Raiders Offered $60 Million, New Stadium

The Los Angeles Raiders would get a new Coliseum to play in, an immediate payment of more than $20 million and the promise of an additional $40 million over 10 years if owner Al Davis keeps his team in Los Angeles, under terms of an agreement currently in negotiation.

Sources on both sides of the talks, who described the proposed deal, said chances that the team will stay in Los Angeles, rather than move to Oakland or Sacramento, seem to have improved in recent weeks. But serious legal obstacles and other impediments could block the settlement.

For more than two years, the Raiders ultimate home has been up in the air, with first Irwindale, and later Sacramento and Oakland, in the bidding. There has been a steady inflation in the value of bids to Davis, but questions have arisen at each site on the ability to perform on the promises.

According to one source, Davis agreed at a meeting Wednesday not to go ahead with a team move to either Oakland or Sacramento while developers from the Spectacor Management Group and MCA Inc., the private managers of the Coliseum, seek approval from the Coliseum Commission for a private ground lease that would allow the project to go ahead.

At the same meeting, the source said, Davis successfully pushed for a bigger cash payment to the team, but how much bigger than $20 million was not disclosed.

If the deal goes through, the Raiders would receive the largest fee ever paid to a professional team for staying where it is. Sources described the payment as settlement of the Coliseum Commission’s pending lawsuit against the Raiders.

Davis has not commented publicly on the discussions. But he said in a television interview Dec. 24 that he wants an “intimate” stadium for the Raiders, one with a low-enough seating capacity to escape television blackouts and with good, close-in sight lines for fans.

Neither the Coliseum in Los Angeles nor the Oakland-Alameda Coliseum has such sight lines now.

All sources close to the negotiations--citing the delicate nature of the talks--spoke to The Times on condition that they not be identified.

Initial Payment

The sources said that much of the initial payment to Davis would come from the $20 million the Coliseum Commission collected in damages from the National Football League in the lawsuit against the league for impeding the Raiders’ move from Oakland in the early 1980s.

In order to provide Davis with a tax-free grant, the money would be given to him in “settlement” of a $57-million lawsuit the Coliseum has filed against the Raiders for alleged breach of contract, sources said. Legal settlements are not taxable.

But the money would later be reimbursed, with interest, to the Coliseum Commission by the private developers, the sources said. They insisted that only private money would ultimately be used and expressed confidence that bank financing could quickly be obtained by Spectacor, the prime mover in the project.

Davis reportedly stated firmly at Wednesday’s meeting that he is not bound by the terms of the deal, as it is currently described, even if the Coliseum Commission should approve the concept. This was an indication that, just as he did in Sacramento and Oakland, the Raiders’ owner would press for better terms than he is being offered.

One possible Davis move, a source said, would be to demand from the private developers a non-returnable advance payment, while they see if the project can be put together. Such a demand would be similar to the $10 million Irwindale gave the Raiders as earnest money in 1987, when the team said it would move there if a new stadium could be built. That money apparently will not be returned.

Two sources told The Times that Davis gave assurances Wednesday that he would not require such an advance payment, which might compound the political difficulties of getting the project approved. But another source said he might yet do so.

Nonetheless, Coliseum Commission President Richard Riordan, who has participated in some of the discussions, said later Wednesday the odds have increased that the Raiders can be persuaded not to leave Los Angeles. Riordan said that he hopes to come to an agreement before he gives up the commission presidency to attorney Matthew Grossman next month.

Lease Proposed

Under the proposed deal, the Coliseum Commission would give a ground lease, perhaps for as long as 30 years, to the private developers. The 92,000-seat Coliseum, the only stadium in the world that has hosted two modern Olympics, would be demolished, except for the eastern peristyle end. A new $125-million stadium, seating about 65,000 people, would be constructed in its place.

This stadium would include 200 luxury boxes and 3,000 club seats that promoters expect could be marketed to corporate interests and wealthy individuals for millions of dollars a year. The stadium would also be expandable to more than 80,000 seats for selected games, such as a Super Bowl or the USC-UCLA or USC-Notre Dame football games.

According to Spectacor and MCA executives, the Raiders and USC might play at the Rose Bowl--or, as a fallback, Anaheim Stadium--during the year or two of Coliseum reconstruction.

The promoters have even speculated in conversations with Davis that UCLA could not resist returning to a new Coliseum from the Rose Bowl, where they play under an agreement scheduled to expire in 1996.

Inquiries made in the last two days, however, showed that UCLA officials are cool to any idea that they might quit the Rose Bowl, where their attendance has been better than it was in the Coliseum.

Both Rose Bowl and Anaheim Stadium officials said no one has approached them about the Raiders and USC playing in their stadiums.

Anaheim authorities appeared receptive to the idea of the Raiders and USC playing in Anaheim Stadium, although they cautioned that there could be scheduling conflicts with the Rams and the Angels.

Shortage of Dates

Pasadena Deputy City Manager Edward Aghjayan said a city policy, changeable only by a vote of the city’s governing body, states that only 12 major events can take place in the Rose Bowl each year, and UCLA already has six. Under this policy, there are not enough open dates for the Raiders, much less USC.

In addition, the Tournament of Roses committee, under a lease, has total control of the Rose Bowl in the month preceding the Rose Bowl game. December is an extremely important month for professional football games.

Other inquiries raise these potential obstacles to the kind of project private developers are talking about with Davis:

- The Coliseum Commission has a ground lease for the Coliseum from the Museum of Science and Industry, the state body that owns the site, which extends only to 2005. Because banks would probably require a longer deal to insure repayment of loans to finance the project, the lease would have to be renegotiated.

Lawyers privy to the negotiations said no one has begun to look into this problem. According to the 1955 ground lease, the Coliseum Commission has an option to extend its lease in 2003 for 49 years but may do so only if it agrees with the museum board on what the rent should be. If there is a disagreement, then the rent would be increased from the current $50,000 a year in proportion to increases in Los Angeles County’s total assessed valuation between 1955 and 2003.

All of this would be subject to negotiation, and the museum board has for a long time been leery of Coliseum-area redevelopment and might not prove a willing bargainer.

- The Coliseum is both a state and a national historic landmark--not just the peristyle end but the whole facility. Never before, according to a state historian contacted Wednesday, has a national historic landmark been demolished, and an elaborate and time-consuming procedure is required before state agencies rule on the matter.

Maryln Lortie, historian in the registration section of the state Office of Historic Preservation, said the state code would require would-be Coliseum redevelopers to seek permission from state agencies to alter the facility in any substantive way.

Disputes over what to do are ultimately reviewed by the state Office of Planning and Research. Only one project to alter a historic landmark has ever reached that level, and that proposal was finally scrapped, she said.

Architect Ray Girvigian, chairman of the state Historic Building Code Board who was instrumental in getting the Coliseum designated a state and national landmark in 1984, said Wednesday, “I would look with great dismay on any proposal to destroy possibly the most significant landmark of its type, not only in California, but in the United States.”

- There are also major questions, lawyers said, about the charter under which the Coliseum is administered by a tripartite body, with three commissioners representing the city, the county and the state. Terms might well have to be renegotiated, a lengthy procedure that could require legislative approval.

- An environmental impact report would be required before a project could proceed. In Irwindale, the environmental studies alone took more than a year.

Times sports columnist Melvin Durslag and staff writer Mark Landsbaum contributed to this article.