The MLS Earthquakes organization “will break ground on its new privately financed 18,000-seat stadium in San Jose with a public ceremony on Sunday, Oct. 21,” according to Matt Schwab of the SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS. The team will “continue playing at Buck Shaw Stadium next season.” Club seats and luxury suites for the new stadium are “sold out.” General seating “will go on sale on Tuesday, Oct. 23.” Earthquakes President David Kaval said that the club “hasn’t found a naming sponsor for the stadium and that ‘financing is not contingent on that’” (SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS, 8/26). MLSSOCCER.com’s Geoff Lepper noted the Earthquakes “plan on moving into their privately-funded stadium at the start of the 2014 MLS season.” Building the “as-yet-unnamed stadium will end an odyssey that began more than a decade ago.” San Jose’s original MLS franchise “moved to Houston in 2006 after ownership couldn’t work out a stadium deal.” Kaval said that the “stadium financing has been fully subscribed, and that the club is in ‘active negotiations with two or three major, Fortune 100 companies’ regarding naming rights” (MLSSOCCER.com, 8/25).
