The Los Angeles Chargers have announced plans to build a new headquarters and practice facility in El Segundo at a cost of more than $100 million.

The development will be on a 14-acre site that is owned by Continental Development Corp. and Mar Ventures Inc., both based in El Segundo. The site will be leased to the Chargers with Continental building the property and acting as the landlord.

“When searching for a location to establish our hub of football and business operations, we didn’t leave a single stone unturned,” Dean Spanos, owner and chairman of the Chargers, said in a statement. “This process played out for more than four years because we weren’t willing to settle. Good enough wasn’t going to cut it. We wanted great, and we finally found it.”

Spanos added that the land’s proximity to Los Angeles International Airport, SoFi Stadium and Silicon Beach all made it desirable.
 
CBRE Group Inc.’s John Zanetos and Phil Ruhl represented the Chargers in the deal.
The team announced its move to L.A. in 2016 and soon after signed a lease in Orange County “for a temporary facility with plans to find a future home,” Ruhl said.
He added that CBRE has been working with the Chargers since 2017 to find a large enough space to develop a training facility.
 
“It’s been an unbelievable experience and process,” he said. “It’s taken an entire team. We’re two members of a very (large) team that has worked on this for four years to get this to this point and are beyond thrilled on the outcome for the L.A. Chargers to officially plant their flag here in Los Angeles.”

For Continental, the new site for the Chargers development made sense.

“When we heard about the Chargers (looking for land), we thought it was a perfect use for the property,” Richard Lundquist, chief executive and president of Continental Development Corp., told the Business Journal. “They’ve been searching for a property ever since they made the decision to come back to Los Angeles, and to find a site large enough to house three football fields is not an easy thing to do.” 

Charging station

The headquarters and training facility will be 145,000 square feet sitting south of El Segundo Boulevard and east of Pacific Coast Highway on Nash Street.
 
The site is currently parking lots and storage that Continental purchased from Raytheon Technologies Corp. years ago. Part of the land acquired from Raytheon is being developed into the mixed-use Nash Street Exchange while another portion will become the Chargers training facility.

Once completed, the project, which is being designed by Gensler, will have three regulation-size football fields. The field area will be able to accommodate more than 5,000 people.

The facility will also have a rooftop hospitality club, an esports gaming and content studio, a lap pool, player rehabilitation area and media center.

“The goal is for the Chargers to become the standard of excellence in the NFL,” head coach Brandon Staley said in a statement. “This new facility demonstrates our organization’s commitment to that standard.”
 
The project still needs to go before the city’s planning commission and is expected to be completed in spring 2024.  

Live, work, play

The Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Kings are also headquartered in El Segundo.

“I want to welcome the Chargers to El Segundo and applaud their decision to bring their new headquarters to this great community,” Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn, who represents El Segundo, said in a statement. “They are joining a growing number of companies and national organizations who are recognizing the advantage of relocating to the South Bay — where professionals at the top of their industries want to live and work. El Segundo will soon have bragging rights that rival any other city in America.”
 
Zanetos said there is a lot about El Segundo that is attractive to sports teams.
“El Segundo offers a few other benefits for sports organizations specially. There’s a lot of travel, a lot of logistics,” Zanetos said. “LAX is really convenient and a big benefit to sports teams. Also, you have the residential communities that surround El Segundo, which are also very attractive to the sports teams as well.”

Lundquist said the city, once known for its Chevron Corp. refinery and as an aerospace hub, has a low business tax rate that is desirable for companies, and the area now has a variety of organizations.

“It’s a great place to be — low crime, great city to do business with and in. Most people know of El Segundo as the aerospace capital of the country, but it’s growing to be much more than that,” he said.

Ruhl added that, in the last decade, El Segundo has seen a lot of investment from developers and new office product, which has brought more companies to the city.

The area, he said, also benefits from “an abundance of land (and) surface parking lots” prime for redevelopment.

And the Chargers moving to the area could also be a boon for others.

“It’s a big shot in the arm for the entire community and will attract other businesses and businesses that do business with the Chargers,” Lundquist said. He added that despite it being a huge amount of land, it would not result in much traffic since it is a practice facility and will have fewer people coming and going than alternative uses of the land would.

Bob Tarnofsky, senior vice president at Continental, added, “The Chargers’ presence will be a huge boost to our current Nash Street Exchange development.”

That project sits on a 7.3-acre site nearby and will have 75,000 square feet of retail, dining and medical office space.
 
“Medical, retail and restaurant tenants will all benefit,” Tarnofsky said.

“It’s going to be great for the community and provide a lot of jobs both during construction and afterwards,” Lundquist added.