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Proposed Oceanside stadium site ringed by freeway, businesses, homes and apartments
By: PHILIP K. IRELAND - Staff Writer
OCEANSIDE -- The hilly, 71-acre golf course in Oceanside
currently under consideration as a new home stadium for the San Diego Chargers
is a mixed-use area tightly ringed by a freeway, parkland, commercial
businesses, apartments and single family homes. Oceanside
city officials said last week they are talking with the San Diego Chargers
about the possibility of building a stadium on a hill above Oceanside Boulevard
at Interstate 5 that has been the home of the Center City Golf Course since
1953.
Mark Fabiani, the Chargers' lead negotiator on stadium
proposals, said Monday that the idea of building a stadium on the golf
course site is being analyzed by
a team of consultants, land-use attorneys, architects and others. The
consultants screen sites for size, compatibility with surrounding parcels,
and transportation. Fabiani said he would call Oceanside's city attorney by the end of
the week to let the city know if the site is "potentially
viable." "We're long past
the point of looking for sites just for the sake of looking at sites,"
Fabiani said, adding that the Chargers don't want to waste anyone's time. He said the Chargers have received hundreds
of suggested sites, but are
looking at sites in just three cities.
Two southern San Diego County cities, Chula Vista
and National City,
are also proposing sites for a Charger stadium.
Even as the Chargers consider the Oceanside
site, the team is stepping up its consideration of Chula Vista's proposed sites.
Fabiani said Monday the Chargers expect to enter
into an agreement in the next two weeks with the city of Chula Vista -- a
city of 225,0000 -- for a consultant to review their two bayfront sites. The Chargers would pay for the
consultant, who would be selected
and managed by the city.
They're also looking at a 50-plus-acre site in National City, a community of about
64,000. The land is adjacent to San
Diego Bay,
but has faced some opposition
from businesses.
In North County,
the 71-acre golf course the team eyeing sits on a hill north of Oceanside Boulevard
and east of Interstate 5. Nicknamed
"Goat Hill," the fairways of the 18-hole course rise and fall through several dells that cut the hill
into smaller hills and valleys. Dozens of eucalyptus trees surround the
course and line the fairways. The Ron Ortega Recreation park and another
city-owned property separate the
course from Interstate 5 to the west.
The public golf course sits on land owned
by the city, which is leased
to a private party in a contract that expires in November 2012.
Golfers currently reach the golf course from the south via Oceanside Boulevard,
which is lined by several strip
malls that include a Ralph’s grocery store, a CVS pharmacy, Boney's and the Navy Federal
Credit Union. The strip malls
back up to the southern edge of
the golf course.
And to the north and east, the course -- originally a private members-only
course called the Oceanside
Carlsbad Country Club -- is bounded
by Greenbrier Drive.
Several apartment buildings line Greenbrier
Drive to the east and back up to the course's
eastern boundary. Along the north
end of Greenbrier Drive
are several single-family houses built in the 1960s -- part of a
neighborhood of a few hundred
homes.
The Oceanside site has pluses and
minuses, Fabiani said. One of the drawbacks
is its size -- less than half of Qualcomm's 166 acres. And there would have
to be a way to replace the open space if the golf course site is used, he said.
"The campaign wouldn't succeed
without the public getting open space," Fabiani
said. On the plus side, Fabiani paraphrased
an Oceanside
city official's claim that the golf course site has the key element of
success for any retail business: "location, location,
location." "The stadium in
Oceanside would be much closer to the market
in Orange County,
Los Angeles and the Inland
Empire," Fabiani said.
One house on Greenbrier Drive
was the childhood home of Suzn Cupps, now of Illinois.
Cupps' parents built the house in 1962, she said,
as she glued numbers to a new
mailbox in front of the house on Monday.
"I'm not in favor (of the proposal) because I feel that in Oceanside there's not a lot of green spaces and it's good that the
city has maintained (this space)
that way," Cupps said. Cupps said she
believes parklands cut down on crime, and she would like the golf course to
stay. Greenbrier Drive was once a dead-end street, she said, and combined with the golf course across the street, the
neighborhood was a quiet, safe place to grow up, said Cupps. Cupps, a
graduate of Oceanside High, said she and her brother will someday inherit the house their parents, now in
their 80s, built and still live in. "Whatever
happens, it will affect my brother and I,"
she said.
A block north of the golf course lives Julie,
an elderly no-nonsense woman who asked
that her last name not be used.
She sat with a few friends in her living room. The ladies said they support
the stadium proposal but worry about traffic and parking. Julie suggested
building a "huge wall" along Greenbrier Drive to keep stadiumgoers from parking in the neighborhood. "If they put a solid wall there,
they're not going to walk 10,000 miles to get there," she reasoned. Julie's friend Betty, who lives a few miles
away, wondered if the stadium
would require a redesign of the Oceanside Boulevard
exit. Julie
said she was not worried what
the stadium might do to her property values, but wondered aloud if they would rise or fall. Another
friend wondered if the proposed stadium would require the city to purchase or
take area homes by eminent domain -- the process in which governments can
take private property for public use, typically with fair-market
compensation.
-- Staff writer Ann Perry
contributed to this story.
Contact Philip K. Ireland at (760) 901-4043 or online at pireland@nctimes.com.
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