City Approves Agreement For SDSU To Purchase Mission Valley Stadium Site

Speaker 1: 00:00 This is KPBS mid day edition. I'm Mark Sauer with Maureen Kavanaugh leaders at SDSU and the city of San Diego have completed one of the largest, most complex real estate deals in the city's history. The university has purchased the 135 acre stadium site in mission Valley for more than $88 million. Groundbreaking is now mere weeks away. Joining me to discuss details of the project as reporter Lori Weisberg, who covers tourism and marketing for the San Diego union Tribune. Welcome Lori. Thank you. Well, start with an overview of this agreement. The city council voted eight to one yesterday to approve it. Centerpiece is of course, a new football stadium for the Aztecs. And there's a lot more to the project, right? Speaker 2: 00:41 Yes, there is. As you pointed out, there's a 35,000 seat, um, football stadium for the Aztecs. Um, they say it could be convertible to, you know, later on to an NFL or soccer, you know, for soccer play. There are also 4,600 housing units, and we should note that that 10% of those under this agreement would be set aside for low income households. So that's about 460 affordable units, 80,000 acres parks and open space. And including included in that is a 34 acre river park. Um, 1.6 million square feet of office and research space. Some of that would be part of this, um, satellite campus for SDSU, uh, 400 hotel rooms and 95,000 square feet of campus retail and another 13,000, um, parking space. So it's, it's a very ambitious project. Speaker 1: 01:35 Yeah. Your story reflected that today. There's no kidding. It was very big and very complex and negotiations got tense in recent weeks between the city and the university. What do you make of how the process unfold? Speaker 2: 01:46 Well, yeah, and we should remind people that this, this, uh, these, um, negotiations went on for 18 months. They were an outgrowth of the 2018, um, initiative that voters approved, um, on the ballot to allow the transfer of a sale of the mission Valley site. So then you have to, then you have to negotiate that plan and that sale agreement, which was not part of the initiative. So there were at times, uh, you know, there was some acrimony, some tension, especially so at the, at the very end, because the city attorney's office was on this aisle from the beginning, even though they brought in and they brought in outside counsel to assist with the negotiations. And there were a number of issues that had to do with, um, water utilities that are on this land that they wanted, um, settled because they thought that, um, San Diego could be potentially getting a raw deal related to that. So anyway, it was, it was like a flurry of last minute negotiations last month, um, to iron out those issues so that they wouldn't scuttle the whole deal. And, um, you know, there was a lot of, um, criticism of the city attorney's office, someone arguing that they were just trying to kill the deal, but ultimately they to a meeting of the minds and that led to, um, a near unanimous approval of this plan with, um, SDSU. So, um, then the, the negotiations and the persistence of the city attorney's office appeared to have paid off Speaker 1: 03:13 Now, is this it, are they really going to break ground or could something come up yet to derail this deal? Speaker 2: 03:19 No, I can't believe how fast this is going. I mean, I shouldn't say fast cause there were 18 months in negotiations, but now it's really going fast. I mean, normally we think of escrows going on for several days, months. This is going to be like an escrow of maybe like two or three days, because the plan is there's now this 30 day waiting period, which is true for any ordinance in under unit municipal law in San Diego. And that's to allow for a possible referendum to be filed, but there's been no hint of something like that happening. So, um, the thinking is that at the end of the 30 days, um, the mayor, um, near Faulkner will sign the deal. And within a couple of days, escrow will close. And then within a week or two in August, they're going to start construction, clearing the site and getting it ready for the stadium and also concurrently they'll be doing the river park. So those are the first two things to expect. And they're saying that that the stadium would be ready for the 20, 22 football season for the Aztecs. Speaker 1: 04:20 That's a really remarkable, the bulldozers will be out there next month. I mean, from, from what the timetable looks like. So let's turn to that stadium for a moment. The Aztecs we'll have one more season at the current half century old stadium that's that's been there and what work can be done around that facility in the meantime. Speaker 2: 04:38 So they, they told me that, um, because the, where the, where the stadium is, the new stadium is going to be built is not on the exact same footprint of a current stadium. So therefore they're saying that they can do this work at the same time that it won't, um, interfere with play at SDCU stadium. So they're, they're gonna go ahead and start constructing it even as well. We'll see when the Aztecs start playing, um, give them the coronavirus, but, um, they say that they can, it can go on concurrently that that won't be a hindrance to, to building this new football facility. Speaker 1: 05:16 Right. We've talked about the football stadium in the works, the river park in the works and all, but as you say, 10, 15 years, I mean, there must be some flexibility built in depending on economic conditions, needs of the private, a demand here, et cetera. Speaker 2: 05:32 Exactly. So that, you know, they have to form, you know, partnerships with private developers. So selling off opportunities to develop office space, research, space, retail, um, and again, you know, even normal times there might be a lot of demand for that, but we're in this very nebulous period where demand may be, you know, five years off for all we know. So, um, uh, so they'll have to see, and I'll be competing with, you know, other office developers, um, for that space as well. Speaker 1: 06:04 Right. And of course, so we're in the midst of a severe recession who knows how long that'll go on. It's all gonna play into that. A final question. Now that the deal is done, what does it mean for the future of the university? I mean, growth is the first word that comes to mind. Speaker 2: 06:18 I think they saw this as a way. Um, you know, they're, they're constrained obviously growing within the footprint of the campus right now. So they've, they've often referred to this as a satellite campus and the opportunity to, um, become more of a research university. So I think there's, and, and, and more maybe PR potentially student housing. So I think they're seeing this as very much, um, a potential for growth. I mean, I don't have a number of how many more students that they could attract once this is fully developed, but, um, that was a big motivator for pushing for this to give them room to grow where they're constrained right now, where they are located, um, at the campus. Now Speaker 1: 07:02 I've been speaking with reporter Lee Weisberg of the San Diego union Tribune. Thanks Lori for joining us. Thank you.