Stadium resolution passes by unanimous vote

Earthquakes supporters urge action at Tuesday’s San Jose City Council meeting by holding “Build It Now!” signs distributed by Soccer Silicon Valley. Photo: Jay Hipps, centerlinesoccer.com.

Center Line Soccer’s full coverage of Tuesday night’s council meeting includes a live blog of the events as they happened. 

San Jose — On Tuesday night, the San Jose City Council voted unanimously to approve a measure which would accept the final Environmental Impact Report (EIR) and allow construction of a new, 18,000-seat stadium for the San Jose Earthquakes at the Airport West site.

The stadium would occupy 14 acres of a 78-acre site, the remainder of which is slated to be developed with 1.5 million square feet of offices, 75,000 square feet of retail space, and two hotels totaling 300 rooms. Cost of the stadium is estimated at $60 million, with the additional development budgeted at over $500 million.

“Our next step is to go to the Planned Development stage with the city, but then at the same time we’re working on how we finance the stadium and put it together,” said Keith Wolff of Wolff Urban Development and son of Earthquakes owner Lew Wolff. “But the first step was to make sure we had the rights to build the stadium, obviously, and so we’re talking to potential sponsors and naming rights partners, and looking at different avenues for financing the stadium.”

Wolff continued with an explanation of what the Planned Development stage entails.

“It’s just really to get the permit to build the stadium. So, we have to do a little bit more design work, we have to deal with some of the issues (with sound and light from the stadium) raised today and that process, and also working with the community groups. But I think the key is to figure out a way to finance the stadium, and that’s the next piece. We’re going to go full speed ahead on trying to do that.”