Shifting time for Coliseum

The Coliseum Commission will conduct its regular monthly meeting today, a week after NFL owners’ lukewarm reaction to the idea of paying for a new or rebuilt stadium in the Los Angeles area.

With a rent increase by the state in the offing, commissioners are faced with a difficult decision: whether to keep pursuing the NFL -- and spending thousands of dollars toward that end -- or to concentrate on alternate plans and striking a long-term deal with USC, the stadium’s primary tenant.

Some commissioners, even some of the most strident advocates of looking elsewhere, say the commission can do both, keep its flickering NFL hopes alive while moving forward on other fronts.

“It would be imprudent on our part not to continue to work with the NFL,” said Bill Chadwick, a state appointee to the commission.

Chadwick said the commission was in a “reactive mode” with the NFL, because the decision on L.A. ultimately will be made by the league’s 32 team owners. By comparison, he said, the commission was in a “proactive mode” with USC and could engage in more traditional negotiations.

David Israel, a fellow commissioner, said the group was “open to listening to a variety of proposals” regarding the stadium.

“We’d still like to be home to an NFL team in Los Angeles,” Israel said. “We’re disappointed [the owners] didn’t see their way clear to do that at their last meeting” in New Orleans a week ago.

One of the stumbling blocks for owners is the rapidly rising cost of building or rebuilding a venue. The league estimates a stadium in L.A. or Anaheim would cost between $820 million and $1 billion -- and that’s if construction began immediately with an eye toward a 2010 opening. There are no such plans in the works.

Because there’s virtually no public money available for building a stadium, the owners would be saddled with the cost, which they find unappealing. Talks between Coliseum officials and NFL staff have continued for the last three years, and the pace has been either glacial or nonexistent.

“There’s never been a sense they were trying to close the deal,” commissioner Zev Yaroslavsky said of negotiating with the league. “In all these discussions, there was never an end to it. While issues kept getting resolved, more issues would pop up. There were always more issues raised than resolved.”

sam.farmer@latimes.com