Clippers Owner Says He’s Demanding New State-of-the-Art Arena

The owner of the Los Angeles Clippers said Wednesday that he will not sign a long-term lease unless Coliseum officials agree to build a new $85-million, 22,500-seat indoor facility to replace the Sports Arena where his NBA basketball team now plays.

In an interview in his Beverly Hills offices, Donald T. Sterling said he has invited Mayor Tom Bradley, Coliseum Commission President Richard Riordan and Coliseum/Sports Arena private management representative Irving Azoff of MCA Inc. to a luncheon next week to discuss his ideas for financing and building the new arena.

Sterling said he is convinced that such a stadium could be built entirely through private financing, without so much as a public money guarantee, by leasing 200 luxury boxes within the facility for $100,000 a year each.

“Unless they build an arena that’s the highest quality, has the best technology and is totally safe, I won’t sign a lease,” said Sterling, who has been negotiating on the matter of a long-term lease with the managers of the Coliseum and the Sports Arena for several months.

“But I’m convinced that starting with the mayor and ending with MCA/Spectacor (the Coliseum complex’s private managers), they want to build a new arena,” he said. “They want to do it and they will do it.”

Sterling said that while his talks with city and Coliseum officials go on he has been fending off proposals that he move his team to the San Fernando Valley, to Anaheim, to Riverside County or elsewhere.

“We’re not negotiating with anybody else,” he said. “We’re not moving, but we do have a Sports Arena lease we can cancel at any time.” (The Clipper’s 20-year Sports Arena lease includes an escape clause the team can exercise at its discretion.)

Bradley could be not reached for comment on Sterling’s remarks, but Riordan and Azoff were contacted and questioned the feasibility of his proposal.

Riordan said, “Sterling’s a guy who always wants the best things in life, and I respect that. But I don’t think it’s feasible at this time or in the near future to come up with a new arena. However, we have plans to put between $20 million and $30 million into the present Sports Arena, which everybody tells me will turn it into a state-of-the-art facility comparable to the best in the United States.”

Azoff commented, “The citizens of Los Angeles certainly deserve to have a new arena. . . . But if we’re unable to do that because of the complexities of the (financing), I think we’d be foolish to turn our backs on the possibility of remodeling the Sports Arena.”

Azoff noted that he and other Coliseum/Sports Arena representatives have formally proposed at least a $21-million renovation of the Sports Arena, which would upgrade its capacity to more than 18,000 and include luxury “sky boxes,” in exchange for Sterling agreeing to sign a 30-year lease to play in the facility.

Sterling acknowledged receiving such an offer, but he said he had informed both the Coliseum representatives and Bradley that it was not satisfactory.

The Clipper owner began the interview by handing over a memo addressed to the reporter, in which he had written:

“I am committed to bringing to Los Angeles a first-class, state-of-the-art sports arena to be the home of the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team as well as the site for the biggest concerts and entertainment events in America. Los Angeles deserves and will have the finest sports and entertainment center in the nation.”

He said the arena he wants, in addition to having 22,500 seats and 200 luxury boxes, would also include a 250-seat private restaurant, a state-of-the-art scoreboard and video monitor, a new training and practice facility on the side, an adjacent new eight-story parking structure and the latest advances in sound and lighting.

“The only issue is not whether Los Angeles will have a first-class sports/entertainment arena,” Sterling said in the memo. “The issue is whether it will be an $85-million brand-new arena built on the present site or whether it will be a $21-million complete renovation of the existing facility.”

The stadium Sterling proposed would be much larger and more modern that the Great Western Forum, where the NBA champion Los Angeles Lakers play, and, Sterling feels, might help the Clippers become much more competitive with the Lakers.

But the $85-million price tag is far more than any financial figure Coliseum or city figures have discussed heretofore.

Meanwhile, in Orange County, it was learned Wednesday that Anaheim has offered the county $8 million for land to build an $85-million sports arena in that city--on the site previously proposed for a jail.

If the county accepts, private developers and city negotiators say a 20,000-seat arena could be built within two years, with the prospect of attracting an NBA or hockey team.

Times staff writer Lonn Johnston contributed to this story.