Tipsheet: Rams give Chargers some stadium leverage
By Jeff Gordon
http://www.stltoday.com/sports/columns/jeff-gordon/tipsheet-rams-give-chargers-some-stadium-leverage/article_0b169521-e3eb-596e-9e3a-7c1bbc5934e5.html
The San Diego Chargers have tried and tried and tried to get a new stadium built. Now Rams owner Stan Kroenke has given the franchise the leverage it has lacked to make that happen.
Chargers attorney Mark Fabiani made that abundantly clear while meeting with San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer’s nine-member stadium advisory group this week. He claimed the Rams and/or Raiders returning to Los Angeles could cost the Chargers 25 percent of its current fan base.
“It would not be fair to the Chargers — a team that has worked for 14 years to find a stadium solution in San Diego County — to allow other teams that themselves abandoned the L.A. market to now return and gut the Chargers’ local revenue stream,” Fabiani said, according to a statement released to media members.
Qualcomm Stadium is 48 years old. A new stadium will be expensive — perhaps more than the $1.2 billion to $1.5 billion projected by city officials.
Gaining approval for public support of this project would be very difficult. Any proposal requiring two-thirds approval would have little hope of passing.
Like St. Louis, San Diego needs to find an answer that doesn’t rely on a successful vote.
Fabiani called on the panel to devise a real stadium solution, not a doomed proposal that would merely alleviate political pressure on those involved.
“The Chargers do not intend to waste years of time and millions of dollars on a proposal that city leaders simply do not have the capacity to actually implement,” he said. “In short, a proposal that looks good on paper should not be sufficient. What we all need is a proposal that our city government has the capacity to actually implement.”
Fabiani said the Chargers “have no intention of quietly participating in any effort to provide political cover for elected officials . . . Simply put, we have no intention of allowing the Chargers franchise to be manipulated for political cover — and we will call out any elected official who tries to do so.”
So the fun has begun. As long as St. Louis can devise a workable plan while San Diego and Oakland fail to do the same, this market has at a chance to remain in the NFL.
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