A new stadium to keep watch of?

San Diego isn't the only place in Southern California trying to get a stadium built.

Stephen Roski, a billionaire developer, announced yesterday his plans to build an $800 million stadium in Eastern Los Angeles.

Here is the official report from ESPN and the San Diego Union-Tribune.

I've seen ambition for stadiums in Los Angeles and San Diego over the years, but this is the only time I've seen these ambitions come to fruition. Usually, a random developer expresses plans for a major outfit that will change a city's economy, but they either aren't serious enough or realistic enough.

This is different. Roski means business. He's got the location, he owns it, he wants it.

I spoke to Chargers special counsel Mark Fabiani this morning, and while he expressed that the team stays out of what other cities are doing (a wise choice, considering the smallest leak could do unfixable harm to the Chula Vista project), he did comment of the links that have been made between Roski and the Spanos family.

"The Roski and Spanos families have been friends for many years," Fabiani said, "and Ed Roski and Dean Spanos speak often about potential non-sports real estate deals. During the course of those conversations Ed has explained his stadium concept to Dean. So we know something about Roski’s stadium plans, but we are continuing to focus our efforts on our remaining two options in Chula Vista and working as hard as we can to make something happen there."

So can we turn this into a conspiracy theory? Certainly, but I'd press the brake button on it. This stadium will be Roski's privately funded project, which means he'll want a major return on the investment if he can bring the NFL back to Los Angeles. To me, this would mean a major stake in whatever team came. The Chargers have been owned by Alex Spanos since 1984, and I'm not sure if they are willing to just hand a large piece of a team valued at $826 million in September 2007, especially when that team is so close to stability in the region for the next 50 to 75 years. Would Spanos make more money by selling a piece, paying outrageous rent for Roski's stadium, or staying put?

Spanos has already spent $10 million to fund this project, and will have to spend much more along the way. Would he eschew money spent for this opportunity?

What's interesting about the Forbes value chart is that 12 percent of the team's value comes from outdated Qualcomm Stadium, totaling $100 million. The Chargers have sold out their last 30 home games, which is over 3 years worth of time, but still fall back in revenue. Here are the stadium values of top five teams in overall value:

Dallas: $237 million, 16 percent
Washington: $362 million, 25 percent
New England: $231 million, 19 percent
Houston: $178 million, 17 percent
Philadelphia: $180 million, 17 percent

Make whatever sense of that you want, but four of those fives teams had stadiums either built or completely remodeled since 2000, and the other (Dallas) moves into a new facility in Arlington next year that is expected to generate even more money than the Irving site.