I'm for the library, but you are comparing apples and oranges. A stadium brings in revenue to the area surrounding the stadium, gives stature to a city for attracting businesses, etc. A library does not.

That doesn't even matter.

San Diego just needs A new stadium and superbowl will come due to our awesome weather.

And yes the city will have to pay for a small percentage of the bill, but nowhere near the total $1 Billion cost of the whole stadium.

Petco Park was a disaster on that end and has left people a bit uneasy about new stadiums...

That's true. And the Gaslamp will be even closer.


And I'll just come out and say it when it comes to this library v. stadium thing, I'm for it all. Airport, transit, HSR, stadium, library, city hall, something higher than 500 ft. Bring those and I'll be a happy man. Now let someone like "voice of reason" shoot me down as some naive lover of expensive (and apparently useless) pipe dreams who doesn't know what this city needs or its voters want. To me those are the things that will make San Diego reach its potential.

dl3000 for mayor!!!

I have to disagree... I think cities with great urban spaces, public buildings, and vibrant retail and residential areas attract business and tourists. I don't think businesses select a city because it has a fancy new stadium. I continue to wonder about the choices being made here. For more than 40 years the city has ignored a central library and it appears the stadium will now get all the energy of the redevelopment agency while the North Embarcadero park sits and waits... To me this illustrates that this region does not learn from great urban areas like Chicago, New York, Barcelona, London, etc These cities have great urban spaces, great public facilities. And yes, they do have stadiums. But they are not known for that. They are known for the vibrancy of their urban cores that include great retail, food, parks, museums, theater and opera houses, etc. If you look at San Diego the only significant investment in the last 10 years downtown has been Petco and now we appear to be moving toward a football stadium public/private investment. Please don't get me wrong, if the Chargers want to spend $$$ to build a stadium that is great, but if we are going to move toward being a great city the evidence suggests we should focus on other public investments. I don't think San Diego has the stomach for that.

Hahaha. My rants always sound like I'm laying down a platform for mayor don't they. I'm just saying how certain people on this forum seem to think that we who think San Diego needs a lot more and better infrastructure are completely out of touch with what the voters want. Maybe we are since the leadership that everyone elected can't or won't get the stuff done. It's always bugged me and I used to draw maps in Junior High and then I found this forum and SSC. It's always been fun discussing what could be possible here.

If San Diego loses the Chargers because they were unable to get a stadium built, everything else becomes irrelevant to me. I will be so done with this God forsaken places (yes, San Diego sans the Chargers becomes "God forsaken" in my opinion) that the "city" could fall into the ocean and I wouldn't care.

Also, it seems very short-sighted to me to allow the Chargers to leave because we instead opted to repair some streets. Infrastructure expenses are never going away, but the Chargers might, and once they're gone, they're not coming back. Plus, what's going to raise more money for the local economy - repairing roads and infrastructure or building a downtown stadium?

So here's a question I would like to ask everyone:

What would stimulate the economy more a new stadium, or a new city hall and library (considering the possibility of combining both into one complex to get it built)?

I'd rather have the stadium. The library would be a hobo hangout and the quality of San Diego politicians matches the architectural beauty of the current city hall perfectly.

I agree with you on vibrancy in retail, availability of affordable housing, and urban spaces including parks which all attract businesses. I was just stating that studies show that professional athletic teams do as well. In fact, just 3 months ago I sat on a selection committee at my company as they decided to leave San Diego and move everything to another city. We reviewed cost of doing business, taxes, education level of local talent, and 7 other categories....one of which was access to sporting events.

As a side note, and without divulging my company, I can tell you what hurt San Diego and was the final cause of our executive team and Board's rationale for leaving San Diego.

* Our reps travel about 40% of the time. The SD airport was a major complaint of our employees. We reviewed the growth plans and felt it wouldn't solve any of the current issues with its one runway.
* cost of doing business regarding EDD unemployment, taxes, etc. have increased at an alarming rate over the past 5 years.
* lack of alternative forms of travel. I grew up in NYC, and could care less about riding a bus, but our employees who mainly resided in La Jolla, Escondido, Rancho Penasquitos, Del Mar, UTC just wouldn't do it, though we offered to pay for monthly passes.
* Lack of Affordable Housing.

We reviewed 34 cities, and eventually chose Dallas, particularly the area locals here call Uptown, considering most of the following reasons:

*Dallas officials approached us and offered incentives we just couldn't turn down.
*The DFW airport better serves our clients and employees.
*The DART rail lines serve a large area of Dallas, and is undergoing the largest expansion of any light-rail system in the U.S. We've purchased DART passes as perks for our employees, and we've received some great feedback from them.
*No income tax.
*business taxes are lower here.
*More cultural amenities.
*Dallas Cowboys, Mavericks, Stars, & Texas Rangers allow for us to "wine-dine" clients in our sky-boxes.

I for one miss the beach and perfect weather, but I'm surprisingly loving Dallas. I must state though that my wife and I chose to keep our house in La Jolla in hopes that we will one day return if the state's situation improves.....for now we are renting it out.

The sad thing to me is that with adequate leadership most of the issues that caused our company to leave CA could have been resolved.

A stadium...by a mile. The economic impact of hosting one Super Bowl is between $350 and $400 MILLION dollars, and that's just the start.

City halls and libraries are overhead and it seems to me that if anything, they're a drain on the local economy. Edit -> An often-times worthwhile drain, but a drain nonetheless. :)

I completely agree. Aside from the direct economic impact of having a stadium/team, there is also an enormous indirect impact.

Actually, if you read tdavis' statement, although the presence of a sports team may have been part of the decision matrix of his company, what really seemed to have mattered was the better infrastructure ( airport, public transportation), better financial and tax incentives of Dallas.

I also would ask those who keep saying studies indicate a tremendous economic impact to please site those studies, and who conducted them. I just did a quick search and of those studies that promote stadium building as an economic multiplier, they are mostly financed by those that have an interest in having a stadium built. What is available from academia, however, indicates either a neutral or negative impact.

Haha yes, we didn't leave because of sports. I was just stating that sports does have an impact, though there are many other influences.

http://www.sdcitybeat.com/cms/story/..._village/8693/

A football stadium in East Village? Architect/developer Graham Downes calls it “an idiotic idea.”

“It will be the death of the area,” he said. “You have this behemoth structure that’s very vertical just sitting there in the middle of town, just sapping all the energy out of the place.”

Downes, a vanguard in East Village’s redevelopment, has long been interested in the area’s industrial past and the potential re-use of its warehouses. He heads Blokhaus, a development company that, among other projects, overhauled the Wonder Bread Factory, the historic building on 14th Street, between Imperial Avenue and K Street, that’s become the reference point for a stadium site but was once part of Downes’ vision for East Village: a hip-yet-gritty live/work area—akin to Vancouver’s Yaletown—that connects seamlessly to Downtown and Barrio Logan, each neighborhood flowing into the next without losing its individual character.

“Somebody should do some visuals so they can see the impact of these two huge stadiums next to each other,” he said. “You can’t walk around them, you can’t walk through them. It’s like a walled city, like you plunked a castle in the middle. It’s somebody’s monument.”

An East Village stadium is far from a done deal, but discussions about its feasibility are moving forward faster than any other proposal put forward in the seven years since the Chargers first expressed interest in moving, arguing in 2002 that continued use of Qualcomm Stadium compromised the team’s “economic viability.”

On Oct. 30, online news site voiceofsandiego.org reported that Mayor Jerry Sanders had met with Chargers President Dean Spanos; Chargers special counsel Mark Fabiani confirmed for a voice reporter that East Village was discussed. And, on Wednesday, Nov. 18, the board of directors for the Centre City Development Corp., the agency that oversees Downtown redevelopment, will vote on spending $160,000 on a consultant to study the stadium’s feasibility.

Darren Pudgil, Sanders’ spokesperson, told voice that the mayor’s preference was for the Chargers to stay in Mission Valley. It’s Downes’ preference, too.

“We need urban development Downtown,” he said. “A ballpark is not an urban development; it’s suburban development. It needs to be out in the sticks where there’s lots of parking, where cars can queue in line for ages without impacting the area.”

So far, only about 10 acres of land in East Village has been identified for a stadium—miniscule compared to the 592 square acres the City of Industry is making available for its proposed stadium. Last month, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed legislation exempting the L.A. area stadium from environmental review, further putting the pressure on San Diego County to site a new stadium or risk losing the Chargers to L.A.

On Monday, Downes dissolved his interest in the Wonder Bread building—he had been the controlling leaseholder. He did it for multiple reasons, he said, not just the stadium. But, he added, “lots of people have land in that area who are trying to make things happen. No one’s going to come down [to East Village] because they’re going to say, ‘Well, if I set up there, print up business cards and start to get cozy and the Chargers come in, I’m toast.’”

Really? Is he suggesting that Petco is taller than the other high-rises in the area? And that the footprint takes up more space than other downtown developments? - Horton Plaza, Convention Center, Civic Center, etc. And Petco sapped all the energy out of the area? The Petco area is stronger now than it has been in decades. And once the economy comes back the empty stores will fill in.

This guy's an idiot.

Yep.

I applaud Dallas' investment in transit, parks, a performing arts center...
Oh, I think Jerry Jones built a new stadium too...

Hello San Diego...?

...and I didn't mean to suggest that sports teams were the reason why the company left, that they are a factor, and that there are a lot of indirect benefits of having them.

Random question. I voted for her when I lived in La Jolla, but I've heard from some lately that they are frustrated with Councilwoman Sherri Lightner for not doing much, staying behind the scenes. Anyone offer any insight?