The Stadium Advisory Group may be moving forward with the Mission Valley site, but the Chargers still favor a downtown development spot, Chargers Special Counsel Mark Fabiani told KPBS Monday.
“Well we’re dedicated to staying in San Diego as well. . .But if that didn’t work out, and Oakland made a deal with the Raiders and we didn’t get a deal in San Diego, we would proceed with the deal in Carson on our own,” Fabiani told KPBS’ Peggy Pico on KPBS’ Evening Edition. “We can finance it on our own if we need to.”
The interview comes after San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer’s stadium advisory group recommended the Mission Valley site for the new NFL football stadium Thursday.
As NBC 7's Gene Cubbison reported prior to the announcement, the Chargers are resolute in their choice - a hybrid stadium/convention facility on a 12-acre site in downtown’s East Village.
“We’re hoping that we missed something that the task force is going to figure out what we missed and that they’ll come up with something,” Fabiani told KPBS Midday Edition. “But I can't sit here today and honestly tell you that I have a plan or that we have a plan that would work for that site, we don’t, although we looked at it for many, many years."
In the interview, Fabiani said the Mission Valley site was a “complicated” one for several reasons: part of the land belongs to the Water Utilities Department, the site has pollution from a plume underneath it, and nearby residents are against the expansion.
“The list goes on and goes of reasons why its very complicated to build anything in Mission Valley,” Fabiani said.
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As the Advisory Group works toward a financing plan in the coming months, Fabiani cautioned that the plan would have to be something voters would support, be active in a reasonable amount of time and be a proposal that would cost a realistic amount of money.
“We have to look at the plan that the task force comes up with,” Fabiani told KPBS. “If it’s a plan that can work that has a realistically costed-out stadium that is actually going to be voted on by the people and enacted, then of course, we would play there. If we could make it work, we could play there.”
You can listen to the original interview here.
