Team President Larry Lucchino is famous for the role he played in building Baltimore's fabulously successful Oriole Park at Camden Yards. With high hopes the completed renovation would place San Diego in the permanent Super Bowl rotation, the city, with the mayor in the lead, began renegotiating the Chargers' lease. Before beginning a discussion of the negotiations and their much-criticized results, I need to make it clear that the process represented the first time in the stadium's history that the city attorney's office was not an integral member of the city's negotiating team. Essentially, the mayor was the chief negotiator, with the city manager as her chief assistant. The city attorney's office was asked limited, technical questions and, upon completion of negotiations, was directed to draft the final documents.
Complicated contracts require sophisticated negotiating.
Former Assistant City Attorney Curtis M. Fitzpatrick is one of the most skilled and experienced negotiators in town. His hand is everywhere in the history of the stadium. He is the father of the stadium's financing and was instrumental in putting together, with one exception, all the complicated contractual arrangements between the city, lenders, tenants, concessionaires and all others doing stadium business with the city. The exception was the last Padres lease, which then-Assistant City Manager Jack McGrory and I negotiated. I take some considerable pride that it's the one Larry Lucchino described as the worst in Major League Baseball from a team's perceptive.