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Fortune 500 companies, get your skyscrapers to San Diego! That seems the only sure-fire way we’ll get a stadium.
As VOSD’s Lisa Halverstadt reports, the Niners didn’t have to deep-six taxpayers to build a new $930 million home. They just relied on Silicon Valley’s deep pockets for naming rights and PSLs — personal seat licenses. Also known as “You can’t buy a season ticket until you fork over a mint.”
(An online marketplace shares the latest PSL prices. For any that are left, the going rate at Levi’s Stadium — home to the team that beat the Chargers in SB XXIX — appears to be $2,500.)
San Diego has just two Fortune 500 companies and a “lesser stock of highly paid workers with oodles of disposable income to unload,” Halverstadt says, who recalls how fabled Mark Fabiani, the Bolts’ point man, told ESPN:
“San Diego is obviously not either the biggest or the most important city in California. … Our support is based on individual fans as opposed to major corporations that are willing to pay a lot of money up front for PSLs or for suites.”
Civic San Diego: It’s the Labor Unions, Stupid
Civic San Diego, the city’s nonprofit, has been attacked from inside and out over government accountability and protecting neighborhoods. But our Andrew Keatts sees another front as well: labor unions.
Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, who already wants to strip the group’s authority and hand it to the City Council, has introduced a bill that would give the Council a final say on downtown development. The Council is seen as more labor friendly than Civic, Keatts writes.
“Lorena came out of labor, and she is supportive of labor’s interests, and labor is wanting to have more opportunities to be involved in projects that Civic is likely to engage in,” said Mike Jenkins, a Filner-appointed member of Civic San Diego’s board. “I think that’s probably an agenda. I think they’re wanting to negotiate on big projects coming through.”
Even Kids Will Love This Colorful Site
Think studying proposed city budgets is a snore? Well, wake up to San Diego’s interactive budget site! Colors galore. Easy navigation. Drill-down capability. And 2015-16 numbers up the wazoo from Mayor Faulconer.
KPBS quotes a pleased Ben Katz of Open San Diego: “They’re using an open government platform and I’m looking forward to everything else that will be delivered through that in the coming year.”
Quick News Hits: Study Trashes San Diegans on Waste
- “After several years of decreases in the amount of trash per person generated in the county, we saw a slight uptick,” said Stephen Heverly, managing director of the research group Equinox Center. (10News.com) The think tank of sorts issued its annual quality of life report and you can find the whole thing here.
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Judge Ronald Prager clears way for the Metropolitan Transit System to continue processing the 1,516 permit requests that taxi drivers began filing in March, which we sorted out earlier. (KPBS)
- Four San Diego mountain climbers have been rescued from near Mount Ganchempo in Nepal, where an avalanche wiped out a village below the mountain. (KPBS)
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San Diego city government used 3.56 billion gallons of water in fiscal 2014, nearly 20 percent more than the 2.99 billion gallons the year before. (U-T)
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Gov. Brown issued an executive order to set a target of reducing emissions by 40 percent below 1990 levels over the next 15 years to curb global warming. (NBC San Diego)
Free to be Mean: Issa Backs Negative Reviews
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Benghazi, is part of a bipartisan group of lawmakers from California and Texas touting a bill making it illegal for businesses to penalize customers who write negative reviews on sites such as Yelp and TripAdvisor, reports Times of San Diego.
“The mere threat of monetary penalties or fines for writing honest reviews would chill the free exchange of opinions we expect to find on the Internet,” Issa says. “The Consumer Review Freedom Act would put a stop to these outrageous attempts to silence free speech online.”
Bully for Issa, and vice versa.
Ken Stone, a freelance writer and contributing editor at Times of San Diego, has nothing but positive wishes for everyone.