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. Jack and I did a pretty good job. A negotiator's task isn't to get a deal that's completely one sided.
Negotiations involve the give and take necessary to strike a bargain.
In anything but the simplest of situations, neither side gets everything it wants. Usually, each side has to agree to some things it really doesn't want. The negotiator's job is to come up with an agreement his side can live with. If Curt Fitzpatrick or I had been on the negotiating team, I'm quite confident the deal could have been made without those two unfortunate terms. With that said, I have to observe that the criticisms heaped on the deal are considerably over blown and unjustified.