Good News on Chargers Stadium Search

At this point you might think that just about all is lost on the Chargers stadium front, what with the Chula Vista option closing and the new potential site in Oceanside being rife with likely insurmountable problems. But that assessment of the situation would be wrong. There's some very good news here, actually.

I spoke Friday with Mark Fabiani, the Chargers point man on the stadium search, and a spokesman for the city of San Diego, and lo and behold, the Bolts and San Diego are talking again. I wrote a story for my employer that you can find on Web sites of various local television stations.

Fabiani cautioned that nothing really substantive is in the works, but he did say the team and city have spoken more in the past four months than they did in the four years when Mike Aguirre -- an opponent of Chargers hopes for a new facility -- was city attorney. The city spokesman confirmed "informal" discussions.

According to Fabiani, there's even been discussions of potential sites: a plot of land just east of Petco Park and maybe part of the Tenth Avenue Marine Terminal again. That strikes me as being a little more substantive than not.

What really struck me was the tone of his voice. My original question to him was whether, with other hopes fading, there was any microscopic grain of possibility that America's Finest City might re-enter the picture? He proceeded to give me the information I'm sharing here, but he sounded genuinely excited about the prospect. Not only that, it sounded like he was home washing dishes, judging by some clanking noises in the background. What guy sounds excited when he's doing dishes? So he had to be happy about the Chargers and San Diego talking again.

After probing the topic a little deeper with him, it turns out that certain conditions are favoring San Diego's return to the game:

1. Fabiani claims the city is losing millions of dollars annually at Qualcomm Stadium, and city officials recently learned the extent of the problem. I have no independent confirmation of this myself, but its true that we have an aging concrete stadium sitting empty except for about 20 football games a year and a remarkably few special events.

2. The economy has dragged down the local real estate market, so any land purchases the Spanos family has to make will be less expensive than they would have been a few years ago. That's particularly important for downtown property.

3. No one is getting financing for large projects right now, so the Spanoses have time to extend their site search and get their ducks in a row before hitting the financial markets.

4. The financial picture for the city of San Diego has cleared dramatically in recent years. The city's problems are all about the larger economy -- they're battling the same deficits all the other governments are. But the fix they were in with with SEC has been resolved. When the time comes, the city should be ready to move, and the city spokesman said Mayor Jerry Sanders is committed to getting the Chargers a stadium somewhere in the region.

Again, excitement needs to be tempered with reality, but this is the first sign of progress between the NFL franchise and the city of San Diego in many years. We'll just have to see how it goes.