San Diego Plans to Build New Sports Arena

The City Council unanimously approved construction of a $155-million sports arena near the city’s eastern waterfront Tuesday, expressing hopes that the arena would revitalize a depressed economy and spur downtown redevelopment.

Mayor Susan Golding said San Diego intends to follow the lead of such cities as San Jose and Phoenix, which recently built arenas. Those cities, however, have major-league hockey or basketball franchises--neither of which San Diego has.

The city’s search for a National Basketball Assn. team may be further complicated by competition from Anaheim’s new arena, home to the Mighty Ducks hockey team.

Proponents of the San Diego project say construction of such a facility would be difficult without a commitment from a hockey or basketball franchise but noted that several teams--most notably the Minnesota Timberwolves of the NBA--have expressed interest in relocating to San Diego.

Sources close to the arena project said that Golding and City Manager Jack McGrory recently met with Timberwolves officials about the possibility of moving to San Diego and that similar discussions with other NBA teams have also occurred in recent weeks.

Kent Wipf, the spokesman for the Timberwolves, said that talk of moving to San Diego is “new to me,” though he added that team officials are struggling to pay off a $74-million debt on the Minneapolis arena, where the NBA franchise averages attendance of 17,976 a game.

The mayor said the proposed 20,000-seat arena “will be a catalyst for both residential and commercial development and a signature structure that celebrates downtown San Diego as a place where people want to live, work, play and visit.”

Still, some question the feasibility of such an undertaking, since it could involve public money from a city that claims to be broke. Officials said public funding sources would be derived largely from hotel tax revenues generated by tourist dollars.

The council’s two minority members voiced unbridled enthusiasm for the project on Tuesday, despite the fact that businesses in their districts may have to move. Most of the land in the proposed 12-block area near the city’s Convention Center is owned by a local utility.

The new arena would rise up out of an area now dominated by warehouses, blue-collar businesses and shelters for the homeless and would sit within walking distance of the city’s Convention Center and its primary mass-transit line, the San Diego Trolley.

Officials said the proposed $155-million price tag does not include financing costs, which would be offset by the sale of 38 acres of commercial property that serve as the site of the city’s existing Sports Arena, a 13,000-seat facility that opened in 1966.

That arena could serve as the temporary home of a hockey or basketball franchise, officials said, pending the completion of the new arena.

Citing poor attendance, the city’s most recent NBA franchise, the Clippers, left that facility for Los Angeles in 1984.