(04-13-2017 07:37 PM)Aztec Since 88 Wrote: Here is a little of San Diego history.
The City of San Diego gifted UCSD over 500+ acres in La Jolla to originally build their campus. In addition UCSD was also able acquire in another gift of an additional 500 acres from the federal government which was the old Camp Mathews. So there has been some precedent set albeit 50 years ago. Also, the Q site is 166 acres of land which the City only owns half the land and the water district owns the other half. The city can only gift their land not the water district's portion of the site.
SDSU's goal is to increase their student population to around 50k from the 35K current enrollment. The Q site is connected by a trolley ride of about 7 minutes to the main campus. This is why they want to develop the land to grow the university and also build a new stadium over time, with the new stadium coming first. SDSU does have a couple of spots near campus where the university owns land, where it could build a new stadium but it is close to many residential homes and in CA, it would take forever to build there.
Even under the Soccer City plan initiative they only want purchase the Q site land for 10K.
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/busi...story.html
My bet is FS investors the group sponsoring Soccer City and SDSU will come to an agreement in where they can share the site. What the final agreement looks is still TBD. One of the lead investors of Soccer City is a huge SDSU booster as well, and help build they new basketball JAM Center for the hoops programs. He is the A in the initials JAM. I think the mayor will act as the intermediary between both groups to work out something that is amicable.
Lastly, the hard part for SDSU, is they just got a new AD last fall and are in the process of searching for a new University president, as he is leaving to take another job back east in June. Hopefully, we can cue Fisher to take the lead in this for SDSU, now that he is retired from basketball and being retained by SDSU as special designee for the University.
The land-for-enrollment trade is a red herring.
The university could have increased enrollment, but chose to get more selective instead. They could have hired more professors in areas that are in-demand (engineering, sciences, management) to accommodate those new students, but instead decided to subsidize departments that are facing declining enrollment.
Land just isn't that big of an issue for enrollment - $100 million in land will increase enrollment less than $100 million in cash would. Let's compare SDSU's land vs student population to other CSU schools with over 20,000 students:
217 students/acre - San Francisco ( 134 acres, 29,045 students )
209 students/acre - San Jose ( 154 acres, 32,154 students )
170 students/acre - Fullerton ( 236 acres, 40,235 students )
159 students/acre - Los Angeles ( 175 acres, 27,827 students )
123 students/acre - San Diego ( 283 acres, 34,668 students )
114 students/acre - Long Beach ( 330 acres, 37,776 students )
113 students/acre - Northridge ( 353 acres, 39,916 students )
102 students/acre - Sacramento ( 300 acres, 30,510 students )
51 students/acre - San Bernardino ( 409 acres, 20,767 students )
18 students/acre - Pomona ( 1,438 acres, 25,326 students )
17 students/acre - Fresno ( 1,399 acres, 24,405 students )
2 students/acre - San Luis Obispo ( 9,678 acres, 21,306 students )
And here's SDSU compared to other urban schools. Most of these have a lot more employees than SDSU, and many of them have hospitals taking up a lot of room on campus:
565 students/acre - Portland State ( 50 acres, 28,241 students )
344 students/acre - Temple ( 115 acres, 39,515 students )
324 students/acre - Cincinnati ( 137 acres, 44,338 students )
267 students/acre - UW-Milwaukee ( 104 acres, 27,813 students )
218 students/acre - NYU ( 230 acres, 50,027 students )
217 students/acre - Pitt ( 132 acres, 28,617 students )
207 students/acre - Cleveland State ( 85 acres, 17,620 students )
138 students/acre - USC (Southern California) ( 308 acres, 42,469 students )
127 students/acre - Boise State ( 175 acres, 22,259 students )
123 students/acre - SDSU ( 283 acres, 34,688 students )
122 students/acre - Tulane ( 110 acres, 13,449 students )
119 students/acre - Illinois-Chicago ( 244 acres, 29,048 students )
113 students/acre - Arizona ( 380 acres, 43,088 students )
107 students/acre - UCLA ( 419 acres, 44,947 students )
104 students/acre - Georgia State ( 518 acres, 54,000 students )
104 students/acre - Akron ( 218 acres, 22,619 students )
103 students/acre - UM-KC ( 157 acres, 16,160 students )
102 students/acre - Nevada ( 209 acres, 21,353 students )
100 students/acre - Harvard ( 210 acres, 21,000 students )
94 students/acre - FIU ( 573 acres, 54,099 students )
66 students/acre - Louisville ( 345 acres, 22,640 students )
64 students/acre - Houston ( 667 acres, 42,704 students )