San Diego county supervisors testified before Mayor Kevin Faulconer’s Chargers stadium task force yesterday on ideas for funding a stadium, and man, are they terrible. (The ideas, I mean. Not the supervisors, necessarily.)
- Supervisor Ron Roberts suggested that the county provide a “bridge loan” that could later be paid back by property and sales taxes on new development around a stadium — tax money that would normally go to the general fund to pay for schools and other public costs associated with new development, but would be instead diverted to repaying stadium loans … somehow. Also, Roberts didn’t indicate how the loan would be repaid if the development didn’t pan out as expected.
- Another idea, from supervisors chair Bill Horn, was for the county to sell a revenue bond that would be repaid by revenues on … something. (In the inimitable words of U-T San Diego, “no payback source was suggested — though he said there would need to be one.”)
No offense, guys, but it’s not much of a challenge to come up with ways of paying for a stadium that just amount to “Borrow the money, then pay it back somehow.” The not-so-fancy footwork is apparently being inspired by a California law that requires a two-thirds public vote before adding new taxes, a voter threshold that is never going to be cleared for a San Diego stadium, no way, no how. So instead we have local officials trying desperately to think of ways to fund a stadium with existing taxes, which would then need to be made up somehow, and backstopped if they don’t come in sufficiently, and oh it all just makes your head hurt, doesn’t it? I’m starting to understand why Sacramento used an arena financing plan that involved using city parking revenues and then filling in the resulting gap with more city parking revenues and then filling in that resulting gap by shrugging a lot and changing the subject.
I was looking at some of the other stadiums that were built before Jerry Jones built that upped the stakes in amenities and San Diego can build a first class stadium for $ 650 million and.with the NFL G4 money that can be increased to a $850 million dollar stadium that would more than enough to satisfy the Spanos family and increase the revenue and profit more than they can in L.A. As for paying it the county has more.flexibility than the city.
Property values and taxable sales in the city could increase. It is possible that a new tax wouldn’t be needed. To put it in perspective, over the last two years the revenue from those to taxes have increased by about $48 million. The city would be asked to cover around $25 to $35 million per year in debt payments on construction bonds. So, it’s not like it’s impossible that the city’s budget could be re-organized to include stadium debt. The real question should be whether it’s worth it to have a modern NFL stadium in San Diego. Given the city’s existing hospitality infrastructure, I think it’s a no-brainer.
Fabiani was pretty negative on the “county financing” idea. Said it takes too long to generate revenue and he made a “chicken or the egg” comparison. It requires a 55% positive countywide vote.
1360sports.com/onair/dave-jeff-54925/feb-25-mark-fabiani-and-todd-13289074/
If the Chargers indeed ‘need’ a new stadium, Spanos can easily pay for 100% of it. He is getting $200 million per year in NFL TV revenues alone!
Of all 31 NFL metro-plexes, San Diego is probably the one that least needs an NFL franchise. I have visited San Diego before, and I will visit again and was not nor will be to see the Chargers.
As has been pointed out to me, the official resolution doesn’t say Sacramento’s arena bonds will be repaid with parking revenues. They imply the heck out of that, but in fact, the general fund is tagged as the repayment source.
And that’s good enough to satisfy California laws.
I can’t see why San Diego cannot do the same thing.
The method of taking revenue from other city services is how they continued making payments on the stadium losses over the years…many millions every year. The current location is not popular enough and a downtown stadium would cost, well, more wealth than you can imagine…many billions, just to squeeze it into the popular part of San Diego, which is the main requirement of the team, I believe.
I like that nobody really doubts that the area could be successfully redeveloped–probably at great profit for the city as well, given that most of the land usage would be for something productive and taxable and not merely the occasional location of tractor pulls and Chargers games.
Downtown stadiums are an absolute waste of space and resources. There’s a reason baseball and football teams never played in downtown Manhattan, Philadelphia, Chicago, or just about any other city until cities/states paid the bill.
MikeM: Exactly.
Real: I don’t think the Chargers care which areas are popular. They just want $500 million or so in tax money. I think the downtown idea is just because the Chargers thought that the city might give $500 million towards a stadium if it were part of a convention center expansion. If the city writes the Chargers a $500 million check to stay in Mission Valley, I find it hard to believe that the team would disapprove.
Won’t it be funny if the Raiders pull out of the proposed stadium deal in Carson to be the second team in Inglewood then the Chargers all of a sudden have no leg to stand on when it comes down to extorting the taxpayers in San Diego?
The Chargers can threaten to move to Oakland, Saint Louis, San Antonio, London, Las Vegas, Cheboygan, wherever. There is no lack of cities to be used as leverage. The only difference would be the most obvious one would go away.
@MikeM
It probably can’t be done in San Diego because our city is almost bankrupt and we aren’t able to provide basic services. We can’t add any additional liabilities without increasing taxes, which requires a 2/3rds vote. Our hoteliers would have expanded the convention center if what you are claiming were possible down here.
@Ben Miller
The downtown “Convadium” project was very much the Chargers’ preferred plan because they thought it had the best chance of passing. The Chargers know that the voters will chose to expand the convention center, with taxes on tourists, over paying for a new stadium. We wont build both so it’s either the Chargers or Comic-Con, or we wont build either.
Thank god the “Convadium” is dead.
An article came out yesterday regarding Goldman paying for the Carson stadium, cost overruns and monies lost (if any) for the Chargers and Raiders.
People came out in droves to Qualcomm last night in an open forum – while you can understand the support these folks don’t seem to understand that they could end up paying big $$ for this stadium. These folks aren’t ones who understand history, as in what it took to build Petco at 296 million of their dollars. The new Chargers stadium won’t be ONLY 296 million to the taxpayers… it’ll be more. There’s a great 33 page document from Berkeley Law that explains how Petco got built, and some of the promises made by the Padres have never come true. You can expect that to be the same with the Chargers.
Substitution effect, folks, it’s real and certainly doesn’t make the case that a stadium is a good idea.