San Diego Union Tribune columnist Kevin Acee is mad as hell about what’s going on with the Chargers stadium effort in San Diego, and he isn’t hiding behind his keyboard about it.
Acee penned a pointed, detailed commentary today about all the stadium dysfunction in San Diego, essentially throwing shade on everyone from Mayor Kevin Faulconer to Cory Briggs to the JMI to the powerful hoteliers in town to all the lawyers working the various sides of the situation to the Chargers themselves.
Holding back no punches, Acee wrote:
I’m trying to keep my cool, because cool is the state of mind that facilitates progress.
But this stadium situation is ridiculous getting drunk on preposterous, stuck in the mud of stupid.
And I know I’m not alone.
They’re losing us.
Cory Briggs. The mayor. JMI. The hoteliers. The naysayers. The lawyers. The Chargers.
You know what happens when people get frustrated, don’t understand something and feel like they can’t affect any sort of change no matter what they do?
Fed up folks shut down.
In this case – the mysterious, maddening case of the Chargers stadium saga – that would mean not voting or voting “no” (or maybe voting for the thing they didn’t mean to vote for).
I’m fighting the urge to simply stop writing. This is insane floating on ludicrous lost in a sea of nonsense.
The Chargers and Cory Briggs meet. City Attorney Jan Goldsmith basically says Briggs’ Citizens Plan is screwed six ways to Saturday. Briggs says Goldsmith is wrong. Briggs says he has settled with hoteliers and has their endorsement. The hoteliers say they have not settled nor endorsed anything.
This all happened in a span of about 24 hours at the beginning of this week.
It may well have been the tipping point, as if we weren’t already to that point. Enough. Already.
Can someone just have the gumption to say that we need to decide what we’re doing here? I wasn’t in the military. I’ve never run a major corporation or a municipality or even, one tiny woman would argue, worn the pants in a family. But I feel qualified to opine that we need a fricking plan.
You can read the story here, but in a nutshell it outlines the utter confusion of the various plans and inititiaves and support and resistence and voting requirements that has Acee – and undoubtedly plenty of others – throwing up their hands right about now.
How does this relate to Los Angeles?
In talking to sources close to the Chargers, it’s pretty cut and dry at this point: Let’s all work together and devise and approve a plan here in San Diego, or we’re outta here. It doesn’t get much clearer than that.
You’d think with that kind of urgency at hand everyone would be working to get on the same page in San Diego. But after reading Acee’s column, it doesn’t seem like people are reading from the same book, let alone page, down there.
Obviously there is still time for the Chargers and San Diego to get things sorted out, but the clock is definitely ticking.
One personal observation: it’s beyond ironic to me that some of the same people who chastised the Chargers all last year for not having confidence the mayor and the city and local leaders could help deliver a stadium plan – hence the play they made on Los Angeles – are now expressing doubt the plan they are supporting is prudent or approvable.
Having visited with Chargers owner Dean Spanos over the course of last year, one of the main takeaways was he sincerely wanted to be in San Diego, but he was concerned the necessary funding would be supported and approved by voters and that the project would get tied up in courts for years with no guarantee of ever coming to fruition.
Basically, some of the same exact concerns being articulated by local leaders right now.
In retrospect, maybe the Chargers were right to be so skeptical.
Spanos’ fear was losing Los Angeles as an option if he pursued a doomed San Diego plan rather than securing his position in L.A.
But he can attack the situation much more confidently now, his spot in Los Angeles guaranteed. Which is why he put off joining the Rams at least one year in order to pursue a San Diego stadium one final time.
He either gets a new stadium in San Diego, or he’s off to Los Angeles. One way or another, he’ll get clarity.
Judging by Acee’s column, though, clarity in San Diego is hiding behind some dark, dysfunctional clouds.
