Stadium Brouhaha Goes Into Overtime

SAN DIEGO — After a season of high hopes and disappointing results, the San Diego Chargers are no longer contestants for pro football’s annual prize.

But that is not to say that San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium no longer provides high-stakes, thumb-in-the-eye combat. A legal and political battle of Super Bowl intensity is flaring over a $78-million plan to expand the publicly owned stadium and to provide sufficient inducements to keep Chargers’ owner Alex Spanos from taking his team elsewhere when its contract with the city expires in 2003.

Bonds to finance the expansion would be repaid through increased rent from the Chargers and other stadium users and through a bigger slice for the city of the food and souvenir revenue--not from the city budget or property taxes.

But for much of last year the City Council was in court with anti-tax activists who said that the bonding method violated the City Charter and Proposition 13 and that the issue should have been put on the ballot. The courts disagreed.

After the court challenge failed, another group of expansion opponents mounted a referendum drive to force the council to put the matter to an election. By Dec. 27, the group had deposited more than 50,000 signatures with the city clerk, nearly twice the required number.

But on the night of Dec. 30, the San Diego city manager gave the go-ahead for wrecking crews to begin tearing down the eastern end of the stadium to make way for 10,000 new seats, 31 more skyboxes and a new video scoreboard.

Expansion opponents cried foul and went to court. A judge let the bulldozing continue and instead scheduled a hearing for Jan. 29.

The issue to be decided by Superior Court Judge Anthony Joseph is whether the referendum drive, should it be deemed successful, involves the full $78-million project or just a portion.

If Joseph rules that the referendum properly deals with the entire $78 million--and not just $18 million added in December--it raises what expansion boosters regard as a nightmare scenario: The stadium expansion loses at the polls, the city is left with a partially demolished stadium, and the Chargers begin to count the days until they can move to any number of cities that would love an NFL team.

If the boosters see a nightmare in the making, the opponents see an opportunity.

“We’re providing leverage for the city to go back to the Chargers and get a better deal,” said Bob Ottilie, one of the lawyers for the expansion opponents.

Meanwhile, if the expansion dies at the polls, it would be an embarrassing political defeat for Mayor Susan Golding, who is widely thought to be preparing to run next year for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate seat held by Democrat Barbara Boxer.

“If [the expansion proposal] gets on the ballot at $78 million and the voters reject it, any opponent will paint this as Mayor Golding’s fault,” said Republican political consultant John Kern. “This could have a big impact on her political plans.”

Golding insists that opponents have misled the public about the expansion details and that, if it comes to a vote, the public will support what the council has done “if it is possible to get the facts out.” Among other things, Golding says that without expansion the stadium would probably not host another Super Bowl, which brought the city a $100-million economic bonanza in 1988.

At the Jan. 29 court hearing, city lawyers will argue that the time has long passed to mount a referendum on the original $60-million expansion approved in May 1995--the bonds have been sold and contracts let--and that only an $18-million add-on approved in December should be subject to being “referendized.”

Lawyers for the project’s opponents counter that the $18-million add-on created an entirely different project than the one envisioned in 1995 and thus the entire $78-million package should be fair game for the ballot.

The issue of $78 million versus $18 million could prove moot, however. The city attorney has suggested that referendum activists violated the law by not making available the full city contract with the Chargers to people being asked to sign petitions.

The decision on whether the referendum passes muster lies with Clerk Charles Abdelnour, who said he may have a decision late this week or early next. Abdelnour concedes that there could be litigation regardless of how he rules: by his own bosses on the City Council if he certifies the referendum petitions as meeting city rules, or by the expansion opponents if he takes the city attorney’s advice and nullifies the petitions.

“I’m on the hot seat,” Abdelnour said.

If Abdelnour certifies the petitions, the City Council, barring litigation, would have but two alternatives: scuttle the expansion plan or schedule a public vote within 11 months.

The expansion plan--which would push the stadium to 71,000 seats--is the centerpiece of a new agreement to extend the city’s hold over the Chargers until 2020.

The Chargers get more seats, a new practice facility, more revenue from skyboxes, and a free hand in raising ticket and parking prices.

Also, the city promises to compensate the team if it fails to sell at least 60,000 of the 62,000 non-prime seats for each exhibition and regular-season game. The money would come from other stadium-generated revenues--the stadium annually runs in the black--or from the city’s hotel-motel tax.

In turn, the Chargers promise to stay until 2020, although there are four “reopener” periods in which, if NFL salaries escalate, the team is able to field offers from other cities. San Diego then has the right to match the highest offer; if the team leaves before 2020, it pays 60% of the remaining bond debt.

City officials insist that compared to other deals between teams and cities, the new agreement with the Chargers is a good one for the city. The seat-guarantee, they say, is in lieu of free-rent or “signing bonus” features that other cities are including in agreements with teams. And an NFL spokesman said the Chargers already pay more stadium rent than most teams, and that the 120% rent increase in the new contract could push them to the top of the list for teams playing in publicly owned stadiums.

Still, the ticket-guarantee strikes some as akin to rewarding failure: paying the team even if the squad starts to play lousy and can’t draw fans.

In a closed-door session last week, the council discussed seeing if Chargers’ owner Spanos would agree to renegotiate the contract, presumably to increase its chances for success if the referendum is put on the ballot. By week’s end, however, the word from Spanos’ son, Dean, the team president, was that the Chargers are not interested.