S.F. Mayor Ed Lee yesterday acknowledged that there is "very little time left on the clock to persuade the 49ers to stay in the city -- and that Santa Clara is all but assured a win in the battle to claim the team after it announced last week it has secured $850 million to finance a new stadium," according to a front-page piece by Heather Knight of the S.F. CHRONICLE. Lee, who is scheduled to meet Thursday at City Hall with 49ers President & CEO Jed York, said that "persuading him to switch gears would be 'a very steep uphill climb.'" Lee: "We're still talking about whether it's 110 percent done yet, but it is getting very close. It's a business decision that's being made here. If someone's got hundreds of millions of dollars lying around, we haven't seen it." Lee said that the city's "only hope to keep the 49ers, which have played in San Francisco for 65 years, is if the NFL doesn't approve the Santa Clara plan." Lee: "That's the only shot we have." A S.F.-based architectural firm was put in touch with Lee's staff and "hopes to be hired by San Francisco to flesh out a plan for a stadium in Hunters Point" (S.F. CHRONICLE, 12/6).
RECORD LOAN: In San Jose, Mike Rosenberg notes the plan to pay for the 49ers' new home in Santa Clara "will rely on the biggest loan to a public agency for any stadium in NFL history." Critics and some analysts "fear the stadium next to the Great America theme park won't whip up enough profit to pay off $850 million that the city's stadium authority will borrow to propel the plan into reality." Lake Forest College Economics Prof Robert Baade said the debt is "way beyond what we normally see. If I was Santa Clara I'd be very, very skeptical. There are lots and lots of unanswered questions." However, Smith College sports economist Andrew Zimbalist said, "If in fact the team is going to backstop the whole debt service, then it sounds like a pretty good deal to me" (SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS, 12/6).
