49ers’ soccer field deal tabled
SANTA CLARA — Two councilwomen stunned and pleased a large audience Tuesday night when their threat of a boycott shut down a planned private City Council discussion on the 49ers’ offer to take control of a youth soccer park next to Levi’s Stadium.
“We need to slow down,” Councilwoman Teresa O’Neill said. “These deals that involve public property ought to have a public process.”
An angry Lisa Gillmor added, “I think it stinks, and we should stop now!”
After an emotional, twohour public meeting at City Hall, Mayor Jamie Matthews and the council canceled a scheduled closed session on the football team’s offer. Many in the overflow crowd of soccer kids, parents, coaches and city residents had delivered impassioned speeches for preserving the soccer park and rejecting the team’s offer.
“The mayor is putting forth a proposal where no one but the 49ers win,” said April Sandoval, a volunteer coach for a girls team.
Before them, 49ers official An overflow crowd attends a City Council meeting Tuesday in Santa Clara, where the 49ers’ proposal to use youth soccer fields near Levi’s Stadium was put off for further study. Al Guido defended the offer as profitable for city taxpayers and said it would actually increase the number of youth soccer fields owned by the city and the local school district from three to eight. He said team and city and school officials have been talking about replacement fields for some time.
“The council would not be starting from square one,” he said.
Under the proposal’s core, the 49ers would pay Santa Clara $ 15 million in advance, plus a cut of parking fees, to lease the large soccer park for about 39 years. The team also wants the right to develop the site later, with extra payments to the city.
In 2017, the 49ers would be able to gradually add more non- football events to the Levi’s calendar and park cars on the fields on those dates. The 49ers have suggested that the city use the rent money to build a new youth soccer complex somewhere else to make up for the loss of the soccer park.
While most of the public speakers wanted to simply preserve the youth soccer park, a few joined Gillmor in calling the land deal a giveaway to the Niners.
“We have a gold mine there,” she said. “That is not fair market value for that property, and it would be a gift of public funds.”
The council referred the 49ers’ offer and related matters to a city soccer committee and others for further study.