property taxes from the new development to pay for construction. (Yes, it's tax increment financing yet again.) But still, it's unusual for a team to turn up its nose at any stadium proposal, even if just as a stalking horse to get other localities to up their bids. Chargers spokesman Mark Fabiani explained the oddity this way to AP:

Fabiani said the announcement of Dealy's project put the Chargers in the awkward situation of explaining how they could turn it down when few other options have surfaced.

"That's part of why this effort by Mr. Dealy is so damaging to us," Fabiani said. "It causes people to ask that question."

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