The San Diego Chargers are unhappy with San Diego mayor Kevin Faulconer's decision to include Steve Cushman, special adviser to the mayor on the recently-failed attempt to finance the city convention center project, as part of the mayor's task force for exploring the pros and cons of building (and helping finance) a new stadium for the team.
“First, we believed we had established a working relationship with the mayor’s office that was based on open lines of communications and shared goals,” Chargers Special Counsel Mark Fabiani said in a Q&A posted on the Chargers website recently. “Obviously the mayor’s designation of someone the team objected to at our very first meeting together does a great deal to undermine that working relationship.
“Second, if you were going to line up the people in San Diego who have done the most to block a new stadium over the years, there is no doubt that Steve Cushman would be near the head of that line.”
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While Faulconer asserted on Thursday that Cushman will have nothing to do with the stadium task force, Fabiani and the team believe that Cushman's desire to expand the convention center in a separate project from the team's proposed stadium/convention center plans will jeopardize the team's chances of getting a deal done.
“We are proposing a joint stadium-convention center, as you know,” Fabiani said during an interview with U-T San Diego. “So the fact that the biggest supporter of a contiguous convention center expansion remains firmly in charge is, to say the least, not positive news for the Chargers proposal.”
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