Raiders Quietly Have Put Down Roots in the Gravel of Irwindale

Out here in the heart of the San Gabriel Valley’s gravel belt, the Los Angeles/Irwindale Raiders have set up camp and assumed a low profile.

A low profile is exactly what you would expect of a team that is being sued and attacked by about 27 different enemies and is planning to build a football stadium at the bottom of a 180-foot gravel pit.

But the Raiders’ low profile is more a matter of taste. There are three years to go before the team can play its first game in Raiders Stadium, or Al’s Pit, or whatever it will be called, and no hard sell is needed in this Raider-friendly neighborhood. So the Raiders have moved in quietly, more like an eager new neighbor than a corporate giant seizing control of a tiny city.

Eight months ago, the Raiders took over a large corner of the new chamber of commerce and senior citizens’ complex in downtown--there is no uptown--Irwindale. Two “Welcome Raiders” messages on billboards along the 210 freeway have long since been replaced by other ads, and a “Welcome Raiders” banner on the Miller brewery blew down in a recent windstorm and has not been re-hung.

Even the team’s offices are unmarked on the outside. In the whole town, the only outward sign of the team I saw on a visit this week was a Raider bumper sticker slapped on the side of a janitorial cart parked in the lobby of the senior citizens’ center.

I did see a busy Raider office, some nice drawings of the future stadium, the actual pit and some mighty impressive Raider jewelry.

I came away convinced that the Raiders are still serious about anchoring their floating franchise in this strange little oasis of dust and smog and man-made craters. I think a lot of people still see Irwindale as Al Davis’ version of a poker bluff, something he can throw down on the table in order to get himself a better deal in renting the Coliseum, and I wanted to see for myself what the Raiders’ operation here looked like.

If this is a poker bluff, it’s a brazen one, involving four full-time employees and a lot of plush carpeting and expensive silver and black office furnishings.

When it was announced last week that the L.A. Coliseum will be turned over to a private corporation, MCA, some folks thought this might afford Davis a chance to gracefully work his team back into the Coliseum picture. Al has vowed never to sign an agreement with the Coliseum, but with new people in charge, perhaps people who are even rational and reasonable, maybe the Raiders could be persuaded not to flee to Irwindale after all.

“That (deal with MCA) really has no affect on us at all,” said John Herrera, a Raider senior executive and commander of the Irwindale outpost. “We maintain that when we are legally free to leave the Coliseum, we will do so, that there is no valid reason for the (Irwindale) stadium not being built. We’ve worked too hard, won too many battles, made too much progress, not to go forward.”

Not that Herrera would tell me if the Raiders are less than rock-solid, so to speak, on their plans to move here. This is an organization that keeps from the media such secrets as whether a fifth-string rookie defensive back has been cut, so it’s unlikely they’re going to confide in a visiting scribe crucial corporate strategy.

Still, the Raiders have invested the four employees for eight months, and have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on legal battles and on an epic environmental impact report.

The EIR was something the Raiders started work on anyway, but a political opponent took the ballclub to court and got an injunction. So all the financial work on the Raider-Irwindale deal ground to a halt until completion and approval of the report.

This came off as petty harassment to the Raiders, who thrive on that stuff.

“There’s an element out there that thinks that to delay (the Irwindale project) is to win,” Herrera said. “We have not allowed that to happen.”

Herrera works at a large desk that is silver--some might call it gray--and black. The spacious office suite is furnished with such items as a silver couch with black throw pillows. The walls feature art, including a giant photo of the Raiders’ Super Bowl trophies, an artist’s black and white drawing of Raiders Stadium, and aerial photos of the naked pit.

Complementing the decor, Herrera wore a black blazer with silver buttons, each button featuring a tiny Raider logo. On his right hand he wore a Super Bowl ring large enough to serve cold cuts on. Even Herrera’s hair is silver and black. He does not wear an eye patch. In the last eight months, he has become something of an honorary citizen of this tightly knit, fabulously wealthy little community.

Herrera showed me the notebook containing the nearly completed environmental impact report. I might have been able to bench-press the notebook once or twice, but not without a suitable warm-up.

“We’ve left no stone unturned, literally,” Herrera said. “They’ve found some birds nesting there (in the pit or on adjacent grounds to be used for parking), and some alluvial shrub that’s fairly rare. Some little rodents, lizards . . . “

The Raiders will have to satisfy the government that these little critters will be suitably relocated, and that no species of plant or animal will be wiped from the earth by construction of Raiders Stadium.

While Herrera took a phone call, I strolled over to look at the photo of the pit. Just then a teensy spider rappelled down the front of the photo, perhaps mistaking it for the real thing.

Herrera’s job is to oversee the Irwindale staff--Kathy Ahr in charge of marketing and public relations, Carol Thomas in charge of community relations, and Doug Albo, the construction overseer--and to work with attorneys, politicians and Irwindale’s municipal government.

Al Davis is busy elsewhere. Reportedly he has been inside Irwindale’s city limits only once, but his heart is in the pits.

“We talk every day,” Herrera says. “Al knows the phone number.”

Herrera and I met Xavier Hermosillo for lunch at a casual but splendid new seafood restaurant that was built recently by the city, just across the street from the Raider pit. Hanging on a wall inside the front door are two large French impressionist paintings--or copies thereof--flanking a handsomely framed artist’s rendering of Raiders Stadium.

Hermosillo is Irwindale’s public relations consultant. You may remember him as the large, genial, wisecracking young man who did most of the talking for the city when the Raider deal first came down.

Hermosillo arrived in a car bearing license plates, “IM MR X.” His wardrobe was accessorized with a mammoth silver Raider belt buckle and a tiny Raider lapel pin. He flashed a Raider money clip and mentioned that he owns an official Raider telephone, patio umbrella, mailbox, trash can and ashtray. He seems not to take himself seriously, but to take the Raiders and their Irwindale project very seriously.

“We’ve won all the political and legal battles,” Hermosillo reported between bites of blackened--but not silvered--halibut. “Now we have to take care of the financial end. Due to the injunction, all the bond money had to be returned and now we’ll have to re-work that.”

He indicated that this re-working would pose no major obstacles.

“John and his staff have been able to proceed, and the basic timetable’s pretty much on target,” Hermosillo added. “I’m convinced that the politicians can’t hurt us now, that this deal can only be killed from within, either by the Raiders or the city of Irwindale.”

Just last week an L.A. Superior Court judge barred L.A. City Councilman Ernani Bernardi from suing Irwindale to prevent its spending of redevelopment money on a stadium. However, a private citizen in Irwindale has indicated that he intends to proceed with the suit. It is presumed that this man’s name has been scratched from Irwindale’s complimentary season-ticket list.

Overall, the project seems to be a go, although as Joaquin Andujar once said, “You never know.” Maybe MCA will pave the Coliseum neighborhood, put up a Raiderland theme park and entice Al Davis to stay forever.

But I can testify that Irwindale is still there, the pit is still there, the tons and tons of city money apparently are still there--in a vault, not in the pit--and the Raiders’ valiant frontier staff is very much on duty.

The Raiders swear they’ll open the 1991 season here, and who knows? By then they might even have a quarterback.