Divided Coliseum Panel Scales Back Management Pact

In failing to ratify the proposed contract for private management of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum complex, the Coliseum Commission has accepted a very much scaled-down concept of what a private manager can do for the facility.

According to the unapproved contract, the private manager, a business partnership of MCA Inc.’s Music Entertainment Group and Spectacor Management, was to invest an initial $10 million in improvements, mainly to the Sports Arena rather than the Coliseum. Another $3 million would have been required in “second wave” investments by 1995.

But Friday, as negotiations began anew for a revised management agreement, Irving Azoff, chief representative of MCA in the talks, said there is no longer any possibility of the business partnership directly investing any of its own money in improvements.

“We are willing to loan them money,” Azoff said. “We’ll entertain such ideas, if there’s a guaranteed repayment. But we’re not willing to invest ourselves.”

Original Version Dropped

The originally negotiated version of the contract, hammered out in six months of tortuous talks, was abandoned Thursday when it became apparent that the frequently divided Coliseum Commission could not muster the two-thirds majority required to approve it.

Three commissioners representing the board of the Museum of Science and Industry--Alexander Haagen, Fred Riedman and Matthew Grossman--would not vote for it on grounds that increased use of the Coliseum and Sports Arena would add to traffic congestion, parking problems and otherwise disrupt attendance at the museum.

Another commissioner, Los Angeles County Supervisor Pete Schabarum, did not like it because he wanted to reserve more control to the commission over proposed events at the Coliseum and the policies to be followed.

But the original contention of Mayor Tom Bradley, City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky and County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, when they proposed private management last summer, was that the prime advantage would be that the divided, slow-moving commission could be bypassed and the Coliseum facilities made more profitable as a result.

Now, the terms must be renegotiated in order to get six affirmative votes among the nine commissioners.

MCA’s Azoff said again Friday that unless that is done successfully in 30 days, “it’s over” as far as the business partners are concerned, and they will abandon their management bid. But Azoff and his partners have issued such ultimatums before, only to agree on further negotiations when the time allotted had expired.

USC Vice President Anthony Lazzaro, representing one of the main tenants of both the Coliseum and the Sports Arena, said Friday that he remains optimistic that an acceptable agreement can be reached.

But Lazzaro warned that if MCA-Spectacor is not going to invest money in improvements, the Coliseum Commission must do so, perhaps using millions of dollars in damages it received from a recent lawsuit against the National Football League, or perhaps using that money as collateral for a loan.

Good Chance of Succeeding

MCA-Spectacor attorney Bob Adler said he believed that the new talks have a good chance of succeeding because “the parties have gotten to know one another” and it is clearer now what will bring about a majority of votes to ratify a contract.

Some Coliseum Commission staff sources, however, were not so sure. One, asking to remain anonymous, said Friday: “We will have to see how serious they (the would-be private managers) are, whether there are really substantive negotiations at all.”