MLS close to Bay Area return, stadium plan in place

	The proposed $100 million MLS/San Jose State stadium would replace aging Spartan Stadium, which was originally built in 1933. John Todd/MLS/WireImage.com

By Jonah Freedman, SI.com

The return of Major League Soccer to Northern California could be less than a couple of months away, SI.com has learned.

Oakland A's owner Lew Wolff is "as few as two weeks" from reaching an exclusive bargaining agreement with San Jose State University that could lead to the construction of a 23,000-seat stadium as soon as next year, a source close to the negotiations tells SI.com.

Wolff -- who owns an option to operate an expansion MLS franchise, contingent on building a soccer-specific stadium -- had been considering as many as four sites to build a home for a new team. It's now looking most likely that site will be on San Jose State's campus.

The framework for a possible deal would involve the university providing land adjacent to aging Spartan Stadium, where Wolff would build a new facility at his own cost.

The planned stadium would be part of a $100 million project, the centerpiece of which would be a facility to be shared by the new MLS franchise and San Jose State's football and soccer teams. It would also include locker rooms, offices and the refurbishing of San Jose State's existing athletic facilities.

The construction of nearby intramural and youth-soccer fields would also be added to the project, incorporating $9 million worth of San Jose city bond money earmarked for such a use.

According to San Jose State president Don Kassing, the university is moving ahead with Wolff and will work to hammer out some of the finer details in a meeting later this month. Among some of the issues still on the table is the size of the stadium.

Spartan Stadium has a capacity of 30,578, some 7,000 seats larger than the plan Wolff is proposing. However, the plans reportedly call for the ability to add seats for various events, such as San Jose State football games and concerts.

"The preliminary design work we've seen suggests there are some ways to do that," Kassing said. "They'd like to do some international soccer games and maybe eventually bring the [MLS Cup] championship here. You'd need a bigger capacity for that."

Kassing is confident a compromise can be worked out, however, and would like to see a deal finalized. If that happens before mid-summer, Wolff will exercise his option and construction could begin soon thereafter.

The stadium could be ready for the 2009 season, although a new MLS team could begin playing in '08 in Spartan Stadium while the new facility is under construction.

A backup plan is in place, however. Even though it's looking more than likely that the project will be given the green light, a dark-horse candidate has emerged in case it falls through. A consortium from Placer County, Calif., adjacent to Sacramento, has approached Wolff with a proposal to base the expansion MLS team some 160 miles northeast of the Silicon Valley area, the source said.

Wolff, a Los Angeles-based developer, recently reached a deal with Fremont, Calif., to build a new stadium for the A's. Using all private funding, the proposed $400 million Cisco Field will be built on a plot of land 28 miles south of Oakland.

For obvious reasons, basing his MLS franchise in nearby San Jose makes the most economic sense. Wolff could draw from the same set of Silicon Valley-based corporate sponsors and could combine his teams' marketing efforts.

Northern California has been without an MLS franchise since the San Jose Earthquakes moved to Houston in 2005, where they're now known as the Dynamo. The team's owner, the Anschutz Entertainment Group, also tried to reach a deal with San Jose State to build a new stadium but was unsuccessful.

Wolff would call his new franchise the Earthquakes, and a staff of former A's employees is heading up the efforts to start a new team from their new offices in downtown San Jose.

The new Earthquakes group and Soccer United Marketing -- the marketing arm of MLS -- have already partnered to host an exhibition match between the national teams of Mexico and Ecuador on March 28 at the A's McAfee Coliseum. That match will be officially announced on Friday.

MLS officials declined to comment on this story.