Rams Ask for Talks About Moving Back to Coliseum

The Los Angeles Rams have asked for talks about possibly returning the team to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum from Anaheim Stadium, one of the Coliseum’s new private managers said Tuesday.

Irving Azoff, chairman of MCA Inc.’s Music Entertainment Group, a partner with Spectacor Management in the five-year Coliseum management deal, said the talks had been requested by Rams Vice President John Shaw.

Shaw, reached for comment, said: “I’ve never had a conversation with Irving Azoff about the Rams returning to the Coliseum.”

Azoff, however, said Shaw’s request came several times, through a third party.

Azoff revealed the Ram contacts after an official signing ceremony for the management deal, participated in by Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley and Supervisors Mike Antonovich, president of the Coliseum Commission, and Pete Schabarum.

Bradley and the others had departed by the time Azoff made his statement. He said that one of his earliest moves as a private manager would be to arrange discussions with Shaw and that Coliseum commissioners would be kept fully informed.

On June 14, Orange County Superior Court Judge Frank D. Domenichini, ruling in a protracted legal dispute, struck down a key provision in the 30-year contract that brought the Rams from the Coliseum to Anaheim Stadium in 1980.

Under the provision, a partnership founded by the Rams’ late owner Carroll Rosenbloom was given high-rise development rights for much of the land occupied by stadium parking. The understanding was that the parking area would be compressed, with multi-level parking structures replacing surface spaces and high-rise building covering the rest.

The stadium’s other major tenant, the California Angels, objected to this. Claiming that they had been promised the use of the same land for surface parking, they sued.

Domenichini sided with the Angels and issued a permanent injunction barring high-rise development on most of the parking lot into the 21st Century.

The decision removed substantial value from the Rams’ involvement in Anaheim and has led to some speculation that the partnership that now includes Rams owner Georgia Frontiere, who was married to Rosenbloom, might be inclined to declare Anaheim in breach of that contract.

The partnership’s attorney, Alfred E. Augustini of Los Angeles, relayed a “no comment” Tuesday afternoon to the reports of Ram contacts with the Coliseum.

In recent weeks, as plans for the Los Angeles Raiders to move to suburban Irwindale and build a stadium there have encountered financial difficulties, there have been suggestions by Irwindale officials that they too might be interested in soliciting a move by the Rams there to buttress the financing for the Raiders deal.

Before Azoff made his statement about the Rams’ approach, there had been considerable talk at Tuesday’s news conference about the Coliseum’s new management deal leading eventually to new talks to keep the Raiders in the Coliseum.

Bradley expressed hope that once the Coliseum is refurbished and the private management talks take hold, “quiet discussions” with the Raiders would take place. Antonovich voiced the same hope.

Azoff, saying that Raider owner Al Davis had often told him he never expected the private management deal to be consummated, said he feels that now that the deal has been struck, “it sends a very powerful message (to the Raiders) that we want to do business” and keep the Raiders.

However, Coliseum General Manager Joel Ralph and Commissioner Richard Riordan cautioned that talks with the Raiders are legally difficult before a resolution of the question of whether the Raiders’ Irwindale deal will fall through.

Times staff writer Chris Dufresne contributed to this article.