Architects Will Study Altering L.A. Coliseum

A nationally known architectural firm that is an expert in stadium construction has been asked to report to the Los Angeles Coliseum Commission within two weeks on whether seating in the Coliseum can be altered to improve football viewing in time for this year’s home games.

Richard J. Riordan, head of the commission’s negotiating committee, said Wednesday that following the report from the Kansas City firm of Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum, known as HOK, as well as a soils study, the commission will decide whether there is time to proceed with the $9-million reconfiguration project. Any work would have to be finished before the Los Angeles Raiders’ first home football game Aug. 15.

Another major requirement is the securing of a bank loan to do the work. Riordan said loan talks continue with several banks.

Last week, commission President Alexander Haagen said he had already concluded that neither the money nor the time were available to pursue the project this year. But Riordan and other Coliseum sources said this week that there is hope that it may yet prove possible to go ahead.

Under the reconfiguration plan, retractable seats would be installed over the Olympic track at lower levels of the stadium to bring football fans closer to the action. Overall capacity of the stadium for football would be reduced from 92,000 to about 80,000.

In an interview over the weekend, Raiders owner Al Davis explained: “We’re greatly in favor of the new (Coliseum) design. For one thing, with seating limited to 79,000, we could have as many as four television sellouts this year.”

The Raiders organization has found that the high capacity of the Coliseum now has the effect of often keeping their games blacked out on Los Angeles television, due to the National Football League requirement for stadium sellouts before local TV is permitted.

Since Feb. 18, the Raiders have refused to continue their own separate project of constructing 60 luxury boxes on the north rim of the Coliseum unless the commission agrees to undertake the reconfiguration at the same time. The box work was abruptly suspended only three weeks after it began, leaving a hole where two light standards and 1,700 regular seats had been.

In another development, USC officials, clarifying their stand, said Wednesday that they are fully in favor of the reconfiguration and that they hope it can go forward this year.

USC is the other major football tenant of the Coliseum. Only last Friday, the USC senior vice president for business affairs, Anthony Lazzaro, had said the university was not taking sides in the negotiations between the Coliseum Commission and the Raiders and only hoped that the stadium, reconfigured or not, would be in good condition for next fall’s football games.

But on Wednesday, Lazzaro, joined by Lyn Hutton, USC senior vice president for administration, and Mike McGee, the school’s director of athletics, said USC’s only question about the reconfiguration is whether it will prove feasible to do it this year. “There is no question we want it,” Lazzaro said.

Two people privy to the negotiations, who asked not to be identified, said Wednesday that they had learned that the Raiders and USC have an agreement that the Raiders will share box revenues with USC, giving the university an initial $5,000 per completed box on an annual basis, with that figure eventually rising to $7,500 a box.

Hutton said that according to the revenue-sharing agreement, which she said had been made in 1982, USC is not permitted to disclose publicly what it will receive from the Raiders in box revenue.