San Diego officials are moving rapidly forward with environmental studies required for a public stadium vote in January despite the Chargers calling that impossible last month when they terminated negotiations.

City officials said they plan to continue work on a new stadium without cooperation from the Chargers based on conversations two weeks ago with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and other league officials.

“Basically they said ‘it looks like you’re on a good track and we’ll discuss it further in late July,’” said Mike Hansen, the city’s director of land use and environmental policy. “We haven’t had any further discussions since then, but we also weren’t expecting to.”

So the city has continued to make moves that comply with an accelerated four-month timeline for a stadium environmental approval that City Attorney Jan Goldsmith laid out publicly on June 17, one day after presenting it privately to the Chargers.


The city issued a “notice of preparation” for an environmental impact report on June 22 and has scheduled a 6 p.m. public meeting on July 15 at Qualcomm Stadium to gather comments about the scope and content of that analysis.

On Tuesday, the City Council will be asked to create a special funding account for the stadium project and approve paying prestigious consulting firm AECOM $1.2 million to help city staff complete the environmental impact report.

The EIR, including detailed studies of traffic and other issues, must be completed and approved by the City Council by Oct. 15 to make a proposed Jan. 12 vote possible. State law requires at least 88 days to elapse between a city placing something on the ballot and a public vote taking place.

Having a vote by January is important because that’s when the NFL has said teams would be able to apply for relocation to the Los Angeles area, where there are competing stadium proposals in suburbs Inglewood and Carson.


The Chargers say it’s not possible the city can complete a comprehensive analysis of such a large project by Oct. 15, stressing that EIRs typically take 12 to 18 months.

“We have made our position absolutely clear: We will not risk the future of the franchise on a quickie, half-baked EIR,” Chargers special counsel Mark Fabiani said Tuesday.

Fabiani also said it’s misleading to describe the timeline as four months because 45 days must legally be a public comment period during which little or no analysis will take place.

He’s previously said it would take several months for the city to identify the experts needed for an EIR and then get them under contract, making it impossible to complete the required analysis in the few weeks the city has available.


Hansen said Tuesday, however, that the city is significantly streamlining the process by assigning 30 staff members to the project and getting help from AECOM, which is supplying 60 consultants and has the needed experts already under contract.

“Normally, we have to go through a procurement process and that requires getting a lead consultant and multiple subconsultants in multiple areas,” said Hansen, adding that the city already has an “on-call” relationship with AECOM. “With AECOM, we essentially wiped out many months of work assembling a team. They’re already out on the property taking traffic counts and noise readings.”

Hansen said it’s essential to hire AECOM because of the vast expertise of their staff and the experience the company has with large projects, including stadiums for the 2012 London Olympics, 2016 Rio Olympics, 2018 World Cup in Russia and NFL stadiums in Seattle, Miami and Indianapolis.

Locally, AECOM has handled the overhaul of Town and Country Resort & Convention Center in Mission Valley.


The total budget for the EIR is $2.1 million, which includes the $1.2 million for AECOM, $380,000 to cover city staff time and a $520,000 contingency fund.

Those funds need approval on Tuesday from the City Council, which unanimously agreed this spring to evenly split with the county $500,000 for stadium negotiators. But some council members have been critical of the city’s stadium pursuit, and Mayor Kevin Faulconer is now requesting significantly more money.

Several members of the council, which is on legislative recess this week, couldn’t be reached for comment.

Fabiani said it would be a waste of money, reiterating his recent criticisms of the city for trying to pay for a convention center expansion with a hotel tax increase the California Court of Appeals unanimously declared illegal last summer.


“These are the same city officials who wasted four years and 10 million tax dollars on a blatantly illegal convention center funding scheme, so the waste of millions more here is unfortunately not that surprising,” he said.

Faulconer spokesman Matt Awbrey said the money is a wise expenditure even if the Chargers eventually move to Los Angeles.

“Regardless of what the future holds for the team itself, this environmental review is required if San Diego wants any kind of sports and entertainment facility built there,” Awbrey said. “It will give the city a leg up.”

Faulconer proposes to cover the entire EIR budget with a $2.1 million one-time payment the city recently received from the state to cover the city’s costs to comply with some “unfunded” state mandates and new regulations.


The city’s notice of preparation for the EIR describes a 68,000-seat stadium that could be expanded to 72,000 seats for a Super Bowl. The structure could be as large as 1.75 million square feet, with a height of up to 260 feet.

“The existing stadium is smaller and ultimately, the design of the new stadium is likely to be smaller in probably all of those respects, but we just want to be safe,” Hansen said. “You want to make sure you analyze the maximum so you have the flexibility to go smaller.”

The July 15 scoping meeting will be in Qualcomm’s Club Level 37. It will essentially be an opportunity for people to criticize what the city plans to analyze and suggest changes. Such comments can also be emailed to dsdeas@sandiego.gov.