We’ve been through a lot, San Diego. Now we need a win. Carefully and thoughtfully, we should unite as a community and act quickly to secure a professional soccer team and the future of the Qualcomm Stadium site.

In an ideal world, we could spend years talking about what to do with Qualcomm Stadium, as we did in the past. In the real world, an opportunity sits in front of us today that will expire if we do not act.

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Major League Soccer is set to award new teams to a handful of cities later this year, likely the last expansion for at least the next 20 years. Soccer is the world’s most popular sport and San Diego is a perfect fit for professional soccer. We are binational, diverse and young. Soccer will thrive here if we can muster the vision to embrace it during this window of opportunity.

To secure a professional soccer team, a group of local investors has proposed something we only dreamed of in years past: a brand-new stadium, paid for without a tax increase or any public funds. Let us repeat ... NO tax increase and NO public funds.

Passing up this opportunity will not only cost us a Major League Soccer team but real money in the years to come. The Qualcomm site currently costs the city an estimated $12 million per year, money that could otherwise be spent on services like police, fire protection and road repaving. In total, the net present cost of inaction over the next 20 years is estimated at more than $300 million.


If we spend years studying and debating every possible alternative, would we get a better deal for this land? Probably not. In fact, we would most likely end up with a much worse deal. Simply put, a Major League Soccer team makes many public benefits possible that are unlikely to be offered in any other scenario because this investor group is the only one in San Diego with the exclusive right to pursue an MLS franchise.

The current proposal provides a variety of valuable amenities paid for with private money, upfront, made available immediately to the public. These include approximately 55 acres of park, including an improved and enhanced river park and a new home for San Diego State University football, built in partnership with SDSU. The gifting of the private portion of the stadium to SDSU after five years would likely be the largest private donation ever made to the university.

Additionally, the proposed development would ensure that the city collects millions of dollars in revenue from the economic activity generated by the project. In short, we would convert a massive liability into an asset that generates millions of dollars in public revenue for decades.

There are legitimate questions about this project. Specifically, we need more details about the proposed new commercial, retail and housing contemplated for the site and its impact on traffic. The proponents of this project have committed to providing those details including the environmental and traffic analysis prepared for the plan and continuing a dialogue with the public.


Even while many details are still being studied, we can draw a few conclusions about the proposed mixed use, transit-oriented development. We know San Diego is in a housing affordability crisis that leaves many San Diegans unable to own a home, or worse, living on the street and in shelters. Adding housing along the existing trolley line at the Mission Valley site is exactly the kind of smart growth development envisioned by the city’s Climate Action Plan.

The proposed development also includes affordable housing and student-focused housing, all of which our community desperately needs.

As longtime taxpayer advocates, civic activists, tourism and sports boosters, we believe this plan will achieve something historic for San Diego: a stadium development that protects taxpayers and provides a wide range of public benefits.

Yes, we should continue to ask questions and vet the details of this proposal, but we cannot let due diligence turn into paralysis. We have been debating what to do at Qualcomm Stadium for decades. It’s time to move on and do something great. We can get this done, San Diego!


Boling and McDowell are former chairs of the San Diego County Taxpayers’ Association. Boling is a former chair of the Convention Center Corp. McDowell is the executive director of the San Diego Sports Alliance.