Chargers say farewells in last week in San Diego

SAN DIEGO — Antonio Gates first arrived at Chargers Park in 2003, and Philip Rivers joined him one year later on the peaceful practice fields and low-slung buildings tucked below a golden hillside on Murphy Canyon Road.

The tight end and his quarterback have spent their entire NFL lives inhabiting this training complex in northern San Diego. They’ve honed their skills with uncountable thousands of throws and catches on these fields, and they’ve built warm friendships with hundreds of their fellow Chargers in its locker room.

But Chargers Park and San Diego are down to their final week as this team’s home. After a three-day mandatory minicamp concludes Thursday, the players will disperse for summer vacation before the moving vans portentously parked outside the complex are filled for the 85-mile drive north to Costa Mesa, the Orange County city where the Los Angeles Chargers will hold training camp in July.

“It’s a bittersweet moment, because obviously the memories are still here,” Gates said Tuesday. “They will forever be here for myself, for the guys that have been around.”

Chargers Park will be empty this summer for the first time in two decades, and San Diego will spend its autumn Sundays without the team that arrived from Los Angeles in 1961. The move has loomed for five months, but its imminent finality