Raiders Won’t Build Luxury Suites This Year

The Los Angeles Raiders said Friday in an official statement that the team would not build 60 luxury suites on the rim of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum this year, thus formally confirming what had already appeared evident last week.

On the final day of the nine-day period that the Coliseum Commission had given the team to either commence the $8-million project or abandon it for this year, a Raiders statement accused the commission of reneging on what was termed its “prior agreements and promises” to modernize the Coliseum through a seating reconfiguration at the same time the suites are built.

Accordingly, the statement added, the Raiders were “forced . . . to determine that the construction of the luxury suites is not practical at this time.”

The statement said nothing about possibly building the suites in the future. But the commission last week ordered its staff to make plans for doing the proposed $9-million reconfiguration work in 1988. The commission had urged the Raiders to go ahead with the suites now in expectation that the reconfiguration would follow later.