There hasn’t been much public talk in San Diego about building a new Chargers stadium since a local city councilmember threw everything he could think of at the wall to see what would stick, though the mayor’s task force is supposed to announce the “outlines” of a financing plan on May 20. Some reporters, though, can’t wait that long, and so are trying to spin stadium news out of … well, follow the bouncing ball:
- U-T San Diego, not yet reverted to its old name of the San Diego Union-Tribune, reports that the San Diego Convention Center’s expansion plans may be falling through, thanks to a court ruling that a hotel tax hike to help fund it would be unconstitutional because it wasn’t approved by two-thirds of voters.
- Fox Sports notes that the Chargers have long wanted to build a stadium near the convention center, and this news could “open the door wide open” (yes, that’s how they wrote it) to revive such a plan.
- Fox then notes that developer JMI Realty (aka former Padres owner John Moores) last year proposed a $1.4 billion stadium and convention center expansion tandem deal, one that would be funded in part by increased hotel taxes — hey, waitaminnit!
Now, it’s possible that Moores’ plan meant the increase in taxes from added hotel stays, not an unconstitutional-without-a-vote increase in hotel tax rates, though there’s no way that that would generate anything close to $1.4 billion. And anyway, it turns out that Moores didn’t actually figure out how to pay for his stadium proposal: U-T San Diego reported last year that “JMI did not ask its consultants for a financing plan, leaving that crucial detail to the city to work out.”
So, San Diego’s convention center expansion funding may be in trouble thanks to a court ruling handed down last year, so that could open the door open (sorry, just can’t stop typing that) for a new Chargers stadium to be funded by some means nobody has figured out yet. I don’t know what the mayor’s task force is going to come out with in eight days, but it’s gotta be more newsworthy than this.
Fun stuff. The Chargers have always wanted a downtown site because they believe that it would be possible to build a joint facility and justify a hotel tax increase to pay for some of that. They really don’t care about FOOTBALL downtown – it is all about a nexus to that tax source.
But another question for the gallery. I need ASAP (like immediately) a good example about a stadium plan leaving out O&M costs and then the public entities getting bitten in the behind by the operating losses. URL preferred. Will be checking back.