The optimists among the San Diego Chargers fans will say today’s stadium development is a step in the right direction. At the very least, the advisory committee tasked with coming up with a plan to keep the Chargers in San Diego can at least focus all its attention on one site now.

The fact they settled on Mission Valley – or the site where the Chargers current stadium sits – rather than the downtown site adjacent to Petco Park, might be problematic.

You can read about today’s development here, and while the task force should be credited with making a speedy decision – especially with Carson looming as a potential new home for the Chargers and Raiders – you wonder if it’s still a case of too little to late.

At the very least, the clock is ticking.

The Chargers declined comment on the decision, but vice president Mark Fabiani expressed concerns to me when we talked recently. His biggest question is whether the timeline to get Mission Valley approved.jives with the team’s own timeline to decide if they should move to Los Angeles.

The Chargers have their own worries now that Rams owner Stan Kroenke made a play on Los Angeles with his plans to build a stadium in Inglewood. They no longer have the luxury of patiently waiting while city leaders figure out how to finance a new stadium plan. Bottom line, the Chargers need assurances from San Diego they will have a viable plan in place by the end of 2015. Otherwise Los Angeles shifts from a threat to a real possibility.

Here is what Fabiani said about the Mission Valley site, which the Chargers advocated 10 years ago but could never get cooperation from San Diego:

“Other than the fact the numbers have changed in all the wrong directions – the costs have gone up and the revenues available from the project have gone down – the biggest issue is, it’s easy to get a stadium entitled through a ballot measure like we’re trying to get done in Carson, because it’s just a stand-alone stadium and a parking lot. To get a huge mixed-use development entitled, it’s going to require years to review,” Fabiani said. “The citizens who live in Mission Valley are not going to just accept millions of square feet of extra development without a thorough review. Nor should they. And that’s going to take years. So a development partner is going to say to us, ‘well this sounds interesting but you’re not going to get one dime from us until we get the right to build. We’re not going to front you the money

“Back in 2004 that was fine, because we had the time. We could have taken a couple of years to go through the process. And the development partner would have been obligated to pay us the money once we got entitled.”

And as Fabiani said, to re-start that process now is a risk the Chargers can’t afford to take.

“When you start now, we just don’t see how the timeline adds up,” Fabiani said. “If you’re going to say we need to wait until this development is entitled before you can start financing the stadium, that just doesn’t seem workable at this point.”

Despite those concerns, it looks like the task force is zeroing in on Mission Valley.

The optimist among Chargers fans recognize the positive step.

But can San Diego cross the finish line in time to keep the Bolts in San Diego?