Chrome: Keyboard shortcut to go to Address Bar

You can achieve this using the keyboard prefs just as you were trying. You simply need to create one more shortcut.

In Chrome you would:

• Set Command-D to Open Location…
• Set Command-L to Bookmark This Page…

By setting an explicit shortcut for Bookmark This Page… you get rid of the conflict an ensure there aren't two menu options with the same shortcut.

Safari 8.0 does: Press and hold the Control key for a moment while you’re editing the location and you’ll see the search icon turn into an icon indicating that it’s interpreting the input as (part of) a URL instead of performing a search. The label “Search selected search engine” next to your text will change to “Go to Site” and the ‘Go to Site “your text”’ menu item in the completions list will be selected. Typing Control+Return will navigate there.

By the way, you can use Control+N (next) and Control+P (previous) to navigate through the completions list using the keyboard. (These are emacs-style navigation key bindings.)