‘Entertainers’ vs. ‘Small Town Undertakers’: The Convadium Debate Rages on

The great convadium debate is heated.

The sparks really started flying when, in an op-ed, San Diego architect Rob Quigley called the Chargers “entertainers, not urban planners” whose plan for a downtown stadium and convention center annex would cause an “irreversible and unprecedented planning disaster.”

Chargers adviser Fred Maas fired back with an op-ed of his own. He called Quigley a “small town undertaker” who doesn’t understand basic economics and who has been absent from conversations about other big downtown projects except for the Central Library, which Quigley designed.

Comments quickly started piling up beneath Maas’ piece. I rounded up some of the best of them. The comments have been lightly edited for style and clarity.

A commenter who uses the handle jdv333 said he thinks extra money from an increased hotel-room tax should go to something other than a convadium:

“If any increase in the hotel-room tax occurs, that should go to our No. 1 tourist attraction Balboa Park, which is in need of $350-500 million in repairs. Not to mention our crumbling streets and sewers – America’s Finest City has among America’s worst streets. Don’t think the visitors don’t notice.”

Bob Stein took issue with Maas’ framing of people who oppose the convadium as having a small-town mentality:

“Using Fred’s criteria, the people of New York City have a small town mentality because rather than let the Jets build a new stadium in mid-town Manhattan adjacent to its convention center, they told the Jets to find a way to rebuild in the suburbs where they already play. The Jets found a way and built a new privately financed stadium in partnership with the Giants. The part of Manhattan the NFL hoped to spoil with a stadium is called Hudson Yards.  It was a train yard. Now it’s a booming commercial and residential neighborhood widely hailed as a new economic engine for New York.”

Wadams92101 agreed with another op-ed that argues stadiums are not the measures of a city’s greatness:

“Nothing is more of a ‘small town’ mentality than thinking a stadium makes you ‘big city.’ Notably, none of the true big cities in the U.S. have downtown NFL stadiums, nor even have stadiums in their city limits. Not New York City (both Jets and Giants play in East Rutherford New Jersey), not San Francisco (Santa Clara), not Boston (Foxborough) and not Dallas (Arlington). Additionally, L.A.’s new stadium is privately funded and Chicago’s Soldier Field is 100 years old. Seems it’s the small towns and dying rust belt cities like Detroit, Cleveland, and St. Louis (lost their team anyway) who think they need a taxpayer-funded stadium to be ‘big city.’ That’s the real small town mentality. Meanwhile, the economies and quality of life of true big cities become bigger and better because they spend their hotel-room tax on things that actually benefit their economies.”