Chargers to stay in San Diego

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SAN DIEGO, Jan. 9 (UPI) -- The San Diego Chargers will not bolt for greener pastures this year, the NFL team and city officials announced Monday.

In a joint statement, the Chargers and San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders said the franchise will not invoke a termination clause to flee Qualcomm Stadium. Instead, the club and city said they will keep collaborating on ways to build a new stadium in San Diego.

"The city of San Diego and the Chargers continue to work closely together to explore publicly acceptable ways to build a new Super Bowl-quality stadium on the bus maintenance yard site in the East Village of downtown San Diego," the statement said. "Both the mayor's office and the Chargers look forward to continuing their joint efforts to build a multiuse stadium that will benefit the entire region."

Attorney Mark Fabiani, the team's point man on stadium issues, said the mayor has retained an outside consultant "to come up with a regional financing plan for a stand-alone NFL stadium."

Fabiani said it's the team's understanding Sanders and other city leaders have decided to move forward with the city's existing convention center plan.

"Effectively, this means that our joint stadium-convention center proposal will be deferred for the time being, as decisions are made about how the existing convention center expansion proposal will move forward," Fabiani said.

He said it's "too soon to say" whether a stadium ballot measure will be put before voters in November.

"We need to continue our work with the mayor's office and see how much we can get done over the next 60-to-90 days," Fabiani said. "And if for some reason we miss the November ballot deadline, we need to be ready to consider alternatives, such as a special election in the spring of 2013 ... ."

The Chargers had been looking at the possibility of moving to Los Angeles.