U-T San Diego has a smidge more information about that plan to put a San Diego Chargers stadium plan on the ballot in 2016: Team stadium czar Mark Fabiani says it will involve the city handing over development rights to Qualcomm Stadium, the team selling the rights to a developer for a whole bunch of money, then bundling a “portion” of the profits worth $650 million with $200 million in NFL money and $200 million out of the Chargers’ pocket to pay for a $1 billion stadium in downtown San Diego.
This is pretty much the same deal that Fabiani has been talking about for months now, and U-T San Diego, having abandoned any pretense at actual journalism, doesn’t bother to interview a single other person about it (except for one random “city resident” who doesn’t like the deal), so there’s a lot we still don’t know: Do the Chargers actually have a developer lined up who’d pay $650-million-plus for development rights for the Qualcomm site? Could they build downtown for $1 billion, including land costs? And if Qualcomm development rights are so lucrative, would the city be better off just developing the site themselves? (This might mean letting the team move if they have to clear the stadium space, but maybe the city could use some of the development riches to give fans gas vouchers or something to drive to L.A.)
The main takeaway here, such as it is, seems to be that if the Chargers can structure this deal to use only city land, not city tax money, it will only require a majority vote, not two-thirds.
This will be great for San Diego! I envy their weather!
I’ll be voting no. No football stadium downtown. Build it at Qualcomm’s site.
Hmm.. $650 million would make quite a dent in the $2 billion dollar pension shortfall the city is currently facing.
Opportunity costs and all.
jmauro, people like you just don’t listen. Don’t you understand that this will be great for San Diego?
You ask many pertinent questions, Neil. The answer to all of them is, anything is possible with enough public stadium cash flowing to an NFL owner! And by god we’ll get there in San Diego, like we do pretty much everywhere we want to.
So as close to making a deal as they ever were.