Fred Maas has been an attorney, developer and underwater robot manufacturer. He counts himself as a “huge supporter” of the Chargers, though he isn’t a season ticket holder.

But recognizing Maas’ extensive resume in tackling local issues, Chargers Chairman Dean Spanos has tapped the 58-year-old Del Sur resident as its ultimate punter to win public approval of a new NFL stadium by year’s end.

“They are an incredibly important part of the fabric of San Diego,” Maas said. “People need to understand that if you lose a team like the Chargers after 55-plus years, you never get them back.”

Los Angeles is taking their Rams back from St. Louis, and if San Diego doesn’t come through, the Chargers have a deal in their back pocket to join the Rams in Inglewood.


“The Chargers are back and have given us a chance to figure it out, and we ought to take full advantage of it,” he said.

Maas is a not newcomer to hot San Diego issues. In the 1990s he helped settle the no-growth wars by helping fashion a compromise to develop Black Mountain Ranch in the state Route 56 Corridor.

In the 2000s he steered the city’s downtown redevelopment agency through a rough transition that involved both an agency scandal and state government policy shift.

Along the way he helped replan the North Embarcadero, analyze the need to expand the San Diego Convention Center and advise former Mayor Jerry Sanders on a new Chargers stadium.


Having exited from active involvement on civic issues four years ago to develop his underwater robotics company, Marine Robotic Vehicles, he’s returned as something of a municipal magician, aiming to conjure what no one has been able to do for 15 years.

“I’ve been asked several times to pull a rabbit out of a hat,” he said. “Maybe this is a case where I have to pull a hat out of a rabbit.”

His Chargers gig originated with a text from team counsel Mark Fabiani and meetings and phone calls with Spanos over last weekend.

“I see my role to some extent as working with Dean and Mark to synthesize (information) into some discernible decision tree to lead to a conclusion,” Maas said.


He doesn’t have much time.

“There needs to be a go/no-go within the next six weeks,” he said.

By the third week in March, he has to resolve these issues and wrap them all into an initiative petition heading toward the ballot Nov. 8:

▪ Location: The Chargers have extensively studied both the 166-acre Qualcomm site in Mission Valley and the 15-acre site east of Petco Park downtown. The former is city-owned but may need costly access improvements. The downtown site is owned in part by the Metropolitan Transit System and it could take extra years to relocate the MTS bus maintenance yard and clean up any contaminated soils there.


“If I could wave a magic wand, what’s best for the team, football, Super Bowls, the community, it would be downtown,” Maas said. “But by the same token, we owe it to ourselves and the community, it would be Mission Valley if it’s more appropriate or more readily accomplished. As an academic matter, I might be biased to downtown, but I’m not taking anything off the table.”

▪ SDSU or SD Live: Echoing the 1998 drumbeat for Petco, Maas said, “It needs to be more than just a football stadium.” At Mission Valley, there’s room alongside a new stadium for creating an annex to San Diego State University and possibly a greater academic village serving UC San Diego and the University of San Diego.

The downtown site could bring to life Maas’ long-held dream of a “sports and entertainment district” along the lines of LA Live. The Chargers and former Padres owner John Moore’s JMI Realty have talked up a stadium atop a convention center.

Whatever those ancillary or spinoff uses might be, Maas said, “Our objective now is to build a stadium to keep the Chargers.”


▪ Financing: Various stadium proposals discussed over the last year in Southern California ranged from $1.1 billion in San Diego to $3 billion in Los Angeles. Funding sources here have included naming rights, seat licenses, revenue bonds backed by facility rent and income, $300 million from the NFL, $350 million from the city and county, city land sales or leases and the balance from the Chargers. By rebuilding in San Diego, the team would save $550 million in relocation fees to L.A. If a new tax is needed, especially if a $500 million convention center component is involved, a nearly two-thirds voter approval would likely be required. That’s a high bar many political observers feel is next to impossible to clear at the moment.

“There will have to be a financing plan — that’s inherent in the project that ultimately goes forward,” Maas said, but he is still gathering the facts to see what it will look.

▪ Approval process: Following its approach in Carson in partnership with the Oakland Raiders, the Chargers aim to put the project on the ballot via an initiative petition. That eliminates the need for preparing a costly and time-consuming environmental impact report that is subject to legal challenge.

But that means collecting 66,447 valid city voter signatures starting in mid-April and getting City Council approval by Aug. 12. If county financing is involved, Maas said a countywide vote might be needed to avoid separate legal challenges.


▪ Legal challenges: Even if voters approve the project, someone may still find grounds to sue. Lawsuits delayed Petco Park for several years even after its 60 percent ballot approval in 1998.

“Whatever challenges may come will not be insurmountable,” Maas said.

▪ Design: The team previously developed schematic designs for downtown, Mission Valley and the now-abandoned joint-facility with the Oakland Raiders in the Los Angeles suburb of Carson. One of those may be chosen and tweaked to sell to the voters. “You’ll have to trust our creativity,” he said. However, he said the design will be large enough to host a future Super Bowl.

Maas is convinced he will succeed.


“I would not have done it if I didn’t think we could,” he said, “and Dean pledged whatever resources it takes to get us there.”

His winning record to date:

For 10 years he was a principal of Potomac Sports Properties, which developed resort properties and Black Mountain Ranch in the state Route 56 Corridor, where he currently lives. In that role he helped forge an agreement with environmentalists that led to voter approval in 1998.

In 2005, he was appointed to the Centre City Development Corp., now Civic San Diego, and four years later took over as acting and unpaid president after his predecessor resigned over a conflict-of-interest scandal.


“He was incredibly wise and calm at the helm of the ship, navigating us through tough times,” said Jeff Graham, who succeeded Maas as president in 2012.

Then-Mayor Jerry Sanders also asked Maas to serve as an unpaid adviser on Chargers stadium issues.

“He’s focused, he’s honest and he will tell you what you need to know, not what he thinks you want to know,” Sanders said. “He can be blunt sometimes, but that doesn’t bother me a bit. It’s a strong point and may be what we need in this process.”

That bluntness broke out in 2010, when then-Councilman Carl DeMaio grilled Maas about a redevelopment extension bill in Sacramento. At one point he refused to answer and questioned DeMaio’s ethics. Two years later they tangled again when Maas donated to a $33,000 research fund aimed at upsetting DeMaio’s mayoral ambitions.


DeMaio, now a radio talk show host, was one of the few people not to welcome Maas last week to his new stadium role. He called him a “corporate welfare guru” for demanding “hundreds of millions more from San Diego taxpayers.” Maas declined to respond.

RELATED: DeMaio’s distaste for Maas still as huge as a stadium

Previously, Maas served alongside future Mayor Kevin Faulconer and then-port commissioner Steve Cushman on the North Embarcadero Visionary Plan board.

“He was terrific to work with,” Cushman said. “He’s a consensus builder. He’s very bright and thinks outside the box, which is another major attribute one needs to put this effort together.”


Cushman, who has also served as a convention center adviser to both Sanders and Faulconer, said he’s ready to talk to Maas, who served on Sanders’ convention center expansion task force.

“I think each is a worthy public project and each in an appropriate time will receive consideration of the voters,” Cushman said.

Maas said there is no time for public outreach, consideration of other sites or a relook at rehabbing Qualcomm Stadium, which will turn 50 years old next year.

“We’re at a point where we’re going through an exhaustive process and we shouldn’t announce a solution until we know what the solution is,” he said. “We need time to figure those things out before we make an announcement.”