Davis May Want to Keep Raiders in L.A.

Los Angeles Raiders owner Al Davis, who is encountering resistance to his team’s planned return to Oakland, has suggested in a recent series of telephone calls to negotiators here that he may not be ready to uproot the franchise after all, local officials said Wednesday.

Although refusing to disclose details of the conversations, two members of the Coliseum Commission confirmed that Davis has expressed an interest in possibly keeping the football team in Los Angeles beyond the 1991 expiration of its lease if the Coliseum is substantially renovated.

“I have some reason to be optimistic,” Commissioner Dick Riordan said of the possibility that the Raiders will stay. “But I’m also a realist and I’ll wait till the lady sings.”

Coliseum Commission President Matthew Grossman said it is his understanding that the Raiders’ pact with Oakland “is not fixed in cement. . . . I have talked to some people who say that he (Davis) is very much interested in our next step.”

Neither Riordan nor Grossman would disclose with whom Davis has been in contact.

Davis was unavailable for comment.

His apparent shift--one of many during Davis’ highly publicized efforts to relocate the team--comes at a time when his deal with Oakland is being met with growing community opposition and a petition drive to put the matter before voters there.

Critics are chiefly concerned that the $660-million deal, the most lucrative in sports history, could require the use of public funds if ticket sales do not generate the amount of money that Davis has been guaranteed by the city.

His renewed interest in Los Angeles has set in motion a scramble by officials here to prepare an offer for Davis that would place control of the Coliseum under the privately run Spectacor Management Group.

Spectacor, for its part, would finance a sweeping $100-million renovation of the Coliseum’s interior that would include, among other things, fewer seats and the construction of luxury boxes. Davis is said to also want as much as $20 million in so-called good-faith money.

Mayor Tom Bradley’s chief of staff, Mark Fabiani, said Wednesday that the mayor has been “personally pushing” for an agreement between the commission and Spectacor that would allow the company within days “to put a deal and private money on the table in front of Al Davis and any other NFL owner who is interested.”

Fabiani said Davis announced his decision to go to Oakland while negotiations for private control of the Coliseum were mired down.

“The mayor,” he said, “is disappointed that the negotiations that were going on before were not completed on time and does not want the Coliseum Commission to make that mistake again. If necessary, people should be working 24 hours a day. . . . We ought to strike during the propitious time.”

Sources close to the proposal said the Coliseum Commission is expected to approve the “privatization” plan on Monday.