Rams owner Stan Kroenke’s move to build a stadium in Los Angeles reverberated well beyond St. Louis.
It hit San Diego as well, where the Chargers look to Los Angeles as both a source of fans and a potential home while they try to sort out a stadium of their own. San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer is feeling the pressure to get a stadium deal that will take a move to Los Angeles off the table. On Wednesday, he said he would “fight to keep” the Chargers in town and put together a task force of civic leaders to come up with a stadium plan by the fall.
“They will explore all possibilities to finance this project with my clear direction that it must present a good and fair deal for San Diego’s taxpayers,” Faulconer said, via ESPN.com. “I will not accept or support anything less.”
There are two sites in mind for a new stadium, the current site and one near the city’s baseball stadium and a proposed convention center. The Chargers are thought to prefer the second option, but were unimpressed by Faulconer’s comments.
“After 13 — now going on 14 — years of work by the Chargers, the speech contained no specifics, and so there is nothing for us to comment on,” Chargers special counsel Mark Fabiani said.
Any deal would need to be voted on by the public and the use of public money needs to be approved by a two-thirds majority, something that would seem to make a new stadium less than certain even if the task force can put together the concrete plan that the Chargers would like to see.