The San Diego Chargers want a stadium that's up to current NFL standards, and one of the city's jewels, Balboa Park, is in serious need of major infrastructure overhauls -- and needs a financial impetus to get the work going. It appears to me to be a match made in heaven.
According to a recent article in The San Diego Union-Tribune, a study found that Balboa Park needs 21 different improvement projects at an estimated cost of $238 million. The article suggests that the money is there, but big-dollar donors are holding back to make sure that their contributions will be meaningful.
If the upgrades to the park include a new stadium to the Chargers, San Diego State, the Holiday Bowl and the Poinsettia Bowl, then park improvements will indeed be worthy of our great city. The stadium can bring necessary upgrades to the run-down pool at Morley Field and finally bring San Diego a world-class aquatics facility. The new stadium would be a fine new location for the San Diego Hall of Champions, which would open their nice current digs for something else. There will be improvements to public transportation, such as off-shoots from downtown and Mission Valley trolley lines.
Furthermore, the area the stadium would go, between Morley Field and the Balboa Park Golf Course, bordered by Florida and Pershing drives, is nothing but open land waiting for development.
The big part, obviously, is that the financial package can be worked out to include the many projects needed to upgrade the park's infrastructure.
Naturally, there will be some opposition to this from people with interest in Balboa Park and neighbors in North Park, South Park and Golden Hill. My answers:
-- Plans for upgrading the park have been floated for many years now. The area's general plan was adopted in 1989 and has not been carried out. While city officials sit on their collective duffs, the Chargers can bring the impetus to actually get some work done. They, along with SDSU, will attract people who may not normally come to the park or be aware of all that it has to offer. Which is the point of the existence of the place. Everyone will win if the trolley system is forced to actually run trains somewhere where people like to go, like Balboa Park (and Lindbergh Field, while they're at it).
-- This will bring additional people and their resulting traffic, garbage and some obnoxious behavior to the park, granted. However, the whole idea of having a park, as stated above, is for folks to come and enjoy the place. Balboa Park, along with Mission Bay and proximity to water in general, are the city's prime real estate assets. It would be ignorant to not consider that city officials would seek to maximize their return from their prime possessions. If you live near the park, then you have to accept that changes will be made from time-to-time to attract more visitors. That said, the team should be neighborly and ensure that the stadium has a low profile in order to maintain the beauty of the park and have enough parking/public transportation to avoid inconveniencing area residents. Heck, if I lived there, I'd open my driveway to fans and charge confiscatory rates!
-- The Chargers will be given a real San Diego home and will be able to end the Chula Vista charade, which benefits no one, especially the Bolts and their fans. While the two college bowl games can adjust to wherever a new stadium is located, SDSU cannot. The Aztecs will have to play before 5,000 people, build an on-campus stadium in tight quarters, or fold their football program all together. And remember history, both the Chargers and Aztecs played at Balboa Stadium -- in Balboa Park -- in the early-1960s, so this is not exactly a new idea.
It's a win-win situation as far as I can see. The city of San Diego, thanks to more than a decade of horrible leadership, can do nothing to help either the Chargers or Balboa Park. But the two can help each other, and should quickly.
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Gotta love the Padres' Jake Peavy, maybe the ultimate gamer. He won the season opener almost by himself. Yeah, it's just a single game, but if the Padres can fill the holes in center and right fields, even by the current holders of those positions, then this team really might contend after all. It's a long season, we'll see.
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Re: the Women's Tennis Association buying out the Acura Classic, selling it to interests in Beijing and forcing players to compete there -- another newspaper story -- WTA officials might want to keep a close eye on what's going on with the Olympics. I don't wish any ill will on them for snatching away our only professional tennis tournament but, well, my instinct tells me that they've entered a hornet's nest.
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