Looks like Moorad has reached a memorandum of understanding with Escondido to build a $40 million dollar minor league ballpark in that city. All that remains is for the council to vote on the project next week which absent a big change in opinion of someone on the council will be passing in short order. Seems like it's a good deal for Moorad and not so good for Escondido, since they're building the ballpark and Moorad reaps the lion's share of the reward, but it's far better than the initial plan which gave everything to the Padres at Escondido's expense. At least the Pads are paying the city $200,000 in rent annually now and covering all construction overruns.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/dec/09/padres-group-city-reach-ballpark-agreement/

My biggest concern with this move has to be the risk of saturating the market with baseball. Particularly since the Padres don't exactly sell out regularly now and neither do their Single A affiliate the Storm up in Lake Elsinore. This would just be more competition for them that's not really needed in my opinion. Staying in Tuscon made far more sense to me, but what do you guys think?