Hey, Wait a Minute!

Bubbling with enthusiasm about keeping the Los Angeles Raiders in town, the private managers of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum are talking about tearing down the historic structure and building a new stadium within two years. The haste, of course, is to meet the demands of Raiders owner Al Davis, who has threatened to take the National Football League team back to Oakland, or to Sacramento.

Well, as John Madden, the demonstrative former coach of the Raiders, might exclaim, waving his arms in the air: “Hey, wait a minute!” If the Coliseum Commission and Spectacor Management have any hope of meeting such a deadline, some corners would have to be cut. One such shortcut just might be the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), which requires a detailed impact study on major projects of this sort. And since the Coliseum is a state and federal historic landmark, any reconfiguration would have to be done in consultation with preservation officials.

It is not certain that the commission might seek an exemption from CEQA from the state Legislature, but The Times’ Ken Reich has reported that Spectacor officials have been in Sacramento to explore the prospects of fast-track legislation to get the Coliseum rebuilt on Davis’ schedule.

Maybe Los Angeles needs a new football stadium. Maybe the Coliseum site is the most logical location. And maybe the Coliseum can be rebuilt in a manner that preserves enough of its Olympian tradition. But those are decisions that must be made with deliberate care and respect for legitimate environmental concerns, not to mention the interests of the taxpayers who are the publicly owned facility’s landlord-of-last-resort. The future of the Coliseum must be decided on the basis of what is best for Los Angeles, not just what is best for Al Davis.