Candlestick Park
Plans were underway to construct a new 68,000-seat stadium at Candlestick Point. On November 8, 2006, however, the 49ers announced that they would abandon their search for a location in San Francisco and begin to pursue the idea of building a stadium in Santa Clara. As a result, San Francisco withdrew its bid for the 2016 Olympics on November 13, 2006, as its centerpiece stadium was lost. Groundbreaking for the Santa Clara stadium occurred on April 19, 2012. On May 8, 2013, the media announced that the name of the new stadium would be Levi's Stadium. The stadium opened on July 17, 2014, in time for the 2014 NFL season. The 49ers christened their new home a month after it opened.
Proposed Los Angeles NFL stadiums
Several other sites were mentioned as possible locations for a new stadium. Then Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt had expressed interest in building a new football stadium next to Dodger Stadium (which is also near downtown Los Angeles). Angel Stadium of Anaheim was reconfigured as a baseball-only park in the mid-1990s, but there have been proposals to build a new football stadium next to it. The Dodger Stadium parking lot had been discussed by NFL owners, in private, as possibly being the best site in Southern California to build a new professional football stadium. Officials with the Dodgers and the NFL met in secret twice in 2005 to discuss the possibility of constructing a stadium and retail complex adjacent to Dodger Stadium. The 49ers' current home, Levi's Stadium, was built in the parking lot of an amusement park. After the "Boston Herald" reported the details of the plan, political pressure forced both the NFL and Dodgers owner Frank McCourt to deny that either party was aggressively pursuing the idea.