One thing I think many overlook is the concept that a stadium downtown will shift more public attention downtown. This includes national attention (people from others locales that will notice our vibrant downtown), and it will bring more attention from locals. I can't tell you how many older people still think downtown is just a sleazy place to get hookers.

I see moving the stadium as a way of incrementally reversing the bad pro-suburb decisions that have been made for so many decades. We are returning these amenities back to downtown. We are supporting our increasingly urban model...why doesn't anyone see it that way?

Cost aside (and that is hard to imagine), the stadium appears absolutely worth it considering the small amount of land the stadium will occupy. It's a small price to lure people back towards the urban core.

yeah like the gigantic working bay doesn't already draw national and local attention.

"Small amount of land" are you serious? Amount of land completely aside, please consider the scale you're dealing with. Driving around Qualcomm is one thing....do-able if needed, but walking around it (and it's parking lots) is not enjoyable whatsoever. Scale scale scale, urban pedestrian friendly and monster stadiums don't really mix. And this is coming from a stadium supporter, but when it comes down to it I would support a walkable East Village with close connections to Barrio/Southwestern/Golden Hill neighbors. We've already fenced off part of our downtown with the convention center, you would think we would have learned our lesson with that (yes, I know the cc brings ton's of commerce and a stadium would too, but try walking around it...or over it like CC).

Chargers could bail on bus yard over fouled soil
 

The downtown San Diego bus yard being studied as a site for a new football stadium has been the subject of a county environmental investigation since 1986.

Leaking underground storage tanks and pipes have periodically discharged diesel fuel, gasoline and oil into the soil and groundwater 10 to 15 feet below the site’s surface, nine football fields northeast of San Diego Bay.

The environmental damage at the site, a few blocks east of Petco Park, could require an expensive cleanup that might mean delays for any development. It’s unclear who would pay for a remedy that could run into the millions of dollars.

Excessive cleanup costs could lead the Chargers to look elsewhere for a new stadium, said special counsel Mark Fabiani, who has guided the team’s search since 2002.

“You can certainly envision scenarios where the cleanup is a deal-breaker,” Fabiani said. “Once you undertake the financial obligation of a cleanup, there’s no telling where it stops and no telling how long it takes.”

At times, the level of petroleum contaminants and carcinogens such as benzene found during testing has exceeded safety limits, and monitoring continues, according to files at the county Department of Environmental Health.

Eight thick file folders outline 23 years of oversight at the northwest corner of 16th Street and Imperial Avenue, which is owned by the San Diego Metropolitan Transit System and houses its bus fleet and offices.

Records show that the 5-acre lot has operated as a bus fueling yard and maintenance facility for nearly a century. Calls to the Metropolitan Transit System were not returned yesterday.

The Chargers have retained Turner Construction Co. to review several issues at the site, including the contamination. A report could be ready next month.

Fabiani has said site cleanup would probably be part of the stadium project, but the extent of the damage wasn’t widely known until The San Diego Union-Tribune reviewed county records this week.

Who might pay for the cleanup and whether contaminated soil would be removed or covered by some sort of buffer are “open to discussion,” Fabiani said yesterday.

The San Diego environmental law firm Caufield & James LLP notes on its Web site, “As a general rule, the party responsible for an unauthorized release of contaminants or a substantial permit violation will also be responsible for remediation — including notice to affected parties, cleanup, restoration and assurance of adequate preventive measures.”

A new stadium could cost $800 million to $1 billion and has been on the Chargers’ wish list for seven years. It’s premature to say to what extent, if any, a stadium plan could involve public financing.

A downtown stadium, far from a sure thing, would require the assembly of several parcels of land, perhaps through eminent domain, and financing in a rough economy.

After long saying the city wouldn’t help the team financially, Mayor Jerry Sanders met with team President Dean Spanos in October, and last week the city’s downtown redevelopment arm, the Centre City Development Corp., paid $160,000 to study how to pay for a new downtown stadium.

That review could be done within three or four months.

The site being eyed by the city and team consists of the bus yard, some adjacent private parcels and a portion of city-owned Tailgate Park east of an earthquake fault.

The county opened its investigation of the bus-yard site in May 1986 after four 10,000- to 20,000-gallon underground storage tanks that held diesel fuel failed integrity tests, indicating probable breaches.

The leak was later determined to be in pipes on the site, but nothing was done for years, records show.

Then in 1993, eight new underground storage tanks were installed to replace a range of older ones. From 1994 to 1997, 16 other tanks were removed. Some were leaking or had holes, and others were pulled from soil heavily discolored by petroleum products or near contaminated groundwater. In 2006, two additional tanks were drained and left in place.

A note in the file from a 1997 meeting between county officials and the property owners reads, “Health risk is minimal long-term since there is open yard/no buildings.”

Yet 2,030 cubic yards of contaminated soil were trucked off site in 1993 and at least 1,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil were hauled away in 1997, records show. (A full-size pickup can carry about 4 cubic yards.)

Another county file shows that the nearby Wonder Bread building, which would be in the stadium footprint, had contaminated soil and groundwater in September 1998.

A consultant hired by the Wonder Bread building’s then-owner speculated that the gasoline probably came from the bus yard, but the county didn’t confirm it.

A handwritten note in that file raises such a possibility, however. It asks “is something coming” from the bus yard and notes that benzene was found in two soil samples at the Wonder Bread site.

The Chargers have played at Qualcomm Stadium on 166 acres of city-owned land in Mission Valley since 1967. That area is the subject of a legal dispute between the city and owners of a massive nearby tank farm over the cleanup of a mile-long, underground plume of petroleum products. If the team ultimately quits the site, it also would need to be cleaned before redevelopment could occur there.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2...r-fouled-soil/

http://media.signonsandiego.com/img/...95d379f58af1c4

Big fucking surprise.

Yeah I'm pretty sure they know about that this isn't news...

Excavate it and fill it in with three layers of underground parking. Problem solved.

Forbes Survey
 

This is an interesting survey from Forbes measuring the economic security of metro areas across the nation. You can click on the arrows to sort the columns.

http://www.forbes.com/2009/11/19/cit...ten-chart.html

Problems Delay $27M Downtown Pedestrian Bridge
 

A new $27 million pedestrian suspension bridge under construction in downtown San Diego near the convention center and Petco Park is not going to be completed on time. The bridge was initially supposed to be finished by early next year, but officials from San Diego’s Centre City Development Corporation have said it’s going to be late next summer before the span is ready for pedestrians.

"I think we were probably a little over ambitious, optimistic... ," the CCDC’s Derek Danziger told 10News.

Danziger said no one in particular is to blame for the delay. "It’s not something like a cookie-cutter type of a design. It’s something that had to be completely done from scratch and, in that, there’s a lot of nuances to that that maybe we just didn’t predict in terms of timing," he said.

The bridge is being designed by the well-known design firm T.Y. Lin, out of San Francisco. They’re the firm behind the design of the new eastern span of the Oakland Bay Bridge. That project was originally supposed to be completed in 2007, but now isn’t scheduled for completion until 2013.

A representative from T.Y. Lin told 10News that the delays with the San Diego bridge aren’t a big deal. He chalked it up to assumptions about how fast the contractor building it would do their work, as well as the Ohio-based fabricator making the bridge pieces; assumptions that turned out to be wrong. But Lin rejects any charges that the issues that led to the delay could’ve been predicted.

The San Diego pedestrian bridge is being funded primarily with taxpayer dollars from federal, state and local sources. The JMI Reality Company, which is associated with Petco Park kicked in nearly $5 million of the overall $27 million pricetag.

http://www.10news.com/2009/1203/21791493_240X180.jpg
http://www.ccdc.com/images/img_harbo...idge_north.jpg

http://www.10news.com/news/21791269/detail.html

Engineers/Contractors always skew numbers to get the bid...

The bridge to nowhere...the city should have spent the money putting the train tracks below grade instead...

This is not a bridge to nowhere, this bridge will provide direct access to the bay front for all the East Village residents, and complete the Bay-to-Park link vision that has shaped development for this town for over 100 years.

It's also an iconic gateway to the city from the South, and helps define the East Village's relationship to the Bay. San Diego is notorious (in my opinion) to cutting off access to the bay (it's most prized characteristic).

Bravo...:rolleyes:

j/k:haha:

True story.

So will the recent developments concerning the bridge delay plans to connect Park Boulevard to Harbor Drive?

Task Force recommends Convention Center Expansion
 

Some excerpts from the CA Real Estate Journal, 12/7/09

Expansion for S.D. Convention Center
Mandy Jackson

Task force recommends pursuing $752.7 million project to prevent losing hospitality business despite city facing a $179 million budget deficit

While San Diego is facing a budget deficit of at least $179 million for its next fiscal year, the city is considering an expansion of its convention center that could cost more than $700 million. Citizens Coordinate for Century 3, a nonprofi t group focused on local and regional planning issues, invited three members of San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders’ citizen task force assigned to study an expansion of the San Diego Convention Center to address the challenges of the $752.7 million project.

Mark Steele, a task force member and founder of architecture fi rm MW Steele Group, moderated the discussion. Steele said major projects in downtown San Diego, such as construction of a new main library, redevelopment of the Civic Center Complex and expansion of the convention center, are long overdue. With a 225,000-square-foot expansion that would include exhibition space, meeting rooms and a ballroom, the convention center would total 1.2 million square feet.

The new space is expected to provide $372 million per year in direct spending, 6,885 permanent jobs, $155.6 million in annual gross room sales for hotels and $34.2 million per year in city, sales and transient occupancy tax revenue. Advertising and public relations executive Bob Nelson, vice chairman of the San Diego Convention Center Corp. board of directors, noted that the purpose of the convention center is not to serve the citizens of San Diego. Instead, the facility’s purpose is to generate revenue that pays for city services. “A lot of other cities want to be convention cities,” Nelson said. While San Diego’s convention center represents only 9 percent of the exhibit space in the western United States, the facility booked 33 percent of the most sought-after conventions in the country this year. Nelson explained that the industry standard for convention center occupancy is 55 percent because of the time the facilities need for setting up and tearing down events, but San Diego’s convention center runs at more than 70 percent of its capacity due to strong demand. Convention Retention Some conferences are turning away from the city because of the convention center’s lack of space.

For the rest of the article, see http://carealestatejournal.com/

how bout fixin dem potholez phurst?

I'm all up for the expansion as long as it's done tastefully.

Soooo whats that?

hahaha - that's what I was wondering.