Empty Nest: The Rise and Folly of Coliseum Commission

In 1958, as he was facing a bitter and costly--and close--referendum election that would have voided the city ordinance giving him Chavez Ravine and the right to build Dodger Stadium, a reporter asked the Dodger owner why he didn’t just let the city build him the ballpark and lease it to him for a song.

“Because,” said Walter O’Malley, “who has a politician for a landlord is homeless.”

In the mid-1960s, the man who was the principal tenant for the Los Angeles Sports Arena, the man who kept its bonds from being in default, the owner of the town’s basketball team, the Lakers, and hockey team, the Kings, had what he thought was a reasonable request.

Jack Kent Cooke wanted to construct a VIP room on the premises where he could entertain important clients and sponsors before and after games.

His landlords, the Coliseum commissioners, were not impressed. That’s what they had concession stands for, wasn’t it? Let ‘em eat hot dogs, was the commission’s attitude.

Outraged, Jack Kent Cooke threatened to uproot his teams and take them to a facility he would build elsewhere, say, in Inglewood.

The Coliseum Commission almost died laughing. What a card that Jack Kent Cooke was! Whom did he think he was bluffing?

In 1946, when a professional football team, the Cleveland Rams, wanted to move to Southern California, the Coliseum Commission didn’t want them. The Commission had to be coerced by newspaper pressure into accepting them.

In 1958, when O’Malley and the Dodgers wanted to play in the Coliseum, the commission thought it would be nice if the team paid 10% commission in rent. After all, the colleges and pros paid it for football.

“I know, but for seven games,” O’Malley said. “Do we have to pay it for 77?”

Concluded O’Malley at that time: “It’s anarchy out there. Who’s in charge?”

The Coliseum commissioners are a unique band of landlords. None of them has a nickel invested in the property. It’s not their land, their edifice. A landlord whose own pocketbook isn’t affected is no landlord at all.

None of this seems to stop their arrogant wielding of power. It used to be in this world, to achieve power, you either had to have votes--or troops. The Coliseum commissioners never had--or needed--either.

The Coliseum wasn’t even built by the people. It was built, only after ear-splitting controversy by a group of civic-minded citizens, including newspapers and downtown businessmen, who recognized its worth to the community.

It became a source of considerable civic pride. In the ‘20s, Los Angeles was known chiefly for Charlie Chaplin and the USC Trojans, and it was the Coliseum and Los Angeles that put the Olympic Games into the big time.

The Coliseum was like a fine old dowager queen whose history was intertwined with the community that surrounded it. But it has always been--at least since World War II--run by a dilettante group whose bumbling has turned it into a municipal curio, an artifact like the original Colosseum in Rome.

Consider that they have driven out the Lakers, Kings, Rams, UCLA Bruins and now the Raiders, and you have some measure of how catastrophic landlord by committee can be. How else can you empty out 103,000 seats, turn an amphitheater into the world’s biggest flower pot?

Management has always been entrusted to a warring board of trustees, none of whom had a common interest and very few of whom knew a hockey puck from a fair catch. Three came from the City Council of Los Angeles, three came from the county Board of Supervisors and three from the State House.

You’d have to stay up nights trying to think of a better recipe for dissension. It’s often been abundantly clear that some of the members didn’t like each other. When you studied the makeup of the board sometimes, you couldn’t blame them.

Well, now, the tiny municipality of Irwindale has made them the laughingstock of the country and made them look like the bunch of stuffed shirts they have often proved to be. Their huffing and puffing would be comical to behold if it weren’t so sad. Actually, they don’t need any new huffs and puffs. They can use the ones former boards used when they lost (leave blank name of franchise). The Coliseum Commission is in a rut.

I have no sure knowledge whether the community of Irwindale will ultimately get the Los Angeles Raiders. But I do know the Los Angeles Coliseum has lost them.

I do not know who Alexander Haagen is or what qualifies him to be sitting in authority over a sports facility in Southern California, but he seems to have caught on quickly what had to be done. He is following in a great tradition.

The board is freed up now to find a way to get rid of the USC Trojans. That may take a bit of doing, but the board has shown that it is resourceful.

Uncoupling the Raiders cost the Coliseum more than a tenant. It cost it a partner in successful litigation. The Coliseum would not have been likely to win that windfall $21-million judgment from the National Football League if it had not been joined in the action by the Raiders. It was one thing for the league to let the Rams move. It was quite unconscionable for it then to block the move of another franchise into the vacuum.

Of course, all is not lost. The Coliseum gets a Pope once every century or so. It will get the Olympics again in the year 2038.

The moral of the story? If you’re a landlord and you’ve got a tenant who doesn’t throw any wild parties, kick holes in the ceiling, throw garbage around to attract roaches or rats--and he pays the rent on time and just simply wants to make a few improvements on your property--just pray you can keep him.

Just because it’s not really your property and you have none of your own money tied up in it, just remember, if the City of Los Angeles wants a white elephant, it can always buy one of those other abandoned gravel pits Irwindale isn’t using.