New S.F. Stadium Mall Won’t Cover City Costs, Report Says

The proposed shopping mall at Candlestick Point will not generate enough money to pay off the city’s share of costs to build a new football stadium for the San Francisco 49ers, financial documents show.

Sales taxes could come up several million dollars short of the $7.3 million that the city needs each year to pay off voter-approved bonds for the stadium, the San Francisco Examiner reported Sunday.

Mayor Willie Brown had promised voters that the $525-million stadium-mall would pay for itself. His aides said other revenue and lower interest rates could pick up the slack.

“We have to make it on new money,” said Kofi Bonner, Brown’s chief negotiator on the deal. “That is the bottom line.”

The stadium-mall project, initially projected to open in 1999, has already been delayed by legal snafus involving 49ers owner Eddie DeBartolo Jr.

In December, DeBartolo stepped down as the team’s chairman amid a possible federal indictment in a Louisiana government corruption investigation. He remains an equal co-owner with his sister, Denise DeBartolo York, the new chairwoman.

Last month, DeBartolo York said cost estimates for the stadium alone--earlier billed at $325 million--would reach at least $500 million, and put the project on hold.

The 49ers had originally appealed to Brown for help with a new stadium to replace 38-year-old Candlestick Park. The team said it needed a new facility to remain a premier franchise in the National Football League, and threatened to leave if the public failed to help financially.

In June, voters narrowly approved $100 million in bonds to help pay for the project. San Francisco’s costs, including interest at 6%, would be $216 million over 30 years, to be paid out of the general fund.

But even if the proposed Candlestick Mills mall matches the performance of the developer’s most profitable mall, sales taxes would come up $2.2 million short of the $7.3 million the city needs each year, the newspaper reported.