Earthquakes investors initiate purchase of Airport West site

A team of investors led by San Jose Earthquakes owners Lew Wolff and John Fisher has completed the initial $3 million payment to the City of San Jose for the purchase of the Airport West site, a property which is slated for a stadium for the Earthquakes as well as a variety of hotel, retail, and office properties.

“We are moving forward on our stadium across the board, so there are a lot of different layers that are going in place,” says David Alioto, San Jose Earthquakes executive vice president. “We have secured the Coleman site, and we will continue to work going forward on making that become the stadium… our number one goal is to make this a reality.”

The investors have also begun the process of creating an Environmental Impact Report for the site. The biggest step on the horizon, however, is the proposed rezoning of Wolff’s Edenvale land from industrial to residential, which will provide the funding necessary for the stadium’s construction.

“The last piece of the puzzle will be when we go in front of the city council sometime early next year, and that’s when the entitlements for the Edenvale project will hopefully be positively received by the city council,” says Alioto.

Alioto reports that no decisions have been made regarding the specifics of the stadium’s design. “Once we get into design, and we have a stadium deal, everything is going to be on the table.”

One of the issues which will be up for discussion is the capacity of the new facility.

“I think the most important thing to remember is we want a full stadium, so if 18,000 people want to buy season tickets and fill the stadium up, we’ll do it,” Alioto says. “If we think we have 20,000, then we’ll take a look at that. What we don’t want to do is have a stadium that looks half full. I think you can see from Santa Clara, the environment down here is fantastic. It’s a smaller crowd, but when you look at it on TV, and I’ve heard this from people across the country, this stadium shows real well, and that’s what we’re looking for in a stadium.”

Regardless of the size of the stadium as it is initially constructed, Alioto indicates that the facility will be built with expansion in mind.

“I think the key question to ask is will there be expandability, not how big is the stadium when we build it, but will there be expandability, and the answer to that is yes. I think if you look at Toronto, that’s the perfect picture. They built the smaller stadium and now they’ve expanded it. So we’ll definitely take a look at that and we’ll be aware of that and try to make that work and happen. It’s a supply-and-demand business and we don’t want to overbuild.”