A joint move to Los Angeles by the San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders took a step closer today as Carson City Council unanimously approved the construction of a privately funded $1.7 billion stadium. Carson Mayor, Albert Robles said “There are two things we need in California: rain … and football, and football is coming to Carson.”
Carson City Council Approves NFL Stadium
The vote means that there are two projects with local support, after Inglewood Council voted to approve an 80,000 seat stadium backed by St Louis Rams owner Stan Kroenke and the Stockbridge Capital Group.
Mike Haynes, a Los Angles native who played for the Raiders when they were located in Los Angeles said, “It might not be too long ‘til sometime another local kid will have an opportunity to play in a Super Bowl right down the street from here.”
Both projects will update a committee of NFL owners on their status at a meeting in New York on Wednesday.
Should either project gain NFL approval it will mean a return to Los Angeles for the teams involved. Should the Inglewood project receive approval it will mean a return for the Rams who competed in LA from 1946-1994, should the joint Chargers/Raiders project receive approval it would mean a return for the Chargers, who were founded the LA Chargers in 1959 before moving to San Diego in 1961, and also a second spell in Los Angeles for the Raiders who competed in the city from 1982-1994.
Under current NFL rules, the next opportunity for a team to file to relocate, either to the Carson stadium or the nearby proposed stadium in Inglewood, would be in January 2016.
Photo: An artist’s rendering of a newly proposed NFL stadium in the city of Carson, Calif. The Los Angeles suburb of Carson approved a $1.7 billion NFL stadium Tuesday. (via MANICA ARCHITECTURE)
