A City’s Broken Play for 49er Site

Big, complex urban redevelopment projects always go more smoothly when they stay below the radar screen.

That’s why it didn’t make anyone connected with a San Francisco 49ers stadium construction plan happy when a legislative maneuver designed to speed the deal along surfaced last week in a local newspaper. Suddenly, the entire city seemed to recall that it had approved a $100-million bond issue to help build a new Candlestick Park way back in 1997, and to realize that not a brick had been laid in the interim.

The project’s return to public awareness may have brought back a flood of uncomfortable memories: How San Francisco had been getting rich on the dot-com boom in 1997, and how today it’s not so rich; how the very concept of public financing of sports parks has fallen out of favor; how the 49ers, which in 1997 had run off a string of 14 straight winning seasons including five Super Bowl wins, are now NFL doormats with three straight losing seasons.

Then there was the campaign, spearheaded by Mayor Willie Brown, to pass the bond issue and a related land-use plan for 77 acres at Candlestick Point. The election was truly a three-ring circus, starting with the 49ers’ then-owner, Edward J. DeBartolo Jr., explicitly threatening to move the team if the measures failed. The 49ers promptly issued a mailer abjectly withdrawing the threat and pledging their devotion to the city.

The election manager for the bond issue had to go underground late in the campaign after he was reported to have thrown a wild party featuring live sex acts and attended by many city leaders. The city was found to have opened polling places two weeks early in low-income neighborhoods adjoining Candlestick Point, where residents were led to believe they’d be in line for many of the 6,500 jobs to be created at the site.

Days before the vote, National Football League Commissioner Paul Tagliabue appeared in town to apply some blunt pressure to the electorate, warning that Candlestick Park was no longer an acceptable NFL venue and pledging that a new stadium would be awarded a Super Bowl within a couple of years of its completion.

The project itself was a jury-rigged combination of sports venue and shopping center. The idea was for the mall, to be built by Mills Corp., the developer of Ontario Mills and other outlet centers, to generate enough new sales taxes to pay off the $100-million bond. But that hope was challenged by fiscal and retail analysts who said it was just as likely that the new mall, even in the unlikely event that it became a popular destination, would merely cannibalize existing sales, leaving the city in a deep hole.

Both initiatives eked out dubiously razor-thin victories on election day. But things went downhill from there. A year later, DeBartolo pleaded guilty to charges connected to a $400,000 bribe he had delivered to former Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards for a casino license. He served two years’ probation, paid a federal fine and lost control of the team to his sister, Denise DeBartolo York and her husband, John.

The Bay Area dot-com boom went bust, leaving San Francisco with a fiscal hangover. The stadium cost estimate soared to $550 million from $325 million at the time of the vote. The original mall strategy looked more tattered with each passing year and in 2005 Mills let its development rights expire.

After that, the team quietly lined up other co-developers, including Lennar Corp., a high-end home builder active in the Bay Area. The city, meanwhile, asked Democratic state Sen. Carole Migden (D-San Francisco) to introduce a bill governing when the city could ask a judge for formal “validation” that the new project complies with the project approved by voters. Normally, such a ruling would be requested only after the project is finalized; Migden’s bill allows the request to be made while planning and design is still underway, thus potentially saving a year or two of red tape.

The San Francisco Chronicle, which discovered the maneuver, has labeled it an “end-run” by Mayor Gavin Newsom to avoid bringing the stadium deal back to voters. That view, shared by the original project’s opponents, is based on two assumptions -- that adding housing to the stadium project is a change sufficiently material to void the original referendums, and that this time the project would be resoundingly defeated.

Newsom’s administration ridicules the notion that it would try to implement a project on this scale behind the public’s back.

“Once the ‘Niners come to us with a project they think is viable, we will take it through an exhaustive vetting process,” Michael Cohen, an economic development official on Newsom’s staff, told me last week. “We will not do anything that contravenes the will of the voters.”

The most obvious lesson in this saga is the futility of taking money from taxpayers for a private enterprise. The condition of Candlestick Park, currently named Monster Park after an audio equipment maker, is not at issue; not a great venue when it was opened in 1960 for the 49ers and baseball Giants, it is today an atrocious one. (The 49ers’ lease expires in 2008, after which it can renew for three successive five-year periods.) Many critics of the old plan would be happy to let the 49ers gin up a suitable project without picking the public’s pocket, and the 49ers may well be considering such a step.

“Let the city lease the acres to the 49ers for $1 a year and grant them the right to build a stadium or any other acceptable project,” says Quentin Kopp, a longtime San Francisco political leader who opposed the 1997 measures. “But do it on their own dime.”

That’s hardly a radical idea. The Giants opted to abandon Candlestick Park for a privately financed new home a few miles up the bay, and they’ve been playing contentedly since 2000 in what is today known as AT&T; Park. By contrast, the 49ers tried to squeeze $100 million from the taxpayers in the NFL’s usual extortionate style and bought themselves nothing but nine years (and counting) of grief.

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Golden State appears every Monday and Thursday. You can reach Michael Hiltzik at golden.state@latimes.com and view his weblog at latimes.com/goldenstateblog.