Rose Bowl Finds Itself in the Red : Finances: The stadium posted a $97,000 deficit last year. City officials are looking for ways to save the facility.

The 70-year-old Rose Bowl, which seems to lift Pasadena to the lofty center of the universe for a few hours every New Year’s Day, is on the verge of becoming a turkey, city officials say.

The 101,000-seat stadium has been losing money for the past year and a half and needs more than $40 million in repairs and improvements. The city has been beating the bushes, with limited success, to get it back into the black.

It’s frustrating, city officials say. “We have the largest stadium in the country and it’s not able to pay for itself,” Councilman William Paparian said.

The City Council this week begins discussions of various plans to put the bowl back on the money-making track. One proposal is to make the Rose Bowl an autonomous city enterprise, with an independent board of directors, such as the Pasadena Center Operating Co., which runs the Pasadena Convention Center and Civic Auditorium. The goal is to provide more economical management.

An audit of the Rose Bowl, by the firm of McGladrey & Pullin, will also be presented this week to the council’s business enterprise committee, showing, among other things, a $97,000 deficit last year, which was covered by the stadium’s reserves.

Even with Super Bowl XXVII set to be played at the Rose Bowl next year and the prospect of lassoing in World Cup championship soccer matches in 1994, the stadium’s ongoing problems won’t go away. City officials expect more budget shortfalls this year.

“We have a huge backlog of deferred maintenance projects and we’re losing money every day the stadium remains open,” Vice Mayor Rick Cole said.

The growing laundry list of proposed capital improvements--to make the bowl competitive with other modern stadiums as well as comfortable for the hordes of guests the city would like to attract--ranges from repaving a parking lot and renovating locker rooms to improving customer access and bolstering seismic reinforcements.

“After the dust has settled in 1994, we may find the Rose Bowl is no longer a very competitive place to put on events,” Cole said.

Adding to the Rose Bowl’s recent problems was the sudden resignation on Valentine’s Day of its general manager, Greg Asbury, leaving the Rose Bowl temporarily without an operating executive.

Asbury’s wife, Judy Smith, owns a public relations firm that has done business with the Los Angeles Sports Council, with which the city is about to sign a contract to sell the city’s Rose Bowl tickets. City Atty. Victor Kaleta found that the potential for shared profits with Asbury’s wife put the Rose Bowl manager in possible conflict with his duties as a city official.

Asbury’s resignation, just as an independent auditing firm is about to announce its findings, has raised a few eyebrows around City Hall. “It’s a pretty dramatic time for the top guy to take a walk,” Cole said.

But the timing is strictly coincidental, suggesting neither mismanagement nor wrongdoing of any kind, City Manager Philip Hawkey said.

“What the audit will tell us is what we already knew--that the costs of running the Rose Bowl continue to go up while revenues basically stay the same,” Hawkey said.

For the moment, Barbara Barrett, who coordinates city facilities in the Arroyo Seco, will run daily operations at the Rose Bowl and Assistant City Manager Ed Sotelo will head discussions with the National Football League and the World Cup Committee. Several council members say they will propose hiring Asbury as a consultant to assure continuity in planning with the National Football League for the Super Bowl game.

“I’m available,” Asbury said last week.

The stadium’s financial problems have more to do with the economy, and the faltering market for major stadium events, than with special circumstances in Pasadena, officials say. Nevertheless, Rose Bowl managers have their own special dilemmas, city officials say.

Any discussion of beefing up revenues at the Rose Bowl seems to begin with the suggestion that the number of major events held there be increased.

“Since I came on the council five years ago, I’ve strived for a different look,” Paparian said. “Why not concerts? Why not more sporting events? Why not a boxing match? Why aren’t we marketing the stadium?”

One answer is the neighbors. The Rose Bowl is on a flat spot in the Arroyo Seco, a broad, dry riverbed that stretches south from the San Gabriel Mountains, flanked by neighborhoods of expensive hillside homes.

Public discussion of staging more major events in the Rose Bowl inevitably riles up the neighborhood’s influential civic groups, which seven years ago successfully lobbied the City Council for an ordinance placing a cap of 12 major stadium events a year. The figure includes UCLA football but not the swap meet.

The issue for residents of the Linda Vista, Annandale and East Arroyo neighborhoods is traffic and noise, said Truett Hollis, a leader of the Linda Vista-Annandale Homeowners Assn.

“It’s like a rat race up here,” Hollis said of days when major events, such as UCLA football games, are scheduled at the Rose Bowl. “You find yourself in traffic jams. You have to go blocks out of your way just to go to the city to shop.”

Rock concerts, such as one featuring De Peche Mode in 1988, are especially bothersome to Arroyo Seco residents. “They had one a few years ago that was the loudest thing you ever heard,” Hollis said. “You could hear it two canyons away.”

But even if the City Council were to eliminate the cap on major Rose Bowl events, the recession is clobbering the market for audience-drawing concerts and novelty shows, stadium managers say.

There were only two major rock concert tours last year, New Kids on the Block and the Grateful Dead, neither of which appeared in the Rose Bowl, and this year has started out “real sluggish,” said Rick Nafe, manager of Tampa Stadium and president of the International Assn. of Auditorium Managers.

“Other major events are slim pickings,” Nafe said. “We’ve tried rodeos, anything you can think of.”

The Rose Bowl has not reached its limit of 12 major events in recent years. Last year, for example, there were only eight events drawing 20,000 or more spectators, including five UCLA games, a motor car racing show, the July 4 show and the Rose Bowl game.

But the stadium’s new, $11-million press box should give the stadium greater appeal in the competitive stadium events market, officials say. The new structure, scheduled for completion in August, will include not only 1,100 press seats but also 38 luxury suites.

“If we hadn’t done it, we would not have even been considered for the 1993 Super Bowl,” Councilman William Thomson said. “And we wouldn’t have had a shot at getting the World Cup finals in 1994.”

The Super Bowl is expected to bring the city a $1-million share of the profits, as well as millions of dollars in spillover business to local merchants and hotel operators. In contrast, the city’s share of the gate and concessions for five UCLA games last year amounted to less than $400,000.

The press box is being financed largely by tax-exempt 20-year revenue bonds, called certificates of participation, which will be paid off with money paid for lease of the suites. The Tournament of Roses and the city also chipped in $1.4 million between them.

In the meantime, however, stadium administrators have come up with a list of other capital improvements--between $40 million and $50 million worth--to allow the stadium to go head-to-head with newer stadiums.

The items on the list are of varying urgency, officials say. “They don’t have to be done this year or next year,” Thomson said, “but over a period of five or 10 years.”

For example, the Rose Bowl administration has been paying for resealing a parking lot every year, instead of paying for the long-term solution of repaving it, Asbury said.

If World Cup matches are staged in the bowl, the playing field will have to be widened by an additional 13 yards, and some field lights will have to be added, Asbury said.

Larger projects include adding ramps to the exterior of the bowl to facilitate access by spectators and widening some of the stadium’s seats.

The big question is how to pay for improvements when the Rose Bowl is operating in the red, city officials say.

“How the hell do you pay for capital improvements if you’re leaking red ink in the operating budget?” says Cole. “How are you going to pay for $3 million or $4 million a year in debt service to rehabilitate the place?”

One way may be to go after meetings and smaller shows. The new press box is an adaptable space, Asbury said, allowing the Rose Bowl to host anything from banquets and large meetings to smaller athletic events. “We could be aggressive about marketing for those kinds of events,” he said.

Some council members look to the Tournament of Roses to contribute more to the upkeep of the Rose Bowl. The tournament currently has use of the Rose Bowl, rent-free, between Dec. 1 and Jan. 1, for activities related to the annual Rose Bowl football game.

“Either we consider the Rose Bowl joint property,” Cole said, “in which case the tournament would be responsible for a major share of the capital expenses, or else we consider it a city responsibility, in which case we charge rent.”

But tournament officials say their organization, which chipped in more than $2.5 million for capital improvements between 1983 and 1991, doesn’t have the resources to finance the $40-million list of projects.

As city officials ruminate about new business approaches, the council is expected to act quickly to place the Rose Bowl, which is now loosely tied administratively to the Brookside Golf Course and the Arroyo Seco parkland, under the temporary administration of the Pasadena Center Operating Co.

The idea is to fill the vacuum left by Asbury’s departure, said Thomson, adding that Pasadena Center Director Robert Holden is a former Rose Bowl manager.

Then, the council must decide whether to turn the stadium over to a nonprofit organization, like the tournament, or to create a new quasi-public enterprise, as some council members refer to the idea, like the Pasadena Center.

“I don’t think you have the expectation of profitability with a government-run unit that you have with a civic operating company,” said Councilman Isaac Richard, who favors the idea.

Pasadena Center employees do not work for the city and consequently do not receive employee benefits. Last year, it cost the city $3.9 million to keep the stadium afloat, more than $3 million of it personnel costs.

Finally, the council must balance the need for profits with the political consequences of angering the Rose Bowl’s neighbors. Look for the council to push for more major events, some council members said, but not of the noisier variety--”Frank Sinatra instead of a heavy-metal concert,” Paparian said.