Man please, who thinks about putting up another stadium 10 years after building the first one? I'm pretty tired of this being brought up. The first tier clause is why we are here, no denying that, but c'mon.
I wouldn't argue that they should have necessarily been planning out a new stadium but should have likely been planning out how to honestly deal with the top tier issue as they knew it was there and that shoe would eventually drop.
I know that wondering why and criticizing St Louis for not starting plans on a new stadium in 2005 is silly. We were one year from the playoffs, the dome rocked every Sunday, and the facility was a mere ten years old. The bathrooms were still in mint condition for God's sake. So I can't speak for SD, but the criticism on this is invalid. Because it's completely divorced from reality. Top tier? Certainly open for criticizing, hindsight it was dumb, born of desperation. But to criticize for not starting in 2005 is completely invalid.
Again, the condition has been there for remaining in the Dome lease. It was a bad idea from the get go but the elephant has always been in the room.
This is a very good point. Many like to say St. Louis should have talked about building a new stadium in 2005 as if we had a crystal ball and knew Georgia would not be here in a few years, her kids couldn't afford to keep the team, and then sell it to Kroenke (who had a small hand in bringing the team here in the first place) who in turn tries to make a move back to L.A. (if that's indeed his intention). I too imagine if Georgia was still alive, we wouldn't be going through this. And again, who talks about putting up a new stadium or paying hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade a 10 year old facility?
I really don't give Georgia this kind of latitude. If nothing, she was all about sucking as much money from the team as possible and keep in mind that she originally had Baltimore in her sights until Shaw - being on the NFL stadium committee - brought the St Louis dilemma to her knowing how desperate they were to get a team in the dome.
Demoff isn't a wall, I'd rather negotiate with him than with someone who sits down, doesn't really listen, and then trashes everything they see to kill the proposal before it gets off the ground.
I would definitely agree with this. If someone is bashing plans in public, how does the public get behind it? Sorry but Fabiani appears to be intentionally poisoning the water whereas Demoff at minimum is offering suggestions on the proposal at hand without undermining it with the public.
You don't know if Demoff does that or not
I kinda think we do but even if this is true, we don't know that Fabiani is helping in SD either.
He may not put publicly, but you have no idea how he is behind closed doors. We don't know if he sit there like a brick wall or not, we don't know what suggestions he makes, we only know that in public they are polite. There are as many reports that say the Rams are forced to attend meetings.
The Rams may have been indeed forced but through that, we know Demoff has offered suggestions (undoubtedly from Stan) and some of those suggestions have been incorporated. What we do know is that he hasn't publicly discredited what the task force is doing.
Behind closed doors isn't a big deal, that's not what I'm worried about. Trashing the project publicly greatly damages the project and essentially kills it. It's very hard to garner support for a project when the team is trashing it, people don't want to agree to spend money if they figure it doesn't matter anyway.
Again, I have to follow this logic. Publicly dismissing the proposal in SD and openly criticizing those involved like Fabiani has been doing can't help in getting the public behind a proposal to use tax dollars toward a new stadium.
lol, so you would rather negotiate with someone who has no real say in how something goes, than with the person who has all the say on how it goes? really? that doesnt make sense to me.
You are assuming that Demoff has no say or is not echoing his boss' edicts yet Fabiani is. I don't see how that would possibly be the case - at least with Demoff.
I gotta stop coming to this thread every day. From the notion that the city should have started stadium plans before the paint dried on the ED, to this new idea that the Rams are being gracious to St Louis for not falsely trashing a perfectly good stadium proposal they barely look at, it's getting a bit out there.
My take is that the city should have at minimum had an end goal in mind here. Not necessarily for a new stadium but just what they were going to do throughout the process. I don't know that there is a good answer here because the lease was so damned one sided toward the Rams. It sucks.
It's not that the Chargers want Los Angeles or San Diego. What Dean Spanos wants is simple, and Mark Fabiani has been telling us for over a decade what it is. The team wants a new, state-of-the-art NFL stadium that doesn't potentially bankrupt the team's owner.
That's it. That's all.
What bankrupts the owner? The Chargers are supposedly being paid to play in SD.
It would be more of a boon for the city than it would be for the team.
That is not what most evaluations indicate but I do agree with this. There are many financial reasons a team playing in a city impacts the tax base through economic activity and the like.
I'll gloss over this quickly, but the Mission Valley site also has a ton of issues. Traffic down there is already a nightmare.
And Carson isn't? Really?
This would be like if the Chargers, as a way to start negotiations with Eric Weddle, gave him a low-ball offer ($5 million a year for two years) in a press conference to the whole of the San Diego media. Then, when everyone pointed out that he's worth closer to $10 million and probably wants four or more years, the team says "Well, this is just the start of negotiations." It's silly!
Not to beat a dead horse but isn't that exactly what the CVC did with their proposal to the arbitrators?
Due to the task they were given and the way they were told to go about it, CSAG got no assistance from the Chargers. We want to call the Chargers the bad guys for this, but they're actually not! If the Chargers interacted with CSAG and gave them some guidance, it would likely be their stamp of approval on the project, closing potential options in Los Angeles. Because they knew the big announcement was coming, their only option was to respond to it once it was out.
And yet Demoff IS giving the task force in St Louis input on the Riverfront stadium. Doesn't that indicate a potential willingness to play in the new stadium in St Louis? Is it possible that staying is still in their future plans?
A starting point for negotiations should be figuring out deal-breakers and baselines. The Mayor should have met with the Chargers and figured out what types of things they would not be willing to do (or not able to afford) to get a stadium, then he could have had someone put together a starting point based on that. Instead, he did it backwards, and embarrassed the city in the process.
I thought all indications and Fabiani himself said that they had been meeting with the mayor.
Financing
Let's do some quick, stupid-guy math on that CSAG proposal.
The Chargers were asked to contribute $300 million.
The Chargers were asked to pay $173 million in rent.
The Chargers were asked to split $60 million in estimated PSL sales with the city/county, so that's another $30 million they're kicking in.
The Chargers were asked to share in the cost of operation and maintenance of the stadium, so tack on another million or so dollars per year.
The Chargers were asked to assume the cost of construction overages, which I'm estimating to be another $100 million (JMI's estimate for overages on a downtown stadium were about $120m).
So now we're over $600 million that the Chargers are potentially putting towards a new stadium in Mission Valley.
Flawed stadium site aside....the stadium proposed was a bit "bare bones" itself. The seating capacity is listed as somewhere between 65,000 and 72,000. There were no mention of luxury boxes and they're missing from the artist renderings (which is important because they affect construction costs and revenues in a pretty big way). There is no roof of any sort (because they said it would cost an addition $150 million), leaving out any chance of getting any sort of indoor event (such as the NCAA Basketball Tournament).
So, to quickly summarize, Mayor Faulconer wants the Chargers to pay over $600 million for a bare bones stadium in a part of the city that has no real room for expansion or growth. Is that a lot or a little? Let's find out!
There are several flaws here. The PSLs are supposed to be $120 million (still seems low); the $600 million is not taking into account what we already know will about to $200 million not coming out of the owner's pockets but $50 million that would; the Riverfront stadium would not be able to host NCAA tourneys either and Stan wouldn't get one dime from any held in the dome and the seating for the Riverfront stadium is less.
Again, it is really difficult to compare apples to apples on any of the financing proposals over the past 10 years or more.
Truth be told, the Chargers are already likely pushing the limits of their budget, and are "overspending" when it comes to what NFL teams spend on these stadium things.
How so? Specifically. And are we talking their current stadium or what they have offered to spend? I don't recall anything saying what they are willing to spend.
L.A.'s NFL stadium riddle: Three teams, two plans, what to expect next
By Sam Farmer contact the reporter
Seems like a pretty fair article.
So wait, it could be argued that Kroenke's utter unwillingness to work with the city, and the cities ability to come up with a viable stadium on it's own, without any input from the team, is a reason why Kroenke should be allowed to move?
Yeah - not sure how that passes muster if that is actually the case. The team is apparently giving some input but how much is debatable.
He's talking to Peacock and Blitz. Peacock said that the stadium was built with the Rams input. You can be assured that the NFL and the STL stadium crew know what he wants. He's not just sitting at home with his arms crossed not talking to anyone.
Now, maybe not much direct contact has gone on with Kroenke. But you can damn well bet that he's given Demoff specific instructions to reign over the Rams side of this.
This is what I have read. Again, I don't have any way of knowing how active the Rams have been in this process. We know Stan hasn't been directly involved but what that means or how it is viewed by the NFL is unknown.
It doesn't get built, but maybe he then decides to secure his own land and finance his own stadium. If the Rams were to stay, I'm sure Goodell would try hard to persuade Kroenke to do the Riverfront project, however.
This may not be too far from what actually happens. In fact, Kroenke may be still working toward this end. It may seem far fetched but Kroenke could still be even building a stadium with plans to sell it to either another team(s) or the NFL itself. Then he turns around and secures the Riverfront property for himself and builds what he actually wants in his native lands. Can anyone actually say that the city wouldn't be able to secure the land and then sell it to Stan at a very owner friendly price.
But I can see why he might have a change of heart... since he said that, his financial position has worsened... oh, wait.
OK - this is pretty funny. Thanks for that.
Just another great article by Shane.
