LOS ANGELES — The Oakland Raiders and the San Diego Chargers announced plans Thursday night to build a joint National Football League stadium in Carson, Calif., just north of Long Beach in Los Angeles County.
Both teams have been working on new stadium proposals in their current homes.
Carson has previously been floated as a potential site for an NFL team in the years since the Raiders left Los Angeles more than a decade ago.
The current plan is to build a $1.7 billion joint stadium on a 168-acre site in Carson. The teams have formed a coalition of community, business and labor leaders called Carson2gether to support a ballot initiative for the stadium.
Plans unveiled by St. Louis Rams owner Stan Kroenke in January to build a stadium 13 miles away in Inglewood propelled the Raiders and Chargers to move forward with their plan, Mark Fabiani, the team's spokesman, said in a
Over the past few years, proposals have been floated for stadiums in the City of Industry and in downtown Los Angeles at AEG's LA Live entertainment district.
The NFL has reportedly shown interest in the possibility of a team moving to LA in 2016 — the first time the league has indicated any real backing of the concept of a team moving to the city. In order for a team to move, two-thirds of the league's owners have to vote in support, Fabiani said.
The Chargers fear the loss of the fan base they have developed in Los Angeles and Orange County if the Rams move back to L.A., Fabiani said of the reasoning behind the Carson proposal. The Raiders and the Rams left Los Angeles within a year of each other in the mid-1990s.
The Chargers announcement comes after San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer formed a task force to study building a new stadium for the team in San Diego.
"It's now abundantly clear that while we have been working here in San Diego to create a plan for a new stadium, the Chargers have for some time been making their own plans for moving to Los Angeles," Faulconer said in a statement.
"This would amount to abandoning generations of loyal Chargers fans," he said. "Despite this news, we are going to continue our efforts to develop a viable stadium solution."
Discussions for a new Chargers stadium in San Diego have now spanned 14 years and the team needs to pursue dual paths, Fabiani said.
"We are pursuing this stadium option in Carson for one straightforward reason: If we cannot find a permanent solution in our home markets, we have no alternative but to preserve other options to guarantee the future economic viability of our franchises," the teams said in a joint statement on the Chargers website.
The teams have launched a petition drive for a ballot initiative to get voter approval to build the stadium.
