Turning left from C Street up 16th Street, drivers can wind and find their way to and through a series of Downtown parking lots that eventually end overlooking Interstate 5 adjacent to a pedestrian bridge that crosses the freeway. Turn around and the 180-degree-plus view is anchored by the vestiges of historic Balboa Stadium, the original San Diego home of the Chargers, and a sea of asphalt, mostly for parking at City College. Oh, and there’s plenty of Downtown skyline and bay views beyond. Just the kind of scene that would bowl over fans of a professional football game.

Could Balboa Stadium one day again be home to the San Diego Chargers? Maybe. The city already owns most of the land.

Or maybe the idea of redeveloping the Tenth Avenue Marine Terminal should be revisited if the team, and a $550 million new stadium, appear headed to a city outside the county.

Regardless, if the Chargers stay in San Diego, the stadium should be Downtown. It is where the history is, where the parking already is, and where the before-and-after game action is happening.

The Chargers are an emotional issue, drawing jeers from critics who see the owners as greedy businessmen and cheers from the majority, including those who generate a 32 Nielsen rating during big games, meaning 320,000 TV households are tuned in. (By comparison, the season finale of American Idol drew an 18.9 rating in San Diego.) When the team is playing well, winning exciting games and advancing through the playoffs, the buzz in the community is tangible and unifying, part of the phenomena of professional sports.

But stadiums, when analyzed as business units by themselves, are economic losers, have been forever, including Qualcomm when opened in 1967, fully funded by taxpayers. Today the city spends about $19 million a year caring for the stadium. No one is expecting taxpayers to foot much of the bill this next time around. That’s also another reason why the stadium should be Downtown.

Balboa Stadium’s attractions are many, including jump starting existing plans to cover two or three blocks of I-5 with a park and plaza, something like Interstate 15 through City Heights. The move could connect Downtown to Balboa Park in a way that would bring a tear of joy to urban planners. It could even include a few downtown-size buildings to generate revenue that would help finance the stadium.

The work would include new parking structures across I-5 that would primarily serve Balboa Park and its largest tenant, the San Diego Zoo. Both are starving for more parking. Redevelopment dollars could pay for that parking.

If the stadium goes to Tenth Avenue, it could take advantage of the huge East Village parking surplus that now serves the Padres at Petco Park only 80 days a year and rarely on Sundays for pre-season football.

Building new stadiums is hard, expensive and each site is fraught with flaws that must be overcome. Politically the task is seen as a third rail, a potential career killer. Elected officials under term limits see little upside in championing a project that likely will take three years to open from the time it gets official OK. Even Mayor Jerry Sanders, who during last year’s campaign vowed to work with the team, has bowed out at least momentarily, declaring the city has neither the money nor time to work on the issue. The City Council memorialized his declaration in late May, voting to allow the Chargers to talk with other cities in the county about locating a stadium. In January the team can talk with anyone outside the county as well.

Into the breach have stepped county Supervisors Ron Roberts and Dianne Jacob. While Jacob is possibly the single most tenacious political leader in San Diego, the water on this issue will have to be carried by Roberts. Despite coming up short in his efforts to win the mayor’s seat, Roberts is a well-rounded political smoothie, with connections into every constituency that has a stake in the Chargers. He has the clout of incumbency, he shares Downtown with fellow Supervisor Greg Cox, and he is a sports fan. The latter is both a blessing and a curse. Fans will share his enthusiasm; foes will unfairly cast him as a tool of the business establishment.

Roberts expects something can get done. Today he sees about a dozen potential sites for a stadium throughout the county. The issue will get serious, he says, when it gets down to just a few. The community will then have to be engaged and Roberts says weekly meetings, open to the public, are a possibility. A quarter century ago, a series of such meetings brought consensus on a new convention center. Fifteen years ago a grueling series of early-morning gatherings led by Ernie Hahn and John Davies created the Downtown master plan on which today’s marvel was built. A similar effort is needed today. And a flow of creative ideas is critical.

Some are already delivering such suggestions.

Peter Q. Davis, the former chairman of the Centre City Development Corp. and ex-port commissioner, sees merit in both the Balboa Stadium and 10th Avenue sites, the latter of which earned him a public spanking by union and waterfront leaders for merely suggesting it three years ago.

With talks having collapsed for building a replacement on its Mission Valley location, Qualcomm Stadium’s days appear numbered as a home to the region’s professional football team. But it does offer development options, including a huge waterfront park, if paired with a new stadium Downtown. (photo/lambertphoto.com)

Since construction of a new stadium must involve a real estate play in which the Chargers leverage additional development to generate dollars to pay for a new athletic field, Qualcomm Stadium could be part of a Downtown deal. But new development at Qualcomm could be less intensive than what the team was recently planning, and a majority of the 166-acre site could be turned into a riverfront park, addressing San Diego’s biggest open space planning failure of the last 50 years. (Davis takes the deal one step further, suggesting the city borrow $175 million from the Chargers in exchange for turning over a portion of the Qualcomm property, and using that money to meet what appears to be a coming court-mandated contribution to the pension system.)

Access to the Balboa Stadium site presents challenges. Peter Hall, the retired CCDC president, says a guided rubber-wheel trolley could run down Park Boulevard past a new stadium, connecting Balboa Park with Downtown. Fans would use shuttles to get to other garage sites Downtown, most of which are empty on Sundays. And walking a few blocks is good, as Padres fans have discovered.

Hall says redeveloping the Balboa Stadium site would be a good use of his former employer’s resources because of the benefit to the surrounding community. “My position was always, if we are going to invest money, it has to be a catalyst for change,” he says.

Mark Fabiani, the Chargers stadium negotiator, says the team has looked at sites Downtown. The Balboa Stadium site, he says, presents access issues and parking needs that conflict with the busy Sunday crowd at Balboa Park. He also notes covering the freeway, while called for in the new Downtown plan, lacks a timetable. Other 92101 sites required too much displacement of people and businesses and the team did not look at Tenth Avenue out of respect for the objections raised by organized labor.

While previously finding Downtown options unfeasible, Fabiani says the team remains interested in new proposals. “That doesn’t mean we wouldn’t look at (Downtown) again,” he says. “That doesn’t mean we have a closed mind about it.”

Hall sees the Balboa Stadium effort bringing together the state Department of Transportation to deck two or three blocks of the freeway, the Navy Medical Center which could use the new parking on weekdays, San Diego City College and San Diego High School, which have a parking shortage, and the city’s Redevelopment Agency.

Tom Wornham, the incoming chair of the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corp. and a vice president with Wells Fargo, says “community will” is the key in retaining the Chargers. “Is there the regional will to keep the Chargers?” he asks. “Do you value them as a regional asset or do you not? We need to take the personalities out of it. It isn’t like we are the first city to look at losing a football team and we know that it costs two to three times as much to get one back.”

Balboa Stadium, the Chargers’ original San Diego home, is adjacent to acres of city owned asphalt and offers redevelopment possibilities that include new parking for Balboa Park. (photo/lambertphoto.com)

Davis isn’t terribly worried about parking at Balboa Stadium. “In 1961, that stadium drew close to 30,000 fans and there was zippo transportation and zippo parking,” he says. “Coming from Coronado, we took the bus and got off at Horton Plaza and walked. You can figure that 30,000 or more people will get there without needing to park in garages.”

Davis also has no problem if the Chargers try to profit from related development. “Obviously no one is in this for the goodness of their heart,” he says.

While Davis sees the advantages and possibilities of the Balboa Stadium site, he remains convinced the Tenth Avenue Marine Terminal is the best location. “What if it can be designed where you can use it as a convention center, use it as a stadium and the architecture is world class?” he says. Funds from CCDC and the Port could help underwrite the project at the marine terminal, but port funds could not help build a new Balboa Stadium.

Football stadiums are terribly large, bigger than baseball parks. Unlike the Balboa Stadium site where a big hole could be dug, the water table beneath the marine terminal makes it expensive, and difficult, to go down more than a few feet.

The biggest obstacle on the bay is the historic waterfront industry, which sees its livelihood and well-paying union jobs as threatened by hospitality-related development. Its leaders have drawn a line in the mud at the new bayfront Hilton now under construction south of the San Diego Convention Center.

Davis says brokering a solution that keeps the Chargers in San Diego rests now with Roberts. “He understands the whole situation really well and he could bring people together like the mayor of Denver did,” Davis says. “He has studied this and has studied Denver. He understands local politics, has good relations with labor and a good knowledge of the real estate market. If he can’t or won’t lead this effort, the Chargers exit San Diego. If that happens, in 25 years a new generation of San Diegans will come along and bring a franchise to the then, long-deserted Tenth Avenue terminal.”

Roberts says he is optimistic a deal can be struck for a new stadium and that Downtown is among his three top sites. “When the list is down to one or two sites, we will want to look at what are the deal points and issues,” he says. “What is the cost and what are the benefits and who is going to reap them? It is not just about a stadium. It can be more than that.”

He also realizes the considerable political capital at stake.

“If this effort succeeds, 1,000 people will take credit,” he says. “If it fails, two supervisors are going to get blamed.”