I believe some conditions have to be met before S.D. gets an MLS team: Chargers leave San Diego and getting a good location in S.D. Skipping over any issues regarding the Chargers staying/leaving... What would be the prime location in San Diego county? Qualcomm Stadium is in an o.k. location and a soccer specific stadium would probably fair better in that location. Also there's open land outside what is owned by Miramar northeast of Santo RD. It's centralized and is off the 52. I'm open for other ideas.
It's all big time speculation. And there's land right outside what the Marine core owns, although I don't know if there are laws dictating how land next to military land can be facilitated.
I like that idea. It should be around 20-25k seats. If they act fast maybe they can use some of that redevelopment money to put into it. Besides, isn't Balboa Stadium a historical landmark site or whatever? For some reason I thought I read that a while back.
I believe it is a historical landmark. It would be a great place to see a team play BUT it has artificial turf and SDHS plays its home games there. Would be awesome and we already got a trolley a couple blocks away!
How could Balboa Stadium be a historic landmark? Everything historic about it was demolished long ago. It is now just a run of the mill high school football and track stadium. I'm in favor of tearing down the Sports Arena and putting a SSS there. It could have a concert stage on one end. There's certainly room, and not many people would miss the current building.
I didn't even think about Sports Arena. That would work as well but I wouldn't put a stage that would look terrible on TV. I would make a full circle with a roof on top to trap in that noise.
Well, personally, I agree with you and would prefer that kind of design. I mentioned a stage end because that's what AEG does with similarly sized parks such as the Home Depot Center. That kind of thing would keep it available as a music venue and maybe make it more viable.
The Old Town Transit Center is a mile or so away. Trolleys, shuttle buses, or something similar might do it. The Sports Arena has lived its natural life, imho.
And yet it keeps on plugging away. As long as it's the only ice capable arena in the county I don't see them demolishing the Arena. Which is probably how it keeps getting naming sponsors and got the attention of AEG in the first place to manage it. They've pretty much got the market cornered on ice capades, disney on ice, etc... Plus they are always the Lakers first choice for preseason games as well. If it ever were demolished I suspect the only thing that AEG would replace it with would be another similar sized arena. But perhaps we can see something like this in Mission Valley some day after the Chargers leave (and leave SDSU in need of a stadium).
I just don't see sports arena staying on top of their bills for too much longer. Their events are not very attractive for the size and location of the arena. The events you mentioned could easily be moved to viejas/ sdsu.
Why not? Many of the lower level seats there retract to add more space. Besides space they just need the proper materials, something that a little money could fix.
They do retract to an extent I just don't think it's enough to fit an actual hockey sized rink. And it does so at the cost of a fair amount of the existing seating. The arena does not have that handicap (in addition to having the ice there already anyway).
Like I said, you might be able to shoehorn the rink into it, but look how crappy the seating arrangements would be.
I saw it done at the delta center for the winter olympics. If its good enough for gold medal figure skating, then its good enough for disney on ice at the sports arena.
Maybe. But I doubt it. It's more likely AEG will keep running the arena until they throw a few million at a new arena at the same site.
We'll have a new Charger's stadium, staffed by flying pigs with monkeys coming out of their rear ends before we get a new sports arena in this town.
When you consider how much more valuable and how much cheaper an arena would be for the community... I'm willing to bet you're wrong . Particularly after the Chargers leave and the city is no longer worried about wasting money on them.
The more I think about the possibility of a new, Charger-less stadium in San Diego, the more I think Boca, Flash and SDSU have to get involved. I think if they all pooled together, they can share the expenses and revenue, making it a safer investiment. Nearly every Mountain West football stadium is in the 35k range. I think a model to follow for SDSU/ MLS could be Colo. St's Stadium. Capacity is 34K. It's simple yet has an expandible format for big games (look at each endzone - grass and concourse). The only major modification should be moving the stands closer to the endzones, making the stands parallel with the endline.
Size wise I agree it could work for the purposes of housing both SDSU and an MLS team. However shape wise, it leaves alot to be desired. Mainly that round stadiums went out of style with flappers and zoot suits since they're not optimized for any sport.