Hard Rock May Help Rose Bowl : Stadium: Two concerts could earn the city $600,000, but neighbors, who oppose events that disturb their tranquillity, are not happy with the idea.

Can the Rose Bowl find fiscal health by becoming a venue for heavy metal concerts?

It could happen, city officials suggested Tuesday. The City Council considered a proposal to suspend noise restrictions and a 10 p.m. curfew for two nights next summer to ring up almost $600,000 in profits for the fiscally troubled stadium from a rock concert.

Council members voted 5 to 2 to go ahead with negotiations for the event in the city-owned stadium.

Rock promoter Avalon Attractions has proposed staging a Guns N’ Roses and Metallica concert in the bowl on consecutive Friday and Saturday nights.

Giving the idea a special push was a recently completed audit of Rose Bowl operations, showing that the 101,000-seat stadium had budget shortfalls of as much as $570,000 in five out of the past six years.

The audit, prepared by the Pasadena-based firm of McGladrey & Pullen, proposes a series of measures to streamline stadium management and cut costs, including more aggressive marketing to draw in more events. City officials have said the stadium needs more than $40 million in repairs and improvements.

The Rose Bowl has turned a profit in only one year since 1986: In 1987, the stadium earned $974,000, thanks to Super Bowl XXI. The 1993 Super Bowl will be in the Rose Bowl.

“To throw away a half a million dollars in revenue is not fiscally prudent,” said Councilman Isaac Richard, who represents the district in which the Rose Bowl stands.

The two groups are among rock’s most controversial and most successful. Guns N’ Roses, with its outspoken lead singer Axl Rose, sold more than 17 million records on its first two releases, and the San Francisco-based Metallica is one of the most popular bands to come out of California.

The biggest stumbling block for the proposed concert is the Rose Bowl’s neighbors, who lobby energetically against any event that disturbs their hillside neighborhood.

“It goes without saying that people who live adjacent to the Rose Bowl are not supportive of this kind of event,” said Dale Beland, president of the East Arroyo Neighborhood Assn.

In 1985, the city adopted an ordinance limiting the number of events drawing more than 20,000 people to the bowl to 12 each year. The ordinance also placed noise restrictions on all events except a Fourth of July celebration and one other open date, and it imposed a 10 p.m. curfew on stadium activities.

For the rock concert, the noise restrictions and the curfew would have to be suspended. The rock groups have “no wish to play in a stadium with those restrictions,” said Rose Bowl event coordinator Brigitte Shinnerer.

“If they suspend all the restrictions, then they’re in real trouble,” said Truett Hollis, a leader of the Linda Vista-Annandale Homeowners Assn. “They’ll have to open it up to a public hearing, and then all hell will break loose.”

The rock concert could draw 70,000 people each evening, said City Manager Philip Hawkey. The city would receive a flat rental fee, as well as 100% of the profits from parking and concession stands, amounting to about $295,000 a night, he said.

Meanwhile, the British rock group Cure is waiting in the wings with another proposal for a Rose Bowl concert, said Councilman William Thomson, who chairs the council’s business enterprise committee.

The last major rock group to perform at the Rose Bowl was Depeche Mode, in 1988, which abided by both noise and curfew regulations. Neighbors, however, said the concert was too noisy and caused too much traffic. “When the amplifiers get turned up, it creates an unholy racket up here,” Hollis said.

While not suspending restrictions on Tuesday, council members gave Hawkey the authority to continue negotiations with Avalon Attractions.

Council members Rick Cole and Kathryn Nack voted against the measure. Cole said it was unlikely that the city could reach an agreement with the promoter.

“I offer the price of a ticket to any council member if this concert happens,” Cole said. “In the end, all we’ll have is a mailbox full of angry letters.”

In a related matter, the council voted to place Robert Holden, director of the Pasadena Center Operating Co., temporarily in charge of the Rose Bowl. Holden, a former general manager of the stadium, replaces Greg Asbury, who resigned two weeks ago because of a possible conflict of interest.