LOS ANGELES — The week before the Super Bowl was rife with football stadium news in California.
San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer selected a team to investigate a new stadium for the Chargers, while supporters of a new stadium in the Los Angeles-area city of Inglewood gathered what they said is enough signatures for a ballot measure to speed up plans for a multi-use project there that would include a stadium.
Faulconer said during a Friday press conference that he has assembled a group of civic leaders and financial experts to develop a plan for a stadium that will include the optimal location and how best to pay for it.
The mayor asked the nine-member group to select either the current Qualcomm Stadium site or another in downtown's East Village and draft a financing plan by this fall for the site it selects. He also asked that they come up with redevelopment proposals for the site of the Chargers' current Qualcomm Stadium.
Funding options the group will consider include forming joint powers authorities, user fees, naming rights and revenue bonds, he said.
"It's time for us, as a community, to come together to decide the future of the Chargers in San Diego," Faulconer said, adding that the group will "give San Diegans the first real plan in the past 13 years."
The city has discussed a variety of plans for more than a decade to replace Qualcomm, which was built in 1967. It is also home to San Diego State University's football team.
"In the end voters will have the final say," Faulconer said.
Panel members are: Doug Barnhart, Chairman of Barnhart-Reese Construction; Rod Dammeyer, chairman of CAC, LLC., a venture capital firm; Adam Day, a California State University trustee; Walt Ekard, a former San Diego County city administrative officer and San Diego chief operating officer; Aimee Faucett, chief operating officer of the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce; Jason Hughes, president and chief executive officer of Hughes Marino, a commercial real estate agency; Jessie Knight, executive vice president of Sempra Energy and board chairman of SDG&E; Mary Lydon, executive director of Urban Land Institute of San Diego-Tijuana; and Jim Steeg, a former NFL executive.
The group backing the NFL stadium proposal 120 miles to the northwest in Inglewood submitted a petition for a ballot initiative containing more than 22,000 signatures to put the issue before voters in the city. Inglewood Mayor James Butts said the effort brought in three times the 8,500 signatures need to put the measure on the ballot.
"They had 180 days to collect the signatures and collected 22,000 signatures in 18 days," Butts said.
Elected officials now have 30 days to certify the signatures.
The City of Champions Revitalization Initiative would enable the construction of an 80,000-seat stadium and a performance venue with up to 6,000 seats on a 60-acre site owned by The Kroenke Group, which owns the NFL's St. Louis Rams.
It would be part of the $2 billion Hollywood Park office-residential-retail project, which broke ground in February 2014. The project is not contingent on the Rams moving to Inglewood, Butts said.
"It would give us the chance to host world class soccer, the Final Four [college basketball championships], and college playoff games - a number of things could be done," Butt said.
Butt emphasized no public money would be used for the project including bonds. Developers would receive an infrastructure reimbursement from the city for streets, sewers and the like should the entire development generate more than $25 million in annual tax revenues, he said.
The proposal for an NFL stadium in Inglewood is the third floated in the Los Angeles area in five years.
The Chargers have long been on the short list of teams seen as likely prospects for a move to Los Angeles.
Fearing the loss of the Rams, Missouri came up with its own stadium plan within days after Kroenke unveiled his proposal for an Inglewood stadium on Jan. 5.
