What San Diego's newest sports venue says about American urbanism
What San Diego's newest sports venue says about American urbanism
The problem(s) with Snapdragon Stadium
Manchester United trotted out at center-back the indefatigable Jonny Evans, the first-teamer who drew the short straw on United’s promotional swing through San Diego last summer. It’s not often someone with 379 Premier League appearances lines up for an exhibition next to ten guys who otherwise would have been at prom.
Goalkeeper Nathan Bishop was five-years-old when Evans started his career with the Red Devils, and that inexperience showed when, outside the penalty area and for no reason, Bishop collided with Wrexham AFC’s striker-cum-reality TV star “Super” Paul Mullin, puncturing Mullin’s lung in the process. From then on, the pro-Wrexham crowd jeered Bishop whenever he touched the ball, and they cheered him when he conceded two goals. United got one back just before halftime when Marc Jurado guided home a lob into the box from teammate Álvaro Fernández.
It was an action-packed first half, one representing Snapdragon Stadium’s international soccer ambitions, and I caught none of it. I was outside the gate waiting for my friend, who was inching along on the 15 freeway and Friars Road. You wouldn't know it at kickoff, but this was a sold-out match between one of the most famous sports teams in the world and one lifted out of obscurity by celebrity owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney. The TV broadcast showed whole rows of empty seats, their ticket holders stuck in traffic.
Snapdragon Stadium replaced another multi-purpose sports facility surrounded by parking, and in the fifty-seven years since San Diego Stadium was built and demolished we have learned nothing. We want urban amenities like world-class sports venues and cultural events, but also reject an urban environment and lifestyle that would lead to those amenities improving quality of life. By clinging to our cars, we force upon ourselves the worst of both worlds. We get the noise, congestion, and pollution of the American city, and we get the vapidity, disconnection, and inefficiency of the American suburb. Something’s gotta give.
In August 1967, a parking lot with 18,500 spaces opened in Mission Valley, and in the middle of it was San Diego Stadium. At turns called Jack Murphy, Qualcomm, or SDCCU Stadium, the naming rights deal didn’t change the fact that it was a concrete behemoth plopped on dairy farmland.
It was connected to nothing—it would take thirty years for trolley service to reach it—and it wanted nothing to do with the city it inhabited. Built in the Brutalist style, it looked like Bane huddled around a treasure he was hiding from Batman. The place was so brutal that the Padres installed some palm trees behind the outfield fence, the irony being that the palm trees synonymous with San Diego aren’t native to here. It’s also telling that the most iconic image of San Diego Stadium was taken from outside its walls, with it far in the background.
The style of the four baseball fans, the TV, the beer bottles and truck turn Charles Starr’ photograph into a nostalgic hug, but the drama within the picture is based in the stadium. It’s lit like a spaceship, with thousands of fans drawn to the tractor beam that pierces through the stadium’s horseshoe. It frames the characters in the foreground and invites them to be a part of the game. Alas, thousands of cars separate them from the action. In a metaphor to suburban development, they are so close yet so far. The hassle and cost isn’t worth getting closer.
That picture was taken during the 1992 MLB All-Star Game. Five years later, they closed the horseshoe with new seating sections, which entombed the stadium and fully turned its back on the city. There would have been nothing for Starr to photograph at that same location during the 1998 World Series in which the Padres battled the New York Yankees. In the background would have been a gray donut. Attendees would have been obscured and the light would have been going up in the sky and not out onto his subjects.
For some reason, this lack of humanity and disconnection was celebrated upon San Diego Stadium’s demise. “Surrounding the stadium, more than 100 acres of pure, perfect parking lot,” said CBS 8 anchor Carlo Cecchetto in a “News 8 Throwback Special” following the venue’s demolition. There is no mention of cars being inefficient, costly, dangerous, toxic, loud, or anti-social.
“Much more than a place to park cars during a big game, it turned into its own gathering place,” Cecchetto continued, “a village of sorts for rabid Padres and Chargers fans.” You know what else is a village of sorts? A village. A place where people live, work, and recreate. It’s inconceivable to us Americans, but countless residential neighborhoods around the world have high-quality transit and pedestrian access to top-flight sports venues. Kenilworth Road, the home grounds of the Premier League’s Luton Town F.C., is a neighborhood.
San Diegans tried to correct for this, even if unwittingly, by approving at the ballot the sale of the stadium grounds to San Diego State University. The housing units, academic buildings, commercial spaces, and hotel that the university will build on the site are vast improvements, but these will get built in “10 to 15 years depending on economic conditions,” according to an SDSU fact sheet. The priority was the new stadium and parking.
The former was opened in 2022, just two years after SDSU took control of the land. The latter surrounds the new venue. By its current land use, the new stadium is no different than the one it replaced, save for some landscaping, and if San Diego Stadium was an outmoded coliseum, then Snapdragon is a nondescript loading dock.
The structures on the concourse are shipping containers, or at least look like them. The back of the seating decks are unadorned, the raw materials exposed. The seats are flimsy. The most distinctive architectural features are the lights, which rise vertically over the seats and look like crane arms. The style is what I call industrial chic. Another name for it is “cheap.” The most visually interesting thing at the site remains MTS’s trolley stop, a postmodern labyrinth of ramps, stairs, and rails. As the purveyor of the iconic red trolley, it hosts something actually indicative of San Diego.
The most important aspect of Snapdragon Stadium, though, is what is not there. SDSU didn’t build canopies, which are common stadium features to keep fans out of the sun and rain, because they would have added up to $100 million in construction costs. Coincidentally or not, the first event in the venue’s history turned into a debacle with the temperature at kickoff for the SDSU and Arizona football game exceeding 100 degrees. Fox 5 San Diego reported that 200 people requested heat-related medical attention, with several transported to hospitals for more intensive care. By driving to a stadium without a canopy, we turn ourselves into the proverbial boiling frog.
As for the surface lots, they will eventually be turned into something else, but much of that something else will be other forms of parking. SDSU’s environmental study for its Mission Valley campus contemplates 7,045 parking spaces available for stadium events. Another 6,147 additional parking spots will be dedicated to residents and hotel guests. That’s just 29% less parking than what San Diego Stadium had, even though Snapdragon Stadium is only half as big.
Today, there is a lot of discourse and policy making around infill and transit-oriented development, with SDSU Mission Valley as an example of it, but what is happening is the importation of the suburbs into the city. Underground and structured parking perpetuate car dependence. Themed “luxury” apartments borrow marketing tactics from tract housing developers and exclude the working class. Amenity decks in those new buildings rob the public realm of vitality.
As I’ve written elsewhere, Petco Park is the best modern urban sports venue in the U.S., but after leaving San Diego Stadium the Padres brought with them to downtown 5,000 new parking spaces, in addition to the 12,000 extant spots near the ballpark site. Petco Park opened before all the parking did, but when the garages rolled up their doors transit ridership to games plummeted. Downtown San Diego is choked with traffic everyday—it’s a dumping ground for the 94, 163, and 5 freeways—and it’s especially so on game days.
To be sure, Snapdragon Stadium possess several redeeming qualities. The concourses are wide and navigable, the food and drink options are far better than they need to be, and the bathrooms are cavernous. There may be more urinals and bathroom stalls than parking spots. Most importantly, there isn’t a bad seat in the house (unless it’s a day game in August).
But no matter what becomes of SDSU’s Mission Valley campus at full build-out, Snapdragon Stadium was built for drivers, which is to say it was built for cars. The developers of San Diego and Snapdragon Stadiums didn’t need to spend money to make it aesthetically or culturally distinctive because what they needed their venues to connect with was not humans but parking lots.
Snapdragon Stadium is two miles from my apartment as the crow flies, five miles by car, and what feels like 1,000 miles by transit. My best option is taking a bus twenty minutes in the wrong direction, then backtracking via trolley. I refuse to concede to nonsensical city planning, though, so I got to the Manchester United-Wrexham match by taking the bus to the first stop in Mission Valley, then walking a half-hour to the stadium. It was as comfortable, peaceful, and inviting as a walk in a freeway median, though I was joined by some others in soccer kits. They must have been visiting from Europe because no sane San Diegan would take that route on foot.
SDSU built Snapdragon Stadium for its football program, but for all intents and purposes it’s a soccer venue. San Diego Wave are a huge draw and San Diego FC start play there in February. It has hosted both men’s and women’s Gold Cup competitions, as well as international and club friendlies. It will host the Leagues Cup this summer. This despite being misaligned with the ethos and traditions of the sport. Among the ways carbrain conflicts with soccer are:
Fan culture - fanbases for teams in the top flight simply are not late to games. They are in their seats before kickoff, contributing to the game environment and lending their team mettle from the start. This is impossible if everyone drives.
Inclusion - soccer in England grew out of the working class. The successful revolt against the breakaway Super League, for example, was driven by grassroots supporters, and there is constant pressure on teams to keep ticket prices affordable. High ticket prices and stadium inaccessibility in the U.S. make the game here more exclusive.
Stadiums - the world’s best soccer venues are embedded in urban neighborhoods, like Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London, or at least have access to high-frequency, high-capacity transit, like Wembley Stadium. This allows those without cars to get to games easily, and it also breeds a deeper connection between a club and community.
Time commitment - you can set your watch to soccer games lasting two hours, and there are many more soccer games than American football games. Frequent car travel to and from soccer games is a drag, at best, and a deterrent, at worst.
Lastly, most of world football plays from August to May, and every soccer facility I’ve ever seen or been to has a canopy protecting fans from the elements. Soccer in the U.S. plays from February to November, in the heat of the summer, yet shade isn’t needed in San Diego, apparently. I went to a Wave game in May on a typical day, 70s and sunny. In the open maw of Snapdragon Stadium it felt at least twenty degrees hotter. Forget frying an egg on the sidewalk. You could have done it on my forehead.
The lack of canopy is reflective of how we consider the built environment in San Diego. The stadium is not a key piece of civic infrastructure, a place woven into the urban fabric where people of all stripes can feel welcomed and at home. No host would blast UV rays and a space heater onto their houseguests for two hours, yet that’s what Snapdragon does because it wasn’t designed for people. It was designed to be driven to and accept money. In the middle of a parking lot in the middle of suburbia it has no other purpose and can have no other purpose. In this way, Snapdragon Stadium is less a place than a consumer product.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like much will change.
“Canopies don’t make sense for us,” SDSU athletics director John David Wicker told the San Diego Union-Tribune after the football program opened Snapdragon Stadium in intense heat. “We did leave the ability to add the canopies for an MLS partner, if they come in and want it. That’s… what soccer buildings look like in Europe and other places.”
But it’s not clear if San Diego FC will be using their money to replicate that. They have scheduling preference at Snapdragon Stadium, meaning most of their games will be in primetime and out of the sun. That fact is a selling point recited by the team’s account executive, according to a friend who’s considering buying season tickets.
The stadium is built, the canopies won’t be, and a simulacrum of urbanity is coming to SDSU Mission Valley property. What’s my solution, then? I have none, not for this specific property. We just have to accept another major development that settled with mediocrity, that adhered to the status quo. San Diego’s slogan is “America’s Finest City,” a phrase invented by Mayor Pete Wilson to save face for bungling the 1972 GOP convention. A much more accurate civic slogan would be “Eh, Good Enough.”
The long-term solution is simple. We need to stop building parking, whether it’s underground, on the surface, or in structures. We can outright ban its creation, particularly near transit, or make it more expensive for the user, but the government affirmatively using its regulatory power is a laughable assertion in today’s day and age. We’re more likely to pass some convoluted tax credit or zoning scheme to indirectly incentivize more productive land uses. Whatever.
The point is parking is the fertility drug of car culture, to paraphrase YIMBY god Donald Shoup. Less parking and therefore fewer cars will allow us—require us—to live closer together, more efficiently and healthily. It’d create more interesting and dynamic neighborhoods. It would increase public transit ridership, giving the transit agencies the demand signal and resources to invest in faster and more frequent services. (I love MTS, but in the eighth largest city in America a light rail system running three-car trolleys with 7.5-minute peak service is a toy, not a utility.) And it will result in a richer, more inclusive sports culture.
I have hope because, in the face of the mainstream delusion over cars, there are people who recognize that there is a better way, and that resistance isn’t a recent phenomenon. In 1980, CBS 8 reporter Larry Himmel taped a prescient, satirical story from San Diego Stadium’s trash-strewn parking lot after a Chargers game.
“In recent years, more and more San Diegans have been attracted to asphalt, as if there’s nothing we’d rather do on a day off than get together with family and friends and head on down to the parking lot for a picnic,” he said in his piece:
“Ah, yeah, there’s just something about the great outdoors and the smell of burgers barbecuing mixed through the exhaust fumes of passing automobiles. And nothing will put a little added excitement into a game of touch football or frisbee like having to dodge in and out of the paths of oncoming cars… Sitting, standing, eating, drinking, and playing on asphalt is becoming one of America’s favorite pastimes. Who knows? Maybe the parking lot may become as big a recreational area as the beach. And then property values around this lot will escalate, and we’ll be paying hundreds of thousands for a shack with a view of the asphalt.”
Car culture promises freedom and mobility and connection and individuality when that is actually found in the city, among the crowd, at the game.
Agree SDSU Mission Valley has excessive parking. But the number one problem is the Green Line's crap 15 min frequencies, especially for the thousands of students and staff who will be traveling between SDSU Mission Valley, SDSU, Fashion Valley, and Downtown daily, not just on game days.
To understand the power of frequency, look at Calgary vs. SF. Individual CTrain lines run 2x-3x as frequently as individual BART/Mini Metro Lines. That's the main reason why in 2019 Calgary's CTrain had 2.5x and 1.7x the per-mile ridership of SF BART and Muni Metro Rail, respectively. After all, it's the Bay Area that has higher job density, residential density, gas prices, parking prices, and road tolls than Calgary. And outside of Downtown, CTrain stations are surrounded by just as much parking, sprawl, and stroads as BART stations are.
Well researched, argued, and rational.