SoccerCity, the $4 billion proposed redevelopment of Qualcomm Stadium, received clearance from county election officials Monday that it qualifies to appear on a city-wide ballot.

City Clerk Liz Maland tweeted that County Registrar of Voters Michael Vu has verified that enough signatures have been submitted to send the matter to the City Council next month:

Random sample of signatures on Soccer City Initiative Petition found sufficient - Clerk Certificate issued;next step: Council consideration — San Diego City Clerk (@SDCityClerk) May 22, 2017

La Jolla-based FS Investors launched a ballot initiative campaign in January to lease or buy the 166-acre Qualcomm property in Mission Valley from the city and build housing, commercial space, parkland and a Major League Soccer stadium.


More than 112,000 signatures were submitted last month, and Vu’s staff sampled enough to determine that the required minimum threshold of 71,646 valid signatures — 10 percent of the city total — had been collected.

“We’re excited but not surprised by this announcement,” said Nick Stone, FS partner and project manager for GoalSD. “The voters have spoken and we want to give them a voice in an election this fall, when it matters.”

The notification automatically triggers a series of events that could lead to a special election Nov. 7 or next year. According to Clerk Denise Jenkins, deputy director of elections in the clerk’s office, this is what happens next:

FS Investors and the City Council are told immediately of the registrar’s findings.

The council will be formally informed at its next regularly scheduled meeting, June 5.

The council will then have two courses of action to take within 10 business days, most likely June 19: Approve the project or refer it to voters at the next regularly scheduled general election, Nov. 6, 2018, or at a special election Mayor Kevin Faulconer wants held on Nov. 7 this year. A third option is the June 5, 2018, primary election.

Faulconer also wants a proposed hotel room tax increase to expand the San Diego Convention Center to appear on the same special election ballot.


That action is expected to come up at the council’s June 12 meeting. SoccerCity would need a simple majority of city voters to pass, while a two-thirds margin would be needed for the hotel tax increase.

FS Investors, which has spun off the project as a limited liability company with other investors, proposes to demolish 50-year-old Qualcomm Stadium and replace it and the surrounding parking lot with 4,800 housing units, 3.1 million square feet of commercial space, 450 hotel rooms and 60 acres of parkland.

The replacement stadium, which would be located northeast of the “Q,” would include 23,500 to 33,500 seats, depending on whether San Diego State University reaches agreement to share the facility and pay half its projected $200 million cost as a new home for Aztecs football.

FS acted via the initiative process to meet Major League Soccer’s deadline to name two to four expansion teams by the end of this year. FS has been designated by MLS as the official bidder for a San Diego team and would have to pay a $150 million franchise fee to MLS.


The company had originally wanted the council to approve the project outright, once the initiative signatures came in, but later changed its mind to back an election after MLS agreed to hold off announcing which of 12 bidding cities would be awarded new franchises until the end of the year.

SDSU backed out of further negotiations last week saying FS’ terms and conditions are unacceptable. Nevertheless, Faulconer, who was student body president in 1989-90, endorsed the project Friday and welcomed university officials back to the bargaining table.

“Tens of thousands of citizens have called on the city to move this project forward, and the City Council should place it on the ballot this year,” Faulconer said in a statement issued by his office Monday.

FS is giving SDSU until Dec. 1 to sign an agreement. Otherwise, the developers say they will build the smaller stadium and SDSU can sign a later agreement if they want to use it. SDSU says the larger facility could not be economically expanded to the desired 40,000-seat size in future years.


Joe LaCava, spokesman for the Public Land Public Vote coalition opposing SoccerCity, called the signature certification “routine” because FS had bankrolled the signature gathering effort.

He also said many signers may have been misled about the details. FS previously said it supplied signature gatherers with fact sheets and acted on complaints.

Now, LaCava said, his group will urge the council to place the measure on the November 2018 ballot to give time to launch a separate search for the best developers.

“We’d expect when that happens in a more transparent process, SDSU would be part of anybody’s proposals and may be the centerpiece of some proposals,” La Cava said.


It is too early to work out the legal framework for acting on a competing plan, LaCava said. He noted that the FS proposal might be moot by then if the MLS has picked its full complement of four expansion teams and San Diego is out of the running.

“As everyone knows now, a council vote to delay is a vote to kill MLS in San Diego,” Stone said in a statement. “We hope the council will honor the will of the voters, follow the law which allows the special election, not waste the taxpayers’ money by calling for a vote when it doesn’t matter, and stand up to the opposition’s request to disenfranchise the 100,000 San Diegans who put pen to paper in support of this proposal.”

But if San Diego still has a chance of winning a slot, it’s unclear how a competing proposal could legally supersede the FS citizen initiative, should it remain on the ballot and receive voter approval.

LaCava’s group is being funded by two Mission Valley developers, Sudberry Properties and H.G. Fenton, who have objected to the approval process that skirts the normal environmental and community review. LaCava said many community groups are joining in opposition and the developer money is necessary to mount an effective opposition campaign.


But Stone said in his statement that Sudberry and Fenton are bankrolling the drive because they “are concerned about competition.” Sudberry is developing the similarly sized Civita project off Friars Road west of Interstate 805 and Fenton has various apartment projects around the Qualcomm site.

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roger.showley@sduniontribune.com; (619) 293-1286; Twitter: @rogershowley