Coliseum, Raider Talks Continuing

Los Angeles Coliseum officials said Monday that despite reports the Los Angeles Raiders are about to return to Oakland, private talks aimed at keeping the football team in the Coliseum are continuing.

“The exact nature of these talks will be made public at a Coliseum Commission meeting Wednesday,” said Irving Azoff of MCA Inc., who is on the private management team speaking for the Coliseum in the talks with Raiders owner Al Davis and his attorneys.

Azoff said the commission may be asked to cast a vote of confidence in a proposal the private managers, a business partnership of MCA and Spectacor Management, have been presenting to the Raiders for reconstructing the 66-year-old Coliseum at the expense of private investors.

Neither Azoff, however, nor Richard Riordan, the commission president, Monday would publicly divulge details of the offer. They said they had agreed with Davis that the contents of the discussions would remain private for the time being.

Riordan sounded a note of some pessimism in describing the chances of keeping the Raiders in Los Angeles.

“I’m convinced that the Coliseum Commission will go along with a dramatic offer to him to dramatically improve the Coliseum,” he said. “I’m just a little bit afraid it may be too late.

“I don’t think it’s anybody’s fault we’re too late. I still think over a long period of time, Mr. Davis will be more satisfied in Los Angeles than in Oakland or Sacramento.”

Nearly two years ago, Davis announced plans to move the Raiders from the Coliseum to a stadium that he said would be built in suburban Irwindale in the San Gabriel Valley.

But with Irwindale’s continuing inability to come up with a financing package for that project, the Raiders have recently been negotiating with Oakland and Sacramento as well as listening to the Coliseum offers.

Oakland Talks

On Sunday, the Oakland Tribune quoted an Alameda County supervisor as saying that Oakland was nearing a tentative agreement with the Raiders, the latest of a number of published or televised reports Davis is about to return to the Bay Area where the team played until it moved to Los Angeles in 1982.

Meanwhile, the Sacramento Union quoted Gregg Lukenbill, chief executive of the Sacramento Kings basketball franchise, as saying talks are proceeding with the Raiders to move to a projected new 72,000-seat football stadium in the state capital.

The Raiders have had no comment on any of the reports.

The Oakland and Sacramento talks, like those in Los Angeles, have been complicated, according to various sources, by Davis’ desire that the Raiders receive a cash inducement of up to $32 million. This would be on top of the large amount that would have to be spent to build a new stadium in Sacramento or to reconstruct the existing ones in Los Angeles or Oakland to make them more suitable for the team.

$57-Million Lawsuit

Marshall Grossman, the Los Angeles Coliseum Commission’s attorney in a pending $57-million breach-of-contract lawsuit the commission filed against the Raiders in 1987 after announcement of their plan to move to Irwindale, said Monday that the aim of the present talks is not only to keep the Raiders in the Coliseum but also to settle the lawsuit.

“The Coliseum Commission’s objective is to maintain a relationship with the Raiders if at all possible,” Grossman said. “But it takes two for such a relationship to exist.

“The Coliseum Commission would much prefer to assure continued professional football than a continuation of the lawsuit. If Mr. Davis chooses to remain in Los Angeles, then that opportunity is certainly one which the Coliseum Commission negotiators are willing to accommodate.”