San Diego mayor begins stadium tour

SAN DIEGO, Aug. 16 (UPI) -- San Diego's mayor will visit three U.S. cities to see stadiums, arenas and entertainment districts as the city considers a new home for the NFL Chargers.

Mayor Jerry Sanders, along with three advisers, is to leave Wednesday for a three-day trip with stops in Indianapolis, Kansas City, Mo., and Denver, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

"The mayor doesn't want to make any decision in a vacuum," aide Darren Pudgil said. "He wants to see what other cities have done to see whether they've succeeded and where they may have failed. There's no need to reinvent the wheel if there are concepts out there that we think may benefit San Diego."

The trip follows by a week the Los Angeles City Council's tentative approval of a $1.5 billion deal to build a football stadium and renovate the downtown convention center. The project's developer, AEG, hopes to have a team and start building within a year, and many have speculated the Charges could move, the Union-Tribune said.

The Chargers can break a deal to use Qualcomm Stadium through 2020 by paying an early-termination fee every year.

Mark Fabiani, Chargers special counsel, who has led the team's search for a new stadium since 2002, said the trip "shows the mayor's seriousness, which is something we've seen privately for quite some time. It enforces what we already understood, which is he'd really like to find a solution here in San Diego, as would we."