Group managing Clippers’ NBA project joins sports arena team Midway Village+

The team has hired prominent facility adviser CAA Icon to represent the group as it seeks to privately finance and build a 15,000-seat replacement sports arena.

THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE

By Jennifer Van Grove

June 27, 2022 5:47 PM PT

With the competition for San Diego’s sports arena site in full swing, one of the development teams in the running to redo the property has recruited an all-star arena partner to help elevate its bid above the rest.

Monday, the Toll Brothers Housing-led development team, Midway Village+, announced that it’s hired facility adviser CAA Icon to represent the group as it seeks to privately finance and build a 15,000-seat replacement arena alongside thousands of homes on the city’s 48-acre property in the Midway District.

Denver-based CAA Icon is a subsidiary of Creative Artists Agency. It’s what’s known as an owner representative, meaning the firm is directly entrusted, usually by billionaires footing the bill, with carrying out the entire arena or stadium development process, including planning, design, permitting and construction. 

“We normally get called in by clients who have unique challenges, whether those are political, league credibility, ... saving a team for a city or really complex engineering projects — like The O2 in London,” said CAA Icon founder and Chairman Tim Romani. “We get called in when the challenges are greatest, and we never shy away from that.”

The agency, for instance, served as developer Oak View Group’s representative for the $1.1 billion Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle. And, more recently, CAA Icon replaced Legends as the owner’s representative for the Los Angeles Clippers’ $1.8 billion Intuit Dome arena project under construction in Inglewood. 

“This is a company that, in many ways, invented the role that they fill, which is to be the top adviser to the owner-developer groups that are trying to do arenas around the world,” said Kunal Merchant, who is the co-founder and chief operating officer of Revitate. 

Revitate is the Newport Beach-based, sports real estate investment firm that is leading arena development for Midway Village+. 

“All of the major arenas that have been built in California in the last 20 years have been led by CAA Icon. Adding them to our already strong team is just additional reinforcement and fortification. It’s saying, we’re going to have the expertise, the track record and know-how to really deliver a high quality arena to the people San Diego,” Merchant said.