NFL Writes Letter to San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer

The NFL has written to Mayor Kevin Faulconer listing what the City of San Diego must do in order to build a new football stadium, and the demands seem to be quite unattainable.

Just to name a few:

The first thing that the NFL is asking San Diego to do is run a full Environmental Impact Report (EIR) to be completed in three weeks. This would allow the City Council to place the matter on a special election ballot by January 15, 2016. The problem with the EIR is that three weeks is historically not enough time at all. All of the most recent stadium EIR’s have taken longer than a year, including: AEG/Farmers Field 17 months, Roski/City of Industry 14 months, 49ers/Santa Clara 13 months, just to knew a few.

The second thing would be presenting a financial plan to voters in which hundreds of millions of dollars to build the stadium would come from the City of San Diego’s General Fund. Polling data has reveled that most voters in California would not approve that type of spending from the General Fund.

Third, San Diego County would have to agree with city voters. It’s already unlikely that the city voters will be okay with taking money from the General Fund for the stadium, but on top of that, according to San Diego sports radio station, mighty1090.com:

“The city would then rely on the County Board of Supervisors to match the city’s contribution. Unfortunately, the board’s own formal written policy says that there must be a county-wide vote before any public money can be spent on a stadium and there appears to be little sentiment on the board to change that policy.”

And to top all of that off, if any part of the City’s plan falls through, then the whole plan goes back to square one.

There are a many more points and some notes basically in the letter saying how difficult everything will be for the city. Essentially, the NFL is stating in not so blunt terms that the plan to rebuild a stadium in San Diego is not going to happen.