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Cushman: Qualcomm site could still be Chargers' home
FORMER MAYORAL ADVISER ENDORSES NEW LOOK AT MISSION VALLEY SITE
By Roger Showley, Business News, UT-San Diego North County, Jan 3, 2013

Qualcomm Stadium, where the Chargers have played since 1967, may still make sense as their future home, according to Steve Cushman.

Former Mayor Jerry Sanders’ point person on convention center expansion, Cushman endorsed the present 166-acre site Thursday as a potential “real asset for the city” if it could be redeveloped with a stadium, housing and commercial buildings.

“I think it would be a great project, a real project that could happen,” Cushman said.

Cushman spoke the day after he made similar remarks on KPBS-TV, when he endorsed U-T Publisher Douglas F. Manchester’s recent estimate that $200 million could be enough to fix the stadium’s many issues.

The estimate seems accurate, Cushman said, because it is line with the $520 million convention center expansion cost. He recommended the city hire the same Phoenix consultant used on the convention center to verify the costs of refurbishing the stadium.

“Maybe it isn’t feasible,” Cushman said. “Maybe it’ll take $400 million to do it, maybe $100 million.”

But he said the point is that “nothing should be off the table.”

“I do not want to see us lose the Chargers,” he said.

Chargers consultant Mark Fabiani, who has been advising the team on stadium issues, said in an email, “We remain open minded about all ideas, but there are no new developments on the ground at Qualcomm.”

The team has been searching for a decade to fix or replace Qualcomm, which it considers subpar when compared to other NFL stadiums.

It proposed a $400 million replacement in 2003 as part of a mixed-use redevelopment on the site.

When that received mixed reviews, the team looked into sites in Chula Vista, Oceanside and other locations and settled on an East Village site in 2010 on the city bus yard at 14th and K streets.

But with the state-ordered end to redevelopment agencies last year, a city-Chargers partnership seemed financially infeasible and Sanders was seeking funding alternatives when he left office last month.

In 2009 Perry Dealy, a consultant to Manchester on another project, independently led a team of civic leaders to look again at the Q and developed an $800 million stadium replacement plus housing, San Diego State University housing and academic buildings and parkland. The Chargers did not endorse that plan and nothing further came of it.

Last year, U-T San Diego ran a front-page editorial promoting the 10th Avenue Marine Terminal on the downtown waterfront as an alternative that could include hotels, convention space and other amenities and replace both Qualcomm and the convention center expansion.

The San Diego Unified Port District, which operates the terminal, rejected the idea and extended a long-term lease for part of the terminal to Dole Fresh Fruit.

Manchester said he was not interested in being the developer the Qualcomm site -- “I’ve got my hands full doing other things” -- and was speaking at the site’s potential from a developer’s standpoint.

“If there’s a way of doing it, maybe that should be considered,” he said. “If you gave me $200 million, I probably could do it.”

But he said was not giving up the waterfront site or any option and remains committed to keeping the Chargers in San Diego.

The only new wrinkle in the stadium debate is the state of pollution at the site from gasoline tanks operated by Kinder Morgan and the recent outcome of a lawsuit by the city against that company.

Both U-T CEO John Lynch and Fabiani mentioned the lawsuit’s outcome as a new factor in what new development might be feasible.

“I am convinced that no stadium will ever be built on the Qualcomm site,” Lynch said. “If it doesn’t happen downtown, you may see the L.A. Chargers.”

Revamped Qualcomm Site

Will new mayor work with Chargers on stadium?
By Brent Schrotenboer, USA TODAY Sports, Nov 7, 2012

The San Diego Chargers' decade-long quest for a new stadium almost certainly won't be submitted to voters until at least 2014.

But even that possibility appeared less likely this week with the election of new mayor Bob Filner, a Democrat who has vowed to be "the toughest negotiator the Chargers have ever faced."

Without a solution, the Chargers remain a perennial candidate to move to Los Angeles – even as soon as next year, though the team has shown a commitment to San Diego as long as viable options are on the table.

"We've waited this long, and if we have a path to success, we can wait until 2014," said Mark Fabiani, the Chargers point man on the stadium search. "Right now we don't have such a path, but we hope to find one with the new mayor."

Even if it goes to voters in 2014 and is approved, a new stadium probably wouldn't be ready for play until 2018.

Both mayoral candidates had opposed public financing of a new stadium, but Filner's opponent, Republican Carl DeMaio, had said he was open to creating a public-private partnership for the project.

Filner, a Congressman, states on his campaign website that "our city has been held ransom by our sports teams, a fact we cannot forget." He states "the only deal" he would make "is one that will give something back to the city and its taxpayers." He states that could include "partial ownership of the team" and "greater involvement and support of our public schools."

Filner's office didn't immediately return a message seeking comment. He is to be inaugurated on Dec. 3.

Still, there may be common cause for Filner and the Chargers, particularly with the labor unions, a staunch supporter of Filner's. The unions generally have supported a new stadium for the team on the basis that it would create union jobs.

"We look forward to working with Mr. Filner," Fabiani told USA TODAY Sports Wednesday. "We have mutual allies in the labor community, and our proposed project would create thousands of jobs and major construction in three separate sections of the city, so we hope to be able to find common ground here."

The city's current mayor, Jerry Sanders, had tried to make progress toward a new stadium, even touring stadium districts in other cities last year to gather ideas for San Diego. He had hoped to submit a downtown stadium plan to voters in 2013.

But that is not likely now because of entanglements involving the state's dissolution of redevelopment agencies.

The stadium is projected to cost around $1 billion, with money coming from the NFL, the team and taxpayers if they approve it in a vote.

The team wants to boost its revenues with a new stadium. It currently plays in 45-year-old Qualcomm Stadium, a city-owned facility that needs $80 million in repairs, maintenance and improvements, according to a city-commissioned report last year. The report also said the city would lose at least $10 million a year on Qualcomm Stadium through 2020. Even so, other financial problems for the city have kept the stadium issue on the backburner in recent years.

According to their lease with the city, the Chargers can negotiate with other cities and relocate during a three-month window each year starting Feb. 1. To leave in 2013, they would just need to pay the city $22 million.

Meanwhile, 120 miles up the road, Los Angeles is on the verge of building a new NFL stadium, pending a commitment from a team willing to move there. The goal is to have the stadium built by the 2017, but the stadium's developer, Anschutz Entertainment Group, has indicated it could be ready to accommodate a team in a different Los Angeles facility as soon as next year while the stadium is being built.

STADIUM SITE NOW IN QUESTION
By Craig Gustafson, Beat Writer, UT-San Diego, Sep 14, 2012

Fred Maas, the mayor’s point man on the stadium issue, said it doesn’t make sense to put out any plan until the fate of Tailgate Park is determined.

“The big issue is it throws a wrench into the whole financial evaluation of the site and, ultimately, presenting a report,” he said. “In an environment in which people are cynical to begin with, the last thing you want to do is release something that raises more questions than answers.”

The team is focused on the possibility of building a stadium in East Village on a site that includes a bus yard owned by the San Diego Metropolitan Transit System and part of Tailgate Park. The financing plan would likely involve several public agencies, including the San Diego Association of Governments, which could help pay for a replacement bus yard or other transportation-related infrastructure improvements.

An alternative plan has been proposed by U-T San Diego ownership for a waterfront stadium at the 10th Avenue Marine Terminal as part of an integrated complex that would include a sports arena, expanded convention center and a public park and beach.

Complications over the East Village property began when Gov. Jerry Brown and state lawmakers approved the end of redevelopment agencies across the state as of Feb. 1, determining that the money reinvested by the agencies was needed to balance the state budget. Critics also argued that redevelopment in some cities had failed to remove blight and promote development as intended.

Many cities, including San Diego, chose to assume control of all the former redevelopment agency’s obligations and properties through a successor agency, a separate legal entity. But, in June, the Legislature changed the rules on how former redevelopment agency properties could be developed, sold or transferred to the city. Any decision on the properties can only occur after a long-range asset management plan for all the properties is developed and approved by the San Diego Oversight Board — a seven-member panel appointed by city, county, school and special district officials — and the state Department of Finance. That approval process can’t begin until April 2013 and a final resolution isn’t expected until the following fall.

The Department of Finance will have the final say, which takes the ultimate decision out of local hands.

“The Legislature’s decision to wind down redevelopment has thrown a lot of projects into limbo,” Sanders said in a statement. “We won’t know the status of this parcel until next fall when the state makes a decision on a long-range asset management plan. Once a determination is made, the next mayor will be able to take the work that has been done so far and incorporate it into a financing plan that works for both the Chargers and the taxpayers.”

Sanders and the Chargers had hoped to put the stadium financing plan before voters in 2013, but the uncertainty over Tailgate Park almost certainly pushes a public vote into 2014. It also shifts responsibility for leading the stadium push to the next mayor. Two candidates competing in the November election — Republican City Councilman Carl DeMaio and Democratic Rep. Bob Filner — have ruled out the possibility of using taxpayer money from the city on any stadium deal.

By Matthew T. Hall, Reporter - San Diego Union-Tribune, April 9, 2012

Other older stadium stories you might have missed:

In San Diego, where the season's end was as anti-climactic as a Raiders win can be, there was no doubt what the big stadium news of the week was. It was the death of redevelopment.

Which is funny, because the day that the California Supreme Court ruled that the state Legislature's decision to wind down redevelopment was legal, the story on the ruling wasn't our website's most popular until late in the afternoon.

Instead, for most of Thursday, as one politician after another grumbled that they'd been "raided," the top spot on our site belonged to news that Chargers center Nick Hardwick might retire....

The elimination of San Diego's Centre City Development Corp. and the state's other 400 redevelopment agencies, threw into question how the East Village site being studied for a new football stadium would be cleared of tenants and cleaned of massive fuel contamination from the buses that currently call it home.

The cleanup and relocation of the Metropolitan Transit System bus yard and other tenants is estimated to cost $150 million, a tidy sum that's excluded from the Chargers' $800 million projections for a new downtown stadium.

The assumption had been that redevelopment funds could cover the site preparations. Now those assumptions are being revisited.

City officials expect to release the stadium financing plan they're working on with Chargers brass by the end of March. Here's the relevant section of colleague Roger Showley's story on the court ruling.

Many high-profile projects, as well as park and sidewalk improvements, count on redevelopment funding and their future now is in doubt.

The biggest is the proposed $800 million Chargers stadium downtown.

"We had assumed last fall that redevelopment funds would not be available, and so we proposed a combination stadium-convention center expansion concept which we believe could be financed without redevelopment dollars," said team counsel Mark Fabiani.

However, the city has rejected a combination as Fabiani sketched out in favor of moving forward now with a $520 million convention center expansion.

At the same time, the Centre City Development Corp., the city's downtown redevelopment arm, had set aside $150 million in additional funds for site preparation of the East Village site eyed by the Chargers, now occupied by the city bus yard.

While that money for the stadium site and millions more were identified in a cooperation agreement with the city earlier this year to secure future funding, it is not clear how secure that agreement now is.

Fabiani said he and other Chargers lawyers are "analyzing the opinion" from the court.

"We are not prepared at this point to offer anything definitive on that question" about the $150 million, he said in an email.

The impact in Los Angeles is less certain. It's unclear how much redevelopment money, if any, might have been spent on infrastructure improvements surrounding the sites of dueling stadium projects proposed in downtown Los Angeles and 20 miles away in City of Industry.

This is how the U-T’s Tim Sullivan summarized his current level of concern about the Chargers moving to Los Angeles: “The threat is conceivable, but it is not yet close, and it does not appear to have moved any closer as a result of the California Supreme Court’s decision upholding the state legislature’s right to dissolve redevelopment agencies.” Kinda like that one scene with the security guard in Austin Powers, he wrote. Yeah, this one.

Want more on the redevelopment ruling? San Diego Rostra compiled nearly two dozen stories from around the state here.

In other local stadium news, voiceofsandiego.org’s Scott Lewis continued to discuss the idea of potential public ownership of the team, which would require changing the National Football League bylaws, i.e. moving Heaven and Earth.

Meanwhile, Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio is now (sort of) charged up about the issue on his (much larger) platform. In classic, anonymously sourced Florio, he wrote: “As one team executive told PFT on Wednesday, plenty of franchises would love to have the ability to ‘print money.’”

In Los Angeles, ESPN.com's Arash Markazi at least waited until the day after Christmas to drop this piece of coal on Chargers’ fans. He tweeted, “I still think the Chargers make the most sense to move in 2013 with the Rams moving soon after in 2014 or 2015.” That’s actually no surprise to anyone who’s following his weekly NFL in L.A. updates, which continually rank the Chargers as the likeliest candidate to go all Hollywood. What’s interesting is that even when the NFL's return to Los Angeles remains a long shot (based solely on an absence now measuring 17 years), Markazi maintains not one, but two teams, could play there. Within three years.

Also in Los Angeles, the Daily News named Tim Leiweke its sports person of the year. In big, bold type, (alright, in the headline....) the paper dubbed the AEG CEO and president “the harvester of hope when it comes to NFL’s possible return to L.A.” Leiweke is the face of the push to put a team in downtown L.A.

The article includes a Q and A with Leiweke and features this exchange:

Q: Are you where you want to be right now in the process, and are you confident whatever gap still exists between Los Angeles and the NFL will be closed?

A: I wouldn't say I am confident but I will say both sides understand the uniqueness of a private company and a private citizen like Phil Anschutz stepping up and saying he is willing to take the risk. But the deal has to make sense for all involved, including him. He is going to have to personally own this team. This will not be an AEG asset. And so, does that get done? I guess if I was confident it would already be finished. So we have work to do. But first and foremost we have to finish the environmental impact report and our goal is to have that finished and improved by June of 2012.

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