For 15 years, the Chargers have stumped for a new home to replace Mission Valley’s Qualcomm Stadium. Their campaign has been the subject of elections, forums, negotiations and nerve-racking uncertainty.
Certainty arrived Thursday at 8 a.m., when team owner Dean Spanos revealed his decision to Chargers employees in person — and the world at large via social media.
“After much deliberation,” Spanos announced, “I have made the decision to relocate the Chargers to Los Angeles, beginning with the 2017 season.”
If Day One of the post-San Diego Chargers era ended the suspense that had tormented the region for years, it did not provide the happy ending so many had desired.
“I hate this day,” county Supervisor Ron Roberts said, fighting back tears.
Outside Chargers Park, the team’s soon-to-be-abandoned San Diego home, fans gathered to commiserate. Many tossed blue-and-gold memorabilia — jerseys, jackets, caps, socks, coffee mugs, posters — into a heap, smashing and tearing what were once prized keepsakes.
“To Dean Spanos!” yelled La Mesa’s Dave Wallerstein, taking a knife to a Chargers flag and then tossing the shredded banner on the pile.
Spanos acknowledged local fans’ “ and ion” across the team’s 56 years in San Diego.
“But today,” he said in a prepared statement, “we turn the page and begin an exciting new era as the Los Angeles Chargers.”
The new era is celebrated on the team’s new web site, FightforLA.com, which extols the team’s new home: “We wear all LA on our chest. We fight for it with our heart. Fight for LA.”
This fervent, overnight switch of allegiances did not sit well with some, including San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer.
“Dean Spanos made a bad decision and he will regret it,” Faulconer said. “San Diego didn’t lose the Chargers, the Chargers just lost San Diego.”
Faulconer spoke at an 11 a.m. news conference. If his comments were meant as a parting shot, he was too late. Spanos had already left in a private jet bound for Los Angeles International Airport. He spent much of the day touring his new home.
Or homes. The Chargers will inhabit several sites in Los Angeles and Orange counties. The team offices are shifting to Costa Mesa. The players will take the field at the StubHub Center in Carson during the 2017 and ’18 seasons. When construction is completed on a $2.66 billion stadium paid for by L.A. Rams owner Stan Kroenke, the Chargers will move into that Inglewood facility, paying $1 a year to rent space from the Rams.
The mayor of Los Angeles, the city of the team’s 1960 birth and first season, welcomed the Bolts’ return.
“The Chargers will make our NFL tradition even richer, and give sports fans everywhere one more reason to be in Los Angeles,” Mayor Eric Garcetti said in a statement. “I congratulate Dean Spanos and the entire Chargers organization, and look forward to the extraordinary contributions they will make to our entire region.”
Allan Lopez, the Northridge organizer of the “Los Angeles Chargers Fans” Facebook page, predicted the team will succeed — if they field a winner with some Tinseltown razzle dazzle.
“They have an exciting team, a sexy image,” Lopez said. “And that’s what L.A. wants, sexy teams. L.A. wants flashy, L.A. wants a show, and I think that’s what the Chargers will give L.A.”
Yet some maintain this team has only anemic from Angeleno fans. “The Chargers aren’t even the third team of interest here behind the Rams and the Raiders,” wrote Los Angeles Times columnist Bill Plaschke. “The Chargers might not even be in the top-five favorite NFL teams in Los Angeles.”
The team belongs in San Diego, he added. “The Chargers are beloved there. The Chargers belong there.”
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said he empathizes with Chargers fans but insisted the team had explored every avenue in San Diego.
“For more than a decade, the San Diego Chargers have worked diligently toward finding a local stadium solution, which all sides agreed was required,” Goodell said in a statement.
“Relocation is painful for teams and communities. It is especially painful for fans, and the fans in San Diego have given the Chargers strong and loyal for more than 50 years, which makes it even more disappointing that we could not solve the stadium issue.”
The decision to move comes two months after San Diego voters rejected a team-sponsored proposal. Measure C would have raised hotel room taxes to fund a combined stadium and convention center annex. Only 43.6 percent of voters backed the measure, far less than the two-thirds required for approval.
This was the latest and last of at least nine different stadium proposals the team had pursued since 2003, although some say many of those proposals lacked financial details.
After Measure C failed, the Chargers renewed talks with the city, the county and San Diego State University. Those parlays fizzled, Faulconer maintained, because the team tried to dig too dip into the public coffers.
“At the end of the day, the Chargers wanted a lot more taxpayer money than we could have ever agreed to,” the mayor said. “We could not a deal that is not in the best interests of San Diego.”
San Diegans overwhelmingly blame Spanos — not Faulconer — for the team’s move, according to a new San Diego Union-Tribune/10News poll. Spanos is blamed by 70 percent of those polled, while 6 percent blamed Faulconer and 9 percent blamed the NFL. The poll was conducted Thursday by SurveyUSA and has a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.
Supervisor Roberts had worked with Faulconer the past two years in dealings with the Chargers.
“They never really engaged in any kind of real negotiations,” Roberts said of the team. “None.”
The Chargers, Roberts added, Donald Sterling “in the Hall of Shame.” As owner of the Clippers, Sterling moved the NBA franchise from San Diego to L.A.
“It hurts,” the supervisor said, “but we will move on without them. San Diego is a great community and we are not dependent on the Chargers.”
Two San Diego professional sports teams praised the Bolts, but expressed dismay at their departure.
“We are deeply disappointed by the news that the Chargers are leaving San Diego,” Padres executive chairman Ron Fowler and managing partner Peter Seidler said in a t statement. “The Chargers are a community treasure, and we have always believed that San Diego is better off with the team here. That said, we know San Diego will continue to grow and become an even more vibrant community.”
The San Diego Gulls offered similar sentiments.
“We the San Diego community in sadness today as we learn of the departure of the Chargers,” said Matt Savant, the hockey team’s president of business operations. “The Chargers have been an incredible asset to San Diego and built a strong foundation to help critical causes important to our region through sports and community involvement.”
This move is not without cost to the Chargers. The team owes the NFL a relocation fee of $550 million to $650 million, depending on how payments are structured. And the team’s absence may bring some benefits to San Diego.
Developers, architects, planners and citizen groups have eyed Qualcomm Stadium’s 166-acre site, picturing alternatives to the steel and concrete hulk surrounded by an asphalt parking lot.
Among the projects they envision:
• A 60-acre recreational and open space park on both sides of the San Diego River and along Murphy Creek.
• Thousands of affordable apartments to help relieve San Diego’s chronic housing shortage.
• Student dorms and faculty housing for San Diego State University.
• A smaller stadium, suitable for Aztec football and a possible major league soccer franchise.
• New freeway on-ramps, river crossings, bikeways and expanded mass transit to ease congestion in Mission Valley and serve as a national model for post-automobile urban planning.
Dottie Surdi, chairwoman of the Mission Valley Community Planning Group, said a draft for the area’s first plan update since 1985 is due early this year.
“One of the things holding us back is the decision on Qualcomm,” she said. “We’d like to see a mixed-use community there. We desperately need more park space in Mission Valley. Obviously, we need more housing.”
For many Chargers fans, though, there were no silver linings to Thursday’s storm clouds.
“It’s like a friend dying,” said Michael Dysart, president of HCS Life Insurance Agency.
“I feel like I walked in on my girl cheating on me,” said Frank Soto, 33, a plumber. “Cheating on me with my rival.”
Throughout most of the day, the mood at Chargers Park was mournful but peaceful. Matt Farrier mocked the team’s new logo, which resembles the Dodger’s “LA” with a lightning bolt as the A’s crossbar.
Farrier held a sign that added two letters to the logo: “LAme.”
Chris Hairston, a Chargers player, emerged from the team’s headquarters to offer fans a resigned greeting. “It is what it is,” he said.
Former Chargers player Kassim Osgood also appeared, asking the protesters to not trash any Malcom Floyd jerseys. “He’s a San Diegan,” Osgood said.
Trashed Chargers merchandise was set afire several times in the morning and then around 6 p.m. During that later occurrence, police briefly detained one man on suspicion of being drunk in public.
Fans didn’t need alcohol to feel glum or unsteady. Larry Falkner was sober, but he looked morose as he sat on the curb across the street from Chargers Park.
“This sucks,” the Imperial Beach resident said. “It happens to be my birthday today and this is what I get.”
Staff writers Annie Heilbrunn, David Hernandez, Tom Krasovic, Bryce Miller and Lori Weisberg contributed to this report.
