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Coliseum Offers Private Funds to Davis : Raiders: Proposal is made as a new stumbling block arises in plan to return team to Oakland. Alameda County wants Davis to spend some of his own money on stadium.

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

As a new impediment arose in a proposal to return the Los Angeles Raiders to Oakland, the private managers of the Los Angeles Coliseum met Wednesday with team owner Al Davis to offer him an advance payment of private money if he stays in Los Angeles while the Coliseum is renovated.

Those close to the negotiations said Davis has asked for $15 million in staggered payments before and during work on the Coliseum, in exchange for his agreement to hold off on any move elsewhere and wait to see if the Los Angeles entrepreneurs can perform on their promises.

They said Ed Snider, head of Spectacor Management Group, was meeting with Davis on Wednesday evening to make the offer of private money. The specific amount of Snider’s offer was not revealed.

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Earlier, Los Angeles Coliseum Commission President Matthew Grossman said that the commission does not expect to receive any request that it put public Coliseum money into the Spectacor offer of advance money.

In 1987, the Irwindale City Council gave Davis $10 million in earnest money to keep if Irwindale was unable later to provide full financing for a stadium for the football team. Since then, the money has apparently been forfeited by the inability of Irwindale to go ahead with the project.

Word of the new talks in Los Angeles came after disclosure that Oakland and Alameda County negotiators are now asking Davis to put some Raider money into a projected expansion of the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum if the costs, as now expected, exceed the original estimate of $53.5 million.

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The request for what could amount to several million dollars came at a meeting between local authorities and Davis Tuesday night. The city and county, as part of a $660-million offer to the team scheduled to be voted on by the Oakland City Council and the Alameda County Board of Supervisors next Monday, had agreed to put $53.5 million into the stadium expansion, but are refusing to put up more.

Davis had no public reaction to the new conditions stated by Oakland authorities after the meeting. A call to Davis on Wednesday for comment on both the Oakland and Los Angeles developments was not returned.

However, a close Davis friend, Donald Sterling, the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers basketball franchise, said in an interview that a deal between the private Los Angeles Coliseum managers and the Raiders “could be close” to fruition. “I think it would be in L.A.’s best interest,” he said. “It would take seven or eight years at least, I think, to secure another pro football franchise if the Raiders left.”

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The Coliseum Commission, meeting Wednesday, voted unanimously to issue specifications for an environmental impact report on Coliseum work in Los Angeles and seek a firm to prepare it. Such a report would be necessary before any reconstruction or renovation could proceed.

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