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San Diego State Granted Lease Extension to Play at SDCCU Stadium
San Diego State University gets a lease extension to play in their home stadium for the next two years.
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The deal means San Diego State doesn’t have to share a stadium in 2019, 2020.
The San Diego City Council has approved San Diego State’s request to extend their lease of SDCCU (formerly Qualcomm) Stadium until the 2020 football season.
SDSU will pay $1.1 million each year to take over the operations and upkeep of the stadium. The university will be on the hook for booking events so the city can recoup losses on the debt incurred from the original bond, expanding the seating for the stadium back in the 1990s.
The good news for San Diego State is that there is a home for Aztecs football, but the problem still lies in the long-term.
This brings a showdown in November. San Diego State wants the own the current SDCCD (formerly Qualcomm) Stadium site and the surrounding land to develop for student housing and administrative buildings. Their ballot initiative will appear on the November ballot and must clear 50% approval and beat out a competing land use initiative.
But then what happens if this initiative fails in November? What happens to San Diego State? What happens to an athletic program without a stadium?
Despite a non-partisan stance due to legal circumstances, SDSU has been sending educational materials promoting the university’s vision for Mission Valley.
What’s certain is that San Diego is a tough place to get things done. The NFL franchise that was once here left over a failed ballot measure to publicly finance a stadium. PETCO Park was delayed by two years due to public lawsuits. San Diego State looks to be the entity to break through and actually get things done in time.
San Diego state is pushing their chips in for this. The question remains will they have enough capital, political and financial, to buy back in if they fail.
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