San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer met with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and at least three league owners in recent days on the East Coast in a potential last-ditch effort to gain more time to try to keep the Chargers in San Diego, the Orange County Register has learned.
Faulconer was joined by Chris Melvin, the city’s top consultant on plans to build a new stadium for the Chargers.
In addition to meeting with Goodell and Giants owner John Mara in the New York City area, Faulconer and Melvin, a managing director at Nixon Peabody, met with Carolina owner Jerry Richardson and New England owner Robert Kraft, according to league sources.
Mara, Kraft and Richardson make up half of the NFL Committee on Los Angeles Opportunities that will direct the Los Angeles relocation process in the coming months. The meetings, set up by Populous, a global architecture firm hired by the city and involved in designing at least 13 NFL stadiums, came just days before league meetings in New York on Tuesday and Wednesday that are expected to shape the final stages of the relocation process.
San Diego, Oakland and St. Louis officials have not been invited to the league meetings.
Faulconer’s office and a spokesman for the stadium task force did not respond to requests for comment.
The Los Angeles committee and league staff will go over its relocation guidelines, relocation fees and timing of potential moves to Southern California during the meetings as momentum continues to build toward the league’s possible return to the Los Angeles market for the 2016 season.
While the committee and staff will report on trends in the relocation process and discuss logical outcomes, there will be no votes or commitments on specifics.
Faulconer, San Diego city and county officials and members of a stadium task force appointed by the mayor have said in recent weeks they remain confident they could put together a viable stadium package in San Diego if the league would extend the relocation process. According to Faulconer’s schedule, the mayor was in Washington D.C. earlier this week to meet with federal lawmakers about water supply, homelessness and trade issues.
The Chargers and city and county officials failed to reach an agreement on plans for a $1.1 billion stadium in Mission Valley by the Sept. 11 deadline set by Faulconer that the mayor said would have enabled the city to hold a January 2016 special election on the stadium issue. The Chargers broke off negotiations with the city and county in June after being advised by their legal counsel that an environmental impact report process proposed by the city was not legal.
With the Sept. 11 deadline missed, the earliest likely date a special election on the stadium could be held is now June 2016. By then, the NFL’s owners are expected to have already approved either the Chargers and Raiders relocating to a $1.75 billion stadium in Carson or the Rams moving into a $1.86 billion venue in Inglewood at the former site of Hollywood Park.
Contact the writer: sreid@ocregister.com
