Is Mark Fabiani The Real Issue For The Lack Of Progress?

By Chris Arechaederra | Feb 19, 2015

Special Counsel to the Chargers Mark Fabiani might be part of the blame for the lack of effort being put in building the team a new stadium in San Diego.

I’m pretty sure it’s safe to say that Mark Fabiani is a pretty important man in San Diego these days. Before 2015, we seldom heard from him regarding this whole stadium issue. Part of the reason is that it wasn’t necessarily on the city’s list of priorities, but he was also waiting around until he needed the card that he has now: the Rams are trying to beat them to Los Angeles.

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I am certainly not one to lay blame or point fingers. I embrace solutions, but while he’s pretty confident in blaming others, I’ll point the finger at Mark Fabiani for once. Fabiani is the stadium point person who is representing Dean Spanos and the Chargers in this battle, or at least it seems like one, against the city of San Diego in getting a new stadium for the Chargers.

It is without question that there’s plenty of people to blame for the lack of a halfway decent plan to build a new stadium from the past 14 years. The people down at city hall have certainly been no angels either in trying to get something done, but this is a new group of people. Either Fabiani is playing unnecessary hard ball with a fairly new task force, or he’s pretty bitter over the last 14 years of wasted time.

On Monday, Fabiani met with members of the new stadium task force to go over what obstacles the team has been facing and to get preliminary discussions going on what they would like to do. However, before the meeting, Fabiani released his message to the task force to the media, before even presenting it at the meeting. It was a pretty fair, factual statement about what they would like to see this task force do based on past struggles it has seen over the last decade or so.

During that meeting, Fabiani took issue with Jason Cabel Roe, who’s a political advisor for Mayor Kevin Faulconer, being at the meeting to begin with. On Tuesday, Roe mentioned on the Dan Sileo Show in San Diego how Fabiani continues to have issue with everything that city is currently doing.

“Mark really does an outstanding job of blaming other people and making excuses,” Roe said. “Last week it was Steve Cushman. This week it was me. We’d rather focus on solutions, and not personalities, and play all of these games on the side that really distract from trying to figure out a way to keep the team here.”

There is some truth to that statement.

All of the negativity and finger pointing is not going to get anything done in the long run, not to mention how badly it reflects on both the city of San Diego, as well as the Chargers.

After Fabiani’s remarks, San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer sent a letter to Dean Spanos, asking him for a one-on-one meeting with the owner so that they can smooth things over as there is now tension between the team and the city. Faulconer took issue with Fabiani’s tone specifically in his letter. Spanos accepted the invitation to meet with the mayor on Wednesday, and the two will set a date and time soon, without Fabiani present.

Like I said earlier, I don’t believe in finger pointing, especially with a situation like this one. But if I were Dean Spanos, I’d start to be present for some of these meetings and see for myself what’s really going on.

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