The public back and forth, the attacks and counters, while not actually engaging in productive dialogue, simply will not help anything get done.

It certainly might result in nothing getting done. Again.

Such a result, it seems, based on its public proclamation that campus expansion is decades away, would be fine with San Diego State.

That may at least partially explain why a ream of e-mails and text messages I viewed over the past several days show a months-long pattern of changing objectives and stalling by some of the university’s leaders in their dealings with the group trying to develop the Qualcomm Stadium land.


So, before I make a plea that we stop the nonsense, parse reality and actually get down to judging this proposal on its merits, I think it’s important to understand as best we can what has actually happened (and did not happen).

Given a chance to respond to my findings, an SDSU spokeswoman acknowledged the university had “a number of verbal agreements” with FS Investors but pulled out over what SDSU claims was FS Investors continually changing terms.

However, communications and documents I viewed seem to show that was not the case. At best, there may have been a lack of understanding on some levels by SDSU officials.

A generous assessment in some cases is that SDSU is playing a semantics game.


One example of those semantics is SDSU maintaining FS Investors did not share the entire citizens’ initiative with SDSU before making it public. The developers say that was because of the ever-changing drafts of the initiative. A 28-page version of the lease portion of the initiative was sent by FS Investors’ attorneys to SDSU’s legal team before the initiative was made public. That document contained information the university maintains it did not know.

To be clear, SDSU being uncooperative and/or changing its mind repeatedly does not necessarily mean the SoccerCity proposal is a good one. But the patterns demonstrated by SDSU most certainly do make Athletic Director J.D. Wicker’s recent claim SDSU does not trust FS Investors shockingly ironic.

And a pot calling a kettle black should trigger alarm bells in a discerning voter.

For whatever reasons SDSU now believes SoccerCity is not acceptable, the documents and communications I viewed indicate the university in at least two instances had the relevant information it later said it lacked.


In November, the university’s CFO e-mailed FS Investors to say a document outlining facets of the project the sides planned to present to Mayor Kevin Faulconer the next day “looks good,” followed by a list of four minor “comments/suggestions.” The document outlined an equal stadium partnership, extent of the surrounding development and highlighted other facets of the proposed project.

Hear from Mayor Kevin Faulconer, who officially endorsed the SoccerCity initiative at a press conference Friday in downtown San Diego.

The next day, San Diego State officials told FS Investors and the mayor’s office they could not agree to a 50/50 stadium partnership. This version was given by both FS and the mayor’s office and was not disputed by SDSU.

Later e-mails to outgoing SDSU President Elliot Hirshman from Mike Stone, FS Investors’ lead investor, and Steve Altman, former president of Qualcomm and a partner in FS Investors, expressed their disappointment in agreements falling through. Both e-mails alluded to late-January conversations between Stone and Hirshman in which a verbal agreement was reached.


A text exchange in early February between Megan Collins, Hirshman’s chief of staff, and SoccerCity project manager Nick Stone indicates that verbal agreement between Stone and Hirshman was ready to be put in writing.

Nick Stone wrote that the sides had settled “the last of the land/economic issues” and asked if all that was left was to “get this into a document.”

Collins replied, “Yes we are ready to get this all into a document.”

The SDSU spokeswoman said Tuesday that FS Investors added language to the ensuing Letter of Intent drafted in early February. However, at the time of the above-referenced text exchange between Collins and Stone, SDSU was in possession of a term sheet that reflected the language of the LOI. (There is language in the LOI regarding the transfer of ownership of the stadium to SDSU that is complicated and could be construed as new information at the time. The transfer is outlined in the initiative.)


Several text and e-mail exchanges from January through March show FS Investors representatives unsuccessfully attempting to engage with SDSU. At one point, Altman followed up an e-mail that went unresponded to with another one two weeks later with the subject line reading “Crickets.”

Moreover, accusations Wicker made in a Union-Tribune column last week that the university balked at its partnership with FS Investors after the group suddenly introduced office buildings and an expanded development are dubious.

Remember, university CFO Tom McCarron told FS Investors at the end of November that the proposal was satisfactory. That was more than five months after the first proposal the sides shared clearly showing on several pages the mixed-use development the project would include. Further, all that development was included in the plan McCarron approved in the November e-mail.

The university spokeswoman explained the timeline thusly:


“The negotiations began as a discussion about a stadium-only partnership in 2015. More than a year later, FS revealed their intention of developing the entire site at which point we explained our interest in expanding the university on the Mission Valley site. We continued in good faith, but each time there was verbal agreement, the resulting written document reflected either the opposite of what was discussed or an unacceptable version of what had been discussed.”

However, an e-mail between Nick Stone and McCarron in February 2016 shows the parties discussing development aside from the stadium.

Lastly, and I can’t let this go, we must talk about that Wicker maintaining in that U-T column last week that FS Investors shared with San Diego State a document that stated the cost per acre for the school would be $13 million.

FS Investors emphatically denied that was the intent of the document. Regardless of whether the SoccerCity proponents are to be believed, some context is necessary.


The document was presented to SDSU in early December. The SoccerCity developers said it was in response to a sudden shift by Hirshman demanding that SDSU be given half the developable land since it was footing the bill for half the stadium.

The document lists the FS Investors outlay for the development, minus the stadium. The purpose, FS said, was to show SDSU why being partners in a stadium did not automatically equate to being partners in the entire project.

The total cost associated with making the land developable was $559 million. Added to that total was $208 million associated with acquiring and operating an MLS franchise. FS says it was illustrating with the document that its cost to prepare the 57 acres – with FS paying for all fees, traffic mitigation, park and parking structure construction, site improvement and demolition – and acquire an MLS team was $767 million (or $13 million per acre).

Not included in that document – but part of a Letter of Understanding created in early February by FS at the behest of Collins – is the gift of $12.5 million from FS Investors to SDSU to offset land acquisition/mitigation costs, the FS gift of the stadium land to SDSU and offer of nine acres for university use at a cost determined by third-party appraisals plus the ability to sublease an additional nine acres for $1.


As an aside, even taking away the costs associated with MLS puts the per-acre cost for the development at almost $10 million. Take away MLS, though, and so evaporate too many benefits to list here.

Besides, I’m trying to stay away from conjecture as much as possible. What I’m arguing is based on the black-and-white of e-mails, texts and documents shared between the sides.

Perhaps we have reached the point of this political campaign where SDSU has dug in.

So be it.


Let both sides present what they must.

What I’ve seen of San Diego State’s constantly moving the end line, making statements that liberally rely on semantics and avoiding productive dialogue is troubling.

You can think I’m squarely on SoccerCity’s side, but it can be plainly seen in the totality of communications between the sides that the developers have been repeatedly rebuffed in attempts to maintain a mutually beneficial relationship.

Let’s stop with the nonsense. It accomplishes only one goal: nothing.


kevin.acee@sduniontribune.com