A youth soccer league ousted from its fields by the NFL may have found a new place to play and resolution to a lawsuit over the displacement.
For the past two weeks, the Santa Clara Youth Soccer League has been fighting the city of Santa Clara and the NFL in court after the latter took over public fields to build a media village for Super Bowl 50 at Levi’s Stadium. The lawsuit contends that the city handed over the fields without public input and in violation of the park’s use permit.
The Santa Clara soccer group said the city’s deal with the NFL leaves some 1,500 youth athletes without a home. Soccer advocates also raised concerns about the NFL’s construction damaging the public soccer park.
Earlier this week, however, with a judge poised to issue a ruling on the case, the San Jose Earthquakes offered to share two fields at Avaya Stadium with the youth league. According to the Mercury News, the NFL, Super Bowl host committee and the San Francisco 49ers have been discussing the offer for the past week.
Soccer advocates previously offered to back down from seeking an injunction to keep the NFL off the parkland if the city foots the bill for alternate fields. The Earthquakes said they would keep the cost at a minimum by waiving rental fees and billing only for maintenance and electricity.
http://santaclarabulletin.blogspot.com/
Looks like the handiwork of James Rowen.
Just be thankful he’s finally gotten it through his head that these people have no interest in being genuine “friends”, and he’s finally doing the right thing. Maybe between this, and the stuff going on in other threads SJI will finally stop pandering to the wealthy as well. It’s done little, if any good for the south bay.
> Maybe between this, and the stuff going on in other threads SJI will finally stop pandering to the wealthy as well.
Or, maybe we could help more people to become wealthy and then double down on the pandering.
James!
Thank you to the SJ Earthquakes! The arrogance of the NFL trampling the rights and interests of the local residents is astounding but not surprising.
This experience will forever diminish the NFL’s reputation. They have singled handedly recruited numerous fans for futbol!
Let’s just home people remember when we get the chance to vote in some new council members/new mayor and select people who will actually represent the citizens in Santa Clara, not special interests.
Maybe if the Gilroy councilmembers could simply trade places with the Santa Clara councilmembers this might happen, at least for the first couple years, until the different special interests get their hooks into them again.
If you do some digging, you can find information about commonalities between some of the stuff going on in Gilroy and some of the stuff going on in Santa Clara. Search on old Metro online issues.