San Diego Chargers target East Village as future home of new stadium
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This map shows the Chargers' current stadium site and options the team is considering.
By: Faryar Borhani
Every Sunday morning Chris Schon has a ritual. He packs frozen hamburger patties into a cooler decorated with bright yellow lightning bolts with some drinks his dad has set aside for him. Then he heads down to Qualcomm Stadium.
However, Schon's destination is about to change drastically in the next two years — to another place nearby or as far away as Los Angeles.
“Tailgating is the biggest aspect of any game in the NFL, and I have done it every game with my family,” Schon said.
Many players, coaches and images of the Chargers have changed since Schon first saw the team in person on Christmas Eve 1994, a game where the bolts beat the Pittsburgh Steelers by a field goal, but one common denominator has always been the same: Qualcomm Stadium. Erected in 1967 as the San Diego Stadium, the nearly 72,000-seat structure has hosted the crown jewel of the NFL, the Super Bowl, on three separate occasions and has been home to more than five different sports teams, including the San Diego Padres and San Diego State Aztecs.
However, by 2011 the Spanos family, owners of the Chargers, hope to make that list of tenants one name shorter when they move to a new state-of-the-art stadium that can help boost revenue in a struggling, stagnant and depleted economy — revenue that could translate into larger player salaries and bigger budgets for development.
Many questions loom as to where the Chargers will go once they opt out of their dense and heavily structured lease agreement with the city of San Diego. If the team wishes to buy out of their contract this year, which extends until 2013, they must pay the city $50 million, and if they do so in 2011 the number will drop to $25 million — it is this year that the Chargers have tagged as the “make or break year.”
The desire for a new stadium isn’t a new development for the Spanos family, but talks have heated in recent months as they have actively searched for spots all over San Diego County, including Chula Vista, Escondido, Oceanside and Downtown. Since the search has begun all viable options regarding those cities have been wiped off the board, except for one: Downtown.
“The (East Village) spot is the one spot that we and the Mayor (Sanders) are looking at very closely,” said Mark Fabiani, special counsel to the president and chief consultant for the stadium search. “You can save a lot of money because of the infrastructure already in place and because it is in a redevelopment district.”
The proposed spot is no bigger than 15-acres, an area that is in stark comparison to the 166-acre area being used now. In the heart of East Village, the newly proposed spot borders Petco Park, a Metropolitan Transportation Service bus depot and existing buildings that have been there for more than a century.
While obstacles are certainly apparent on the surface, it is problems developing underneath the ground that have been giving the Chargers the biggest headaches of all. A report done by a hired task force last year shows that the area has a giant fault line that may virtually cut the area in half.
“We are very concerned about the fault lines,” Fabiani said. “We have hired Turner construction to take a look at the (fault line) and we believe we can work out a solution that will be approved by the city and state.”
If fault lines didn’t amount to enough stress for the project, the adjacent bus depot has been found to have hundreds of feet of petroleum waste that has accrued since the depot opened over 100 years ago.But Fabiani doesn’t think the waste will be a big issue and said that almost all major stadiums have to deal with it in some way.
“The biggest issue for us right now is to find a way to fit the stadium on the land,” Fabiani explained. “The stadium no longer can be a circle or oval, it has to be a square or rectangle to account for the fault line.”
And while fans hope to keep the Chargers in San Diego, the problem of funding the new stadium couldn’t come at a worse time with the city facing a $179 million budget deficit for next year alone. Fabiani said the organization is working with the city closely to figure out a financial plan, but said it most likely wouldn’t be ready until January — the same time suitors from a Los Angeles based state-of-the-art stadium hope to woo the Chargers with lucrative packages and options.
But fans like Schon say they'd give up certain rituals in exchange for keeping the team home.
“I don’t really mind if we don’t have as much room to tailgate,” Schon said. “It is better than the alternative of going to another city other than San Diego.”
Recent media reports have alluded that the city won’t be able to pick up most of the tab of the $750 million to $1 billion cost of the stadium. The Chargers have stated that they will help with the funding, and the NFL has a fund for just such occasions, but with new stadiums in San Francisco and New York the fund is practically depleted — making many experts say that taxpayer dollars are nothing but inevitable.
“I don’t mind paying a few extra dollars to help fund this football club,” Bradley May, an East Village resident said. “I feel like San Diego and Los Angeles are always competing for features to attract residents, and if we let the Chargers just walk up there we are letting go of one of our biggest resources for revenue.”
And while many San Diego residents share the same sentiment of May, one local activist does not.
“I am a big Charger fan, but in no way should the city be directly supporting the team with money, or indirectly with land,” said Richard Rider, chairman of the San Diego Tax Fighters, said. “There is no way to fund a downtown stadium, and I think they will stay just where they are.”
Rider also went on to say that most of the tenants who occupy Qualcomm’s luxury boxes are Los Angeles based companies, and if all indications are true, once L.A. gets an NFL team, those companies will take their business elsewhere.
The next step to keep the perennial playoff contenders in “America’s Finest City,” according to Fabiani, is to wait until the financial analysis is completed early next year.
“I don’t care if they have to play in a high school stadium for the next two years,” Schon said. “If they are in San Diego, I will watch them anywhere.”
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