San Diego’s newly awarded Major League Soccer team is planning a $150 million training facility east of the city on land owned by a local Native American tribe that is also part of the team’s ownership group.
MLS officials said this week that the city’s forthcoming new team, set to begin play in 2025, has leased a 28-acre site in the eastern San Diego suburb of El Cajon, California, with plans for a 125,000-square-foot campus that includes five soccer fields, infrastructure improvements and a 50,000-square-foot sports performance training facility with high-tech amenities.
Plans also call for a residential youth academy called Right to Dream, with sports and other education-related programs geared to students age 11-18. The development includes housing and classroom facilities to be built on a portion of the property that currently houses Singing Hills Hotel, which closed last month and where some buildings will be renovated for dormitories.
Financial terms of the long-term lease were not disclosed. The rural land and existing buildings are owned by the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation, which is part of the new MLS team’s ownership group led by billionaire businessman Mohamed Mansour.
The planned development site is near the intersection of Dehesha Road and Willow Glen Drive on the Sycuan Reservation, and is part of a larger parcel that includes Pine Glen Golf Course.
“The land is absolutely beautiful — rich with tradition and heritage — which will give us the foundation to achieve our vision to become the epicenter of football excellence and innovation in North America,” San Diego MLS team CEO Tom Penn said in a statement.
San Diego in May was awarded the MLS’s 30th franchise and will begin play in 2025 at San Diego’s Snapdragon Stadium, completed last year by San Diego State University to also house its college football games and other events. The 35,000-seat venue is on the former site of the stadium that housed the NFL’s Chargers for more than 50 years before the team moved to Los Angeles in 2017.
The stadium is in San Diego's Mission Valley neighborhood, about 20 miles west of the planned training campus. It is a centerpiece of a larger mixed-use project where the university is teaming with other developers to build housing, retail and other commercial and civic components.
The new MLS team is using the placeholder name of San Diego Football Club, with plans to unveil a permanent name and other team details later this month. Construction on the training campus is expected to begin next month, with completion expected sometime before the start of the 2025 MLS season.
The Sycuan Band is among several Southern California Native American groups with significant commercial property holdings in the San Diego region, including hotels, retail centers, casinos and golf courses.