(05-17-2017 02:23 PM)Aztec Since 88 Wrote:  The city says it cost 12 to 14 million to operate the Q, but what they don't tell everyone that at least 5 million of that is a bond payment that has to be made from when they expanded it in the early 2000s. The city still has to make that bond payment even when the Q is raised. The real cost is around 7 million to operate annually. Any lease beyond 2018 would have SDSU picking up the cost of maintenance minus the bond debt.

If you read the soccer city proposal it is bad for the city of SD. The are trying to get the land to build a condo city under the ruse of building stadium and river park, without traffic mitigation for and additional 500O units and any events held at the new stadium. This area of toen is already congested. FS Investors could potentially get the 166 acres of land for 10K, plus the cost of stadium demo and removal.

The Soccer City plan is not good for SDSU, and they should not support it, SDSU's goal is more about campus expansion to grow the university in enrollment than it is about the stadium. Although if SDSU is able obtain part or all of the of 166, that is where they would prefer to build a new stadium.

The city also ignores/hides the high costs related directly to the Chargers games that won't affect the future operational budget. A big portion of these high costs came from disability access lawsuit payments and a horrible lease - which essentially eliminated any revenue received from the Chargers.

Take away the $5M debt-service, the $800K paid to the Chargers (lawsuit related), $1.1M in public safety, and probably a good portion of their $3.4M annual personnel budget, and the cost to continue operations of Qualcomm is more likely in the $4-5M/year range.

Qualcomm made $3.1M in revenue in 2015 from non-Chargers/SDSU events. SDSU starts paying $2M in rent ($333K per game) and the problem is solved. That's $11 extra per ticket (on the average), if SDSU gets 30K attendance (The Aztecs averaged 37K in 2016, 29K in 2015, and 32K in 2014).

Of course, the other side is the $50M remaining on the bond and the fact that the land is allegedly worth $1B. Hard to keep such valuable land when it will only be used for 7 annual college football games (including bowl game), some monster truck rallies, and the weekly swap meet.

But, at that valuation, sell off like 5-10% of the parking area, and keep the rest, and the bond is paid off in full and you would probably still have enough left over for an endowment for ongoing stadium maintenance and repairs.

But this is all moot because the city seems determined to shut down Qualcomm after 2018.