L.A. Coliseum Management Pact Will Go Before Panel

An agreement has been reached by negotiators on a private management contract for the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and Sports Arena, and it will be submitted to the Coliseum Commission for approval next month, a Coliseum spokesman said Thursday.

Spokesman Scott Carmichael said the text of the 90-page proposed contract between the commission and a business partnership of MCA Inc.’s Music Entertainment Group and Spectacor Management will probably not be released until the middle of next week.

Carmichael said tentative plans call for a public hearing to be held on the agreement at the next regular Coliseum Commission meeting April 6, and a vote could come at a special meeting soon thereafter.

No details of the proposed contract were released Thursday.

However, there already have been indications of opposition from at least two of the commission’s nine members, and others are reportedly on the fence. Six affirmative votes, or two-thirds of those voting, will be required to approve the contract.

The negotiators’ agreement concluded three months of frequently tortuous talks, particularly over the financial guarantees to the commission.

Private management of the Coliseum and Sports Arena was separately proposed late last summer by Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, who is expected to oppose Bradley in the next mayoral election, and Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich. The proposals came shortly after the Los Angeles Raiders football team announced plans to move out of the Coliseum to a new stadium in Irwindale.

All three officials contended that the Coliseum would be more efficiently and profitably run by an outside firm than by the frequently divided commission, a tripartite group on which the city, the county and the state are all equally represented.

However, opposition to the idea has come from former commission president Alexander Haagen, who has suggested that the commission may be better off to market the Coliseum and Sports Arena on its own.

Earlier Thursday, Irving Azoff, head of MCA’s Music Entertainment Group, had expressed relief over the conclusion of the negotiations.