Chargers pleased with parking options around Oceanside

City staffers told San Diego Chargers officials on Monday that there are about 17,000 publicly owned parking spaces around North County that could be used if the football team built a stadium in Oceanside.

"There is more parking than we expected," said Mark Fabiani, the Chargers' lead negotiator on the stadium issue. "We have to figure out if it's workable parking -- if we can efficiently transport people from the parking to the (stadium) without interfering with life in the surrounding neighborhoods."

Fabiani met for 90 minutes on Monday with Oceanside staffers to discuss how 60,000 fans could reach Oceanside on gamedays. Both city and team leaders said they want to make sure there are viable transportation options before pursuing the idea of a stadium in Oceanside. Fabiani said they should know the answer in the next 45 days.

The Chargers want to leave aging Qualcomm Stadium in Mission Valley within the next decade for a new state-of-the-art facility that might generate more money. Team officials have said they want to stay in San Diego County and have identified Chula Vista, National City and Oceanside as potential homes. The Oceanside City Council voted unanimously in January to explore the possibility of the NFL team building a stadium in Oceanside.

City voters would have to approve the stadium. Chargers officials have said that after they select a city they would want to put the issue on the November 2008 ballot.

Monday's meeting was the third time city staffers and Chargers officials have gotten together to go over options and issues for building a stadium on a 70-plus-acre, city-owned golf course near Oceanside Boulevard and Interstate 5.

Chargers officials have said the Oceanside site is appealing because it is near rail lines. Team officials have said they want to utilize mass transit and not build a massive parking lot at the site.

City staffers have spent the last month gathering information about transportation and parking in the area, including the capacity of rail lines and a survey of publicly owned parking spots. They presented the information to Fabiani on Monday.

"They worked really hard to put together a lot of information and it was impressive," Fabiani said. "It demonstrates the willingness of the people on the other side of the table to work just as hard as we are on the issue."

Local parking lots

Fabiani said he's flying to Stockton today to present the information from city staffers to the team's traffic and parking consultants.

Fabiani and city officials didn't provide a breakdown of the available parking spaces, but said many were along local rail lines or at nearby colleges and universities.

The North County Transit District has 1,000 spaces at Coaster stations between Carlsbad and Sorrento Valley, said Tom Kelleher, a spokesman for the district.

He said there are 1,250 spots at the transit center in downtown Oceanside and 1,500 spaces in lots along the 22-mile Sprinter light rail line, which is expected to open in December and will run between Oceanside and Escondido.

Cal State San Marcos, which will have about 4,600 parking spots by 2010, and Palomar College, which has about 4,500 spots, are both located along the Sprinter line in San Marcos.

MiraCosta College, which is located off College Boulevard in Oceanside, has about 1,800 parking spots.

Fabiani said the team would be interested in leasing parking lots from the colleges or even in business parks because they're usually vacant on Sundays.

To see if the team could transport fans from the parking lots to the site, Fabiani said team consultants will study options such as shuttles or expanding the capacity of rail lines.

Mass transit options

The Coaster has five-car trains with seating for 675 people. Kelleher said the district sometimes runs trains with 10 cars for special events, but it takes twice as long to load and unload people at each station. The transit district currently doesn't run any trains on Sundays because it hasn't seen the demand for such services, although Kelleher said the district would consider the option if it was a primary route to Chargers' games.

Kelleher said the Sprinter light rail line will have trains, with a capacity of 452 people, running both east- and west-bound every 30 minutes. He said the district can't run trains more frequently than that because only 8 miles of the 22-mile route is double-tracked, meaning the running schedules for trains needs to be staggered.

Fabiani said it may be difficult to expand the capacity of the Sprinter, but that the team could look at paying to double-track the line and even consider triple-tracking the line in some places.

He said the team would also study the possibility of extending the track onto the golf course site and building a station on the property.

Fabiani said the amount of parking built on the site would depend on what else the team builds on the site. Chargers officials have said they want a site for a stadium and a development, saying revenues from a housing, business or entertainment complex could have finance the stadium.

The team proposed having 9,000 spaces in its plans to renovate Qualcomm, but Fabiani said the rail lines along Oceanside could take more fans to the game than the trolley lines running to Qualcomm.

Between 25 percent and 30 percent of Chargers fans take the trolley to games at Qualcomm, Fabiani said.

With about 16,000 parking spots spread across 120 acres, Qualcomm Stadium has about one of the largest parking lots in North America.

Oceanside City Attorney John Mullen, the city's lead negotiator for the stadium issue, said Oceanside doesn't have space for a 16,000-spot parking lot and would have to look to use existing lots.

He said the city is "still in the information-gather staging."

The City Council doesn't participate in the meetings, but Mayor Jim Wood said he was pleased to hear about the progress.

"We seem to have a lot of off-site parking," Wood said. "I'm happy to see things moving in the positive direction."