The 'Q' is OK, its architect says
Retired local architect Frank Hope Jr. returned to Qualcomm Stadium 50 years and three days after voters approved his $28.5 million design for San Diego’s first major league sports facility.
And contrary to the drumbeat for a $1.2 billion replacement, Hope, 85, pronounced the present facility in good shape and serviceable for many years to come.
“I do think it’s a very nice piece of architecture,” Hope said as he provided a running commentary to more than 40 architects who toured the stadium Thursday. “It’s easy to look at. It’s fun to use.”
Some other commentators call the stadium a “dump” and “dilapidated,” an embarrassment to the NFL, its fans, players and the sport.
But when it was built, Qualcomm, then known as San Diego Stadium, was considered state of the art and won the first honor award for a sports facility from the American Institute of Architects, whose local chapter organized the tour.
David Marshall, who led the tour and authored a historic assessment for the city’s environmental impact report on a new stadium, acknowledged the stadium might not survive if a replacement is built. But he argued that renovation and modernization is both the economical and environmentally responsible course to take.
“I haven’t heard any real strong reasons (for replacement) other than it’s an old building and it’s easier to build a new one,” said Marshall. “It might be easier but it is not cost effective and it doesn’t take into account the significance of the building or the quality of the architecture.”
Compared with the current high-stakes battle over a new stadium as a way to keep the Chargers in town, Hope’s stadium sped through the design, voter approval and construction process in 16 months as smoothly as 30-yard field goal.
Did it go over budget, one tour attendee wanted to know.
“There were no cost overruns because there was no cash for overruns,” Hope said.”
He recalled City Manager Tom Fletcher pleading for voter approval, saying it would only cost the equivalent of a “carton of cigarettes” per person.
“And we did get 68 percent or something like that,” he said when voters approved the bond measure on Nov. 2, 1965.
Hope, whose father founded his firm in 1928, said he first was hired to find a site. Then he toured six or seven stadiums around the country and returned to town to share his findings. He won the design and engineering contract, a notable feat for an architect at age 35 with no stadium experience.
Hope Design Group went on to design multiple other buildings, from Seaport Village to an airport terminal expansion, colleges and museums, hospitals and hotels -- and the Union-Tribune in Mission Valley. The firm also did work in Saudi Arabia, the proceeds of which underwrote one of the first computers for architectural design in San Diego.
“It just came to me that these are the biggest things in almost any town or city and they really were ugly,” Hope said, following his stadium study tour. “And I said to Gary (Allen, his design architect) and everybody, ‘Look, this is going to be a beautiful building whatever happens,’ and it turned out to be that way.”
He offered some insights into what sets it apart from other football stadiums:
▪ Concrete, not steel: The 68,000 cubic yards of poured-in-place and precast concrete meant the building’s structure would explicitly express its function without the need for tacked on architectural flourishes. The modern “brutalist” style, Marshall added, refers to the French term for raw concrete, not a brutish monstrosity.
▪ The round pedestrians ramps, stairs, escalators and multiple gate entries simplify access and exit, compared with other facilities where fans can get lost between the parking lot and their game seat.
▪ The lighting system, contained in a series of 28-ton precast concrete rings surrounding the seating bowl, adds not only an elegant architectural element but also makes it easy to change lightbulbs. Stadium Manager Mike McSweeney said he was keeping the building together with “spit and paper” -- a reference to the city’s shortfall in maintenance funding -- but thanked Hope for “giving us such a great spot” and making his assignment the “pinnacle of my career.”
▪ The facility was built atop a 37-foot “mountain,” built from 2.5 million cubic yards of dirt excavated from the north face of the cliff across Friars Road. That solved two problems: It raised the stadium above the flood plain and buried the lower seating sections to reduce the facility’s bulk. There’s no soils stabilization problem, Hope said, because the stadium sits atop a series of steel columns extending to bedrock. “If they tear this thing out and want to level it out, they’re going to have to pull out I don’t know how many columns,” Hope said.
▪ The multipurpose use for both baseball and football necessitated the installation of movable seating sections. Hope said he approached a local Firestone sales representative over cocktails one day and the man returned with a unique rubber-tire solution that remains in place today.
But the stadium design incorporated solutions that annoy users and fans today.
The lowest seats are just above the field level and make it difficult for attendees to see the action when someone stands up in front of them.
Hope said he proposed early in the design phase to eliminate those seats but an advisory panel said people would buy the seats regardless.
“These last three rows have been bugging me for years,” Hope said. “People stand up when something happens, whether it’s in the first seat or the 10th seat,” Hope said, even in the newest stadiums. And Qualcomm’s obstructed sight lines exist only at those field seats (and around some columns) and virtually nowhere else.
The solution is a giant television JumboTron scoreboard that fans can view when their view is blocked -- and that recalls a tale all its own.
Hope said the city issued a separate contract for a state-of-the-art scoreboard and the mayor’s oversight committee took charge of that element. But the video didn’t work right for two years and he escaped any blame.
“That was the best thing that ever happened to us,” he said.
NFL owners, players and managers complain about the locker rooms, while sports writers complain about the press box.
But after looking at the Aztecs’ locker room -- not much more attractive than a high school facility, as one touring architect said -- Hope smiled.
“It looks fine to me,” he said. “After reading what I’ve read in the paper by sports writers, I expected the whole thing to be a junk heap. It looks as nice as almost any athletic facility looks. So I’m not going to believe them anymore.”
As for the press box, he said, somewhat tongue in cheek, “You can never really satisfy the press with anything. You’ll hear stories that it’s not big enough; there are special requirements. But you don’t really need all those damn reporters.”
One other complaint about the stadium is the stains on some of the concrete and other cosmetic blemishes. Architect Marshall said some could be removed through power washing but he did not recommend painting the concrete -- since that would necessitate perpetual repainting at great cost.
Marshall’s report said there are some hairline cracks and and some chipping and flaking of the concrete but no signs of settlement, structural damage or hazards.
For all its architectural innovations, Qualcomm does not sport luxury skyboxes for high-roller corporate ticket holders and lacks the electronic bells and whistles evident in the newest stadiums.
Some of that could be remedied through a thorough renovation, estimated to cost between $350 million and $700 million. But as the cost of new stadiums has escalated beyond the billion-dollar level, the gap could give more credence to preservationists’ arguments that it’s foolish and wasteful to throw away a building that hasn’t even turned 50.
“I’m not sure what NFL modern standards are,” Hope said. “If it has to be the same kind of stadium as the new Dallas or some of the other billion-dollar ones, I don’t think we can do it (with Qualcomm)... The question: Is San Diego prepared to do that? I don’t believe they are.”
City officials plan to ask the voters that very question next November, depending on the outcome of the NFL’s decision on which team, if any will be allowed to relocate to Los Angeles. The Chargers have indicated their intentions to apply for relocation next year.
Marshall said Qualcomm is clearly eligible to be declared a historic site, perhaps even at the national level, and if it sounds odd to call a 1967 stadium “historic,” it is certainly a landmark, he said.
“When people think of San Diego and they think of architecture, this building is on national TV many times a year, and that makes it significant, and being a quality design, of course, helps as well,” Marshall said.
Hope, who said at that early stage in his career he should have been designing houses instead of a major sports stadium, recalls attending the first game on Aug. 20, 1967, and feeling the roar and stomping feet of 50,000 football fans.
“It was the most exciting thing I’ve ever had happen,” he said. “Coming in here to see the whole thing full of people, it was an incredible feeling to me.”
