Entering the far turn with the lead in the race to develop a new football stadium in San Diego, Perry Dealy. And if that's not a brilliant last name for the kind of person needed to kick-start such a development in this town, nothing is.
Dealy is thinking big, which strikes me as being the right way to go if we're ever going to get a new facility for the Chargers, Aztecs, and Holiday and Poinsettia bowls. As a former president of Manchester Development, I'm sure this man is quite capable of thinking big.
His plan includes gobs of office space, hotel rooms and commercial development to go along with a stadium. I'm not sure about the office space, I think the vacancy rate in this town is rather high no matter what the economy is doing, but I always thought if the stadium was combined with a major retail and entertainment center, along with hotels and residential units, then this project could get off the ground.
The Chargers original proposal included a lot of those points, but it came at a time when the city of San Diego was incapable of making any moves. With the down economy, the city will not be able to play ball for at least another year, the better for Dealy to fine-tune his plans. But go big. There will be people who will be repulsed by the idea of a massive project but, in my mind, the bigger the plans the more capacity you can build into it to mitigate some issues, such as traffic. And, yes, the project needs to include a significant amount of public parkland.
My idea of a mitigant: I think The Q is kind of ugly plopped right there in the middle of Mission Valley. In a major redevelopment, you can build the stadium first (I envision the trolley line going through the stands where people can see it and riders can momentarily experience whatever event is taking place) and then surround the stadium with more attractive residential and hotel buildings -- not nearby, but lining the outside of the actual stadium building.
I know it's counter-intuitive to think big in this economy and against some of the opposition a stadium project has already encountered, but in this case, bigger might truly be better.
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Next day update: both the mayor's office and Chargers have come out against the plan, basically citing an unworkable density. The devil is in the details, of course, and I'm sure there's specifics in Dealy's plan I wouldn't support myself. However, Dealy might have provided a road map out of the current stalemate in regards to a new stadium. If the mayor's office and Chargers can think big, they might get a project rolling.
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