Coliseum Renovation Hits Snag : Stadiums: Management firm asks for $4 million in public money to help design a scaled-down renovation.

In a new blow to the plans to renovate the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, the facility’s private managers say they cannot retain sole financial responsibility for the project and are asking for $4 million in public money to design a scaled-down rebuilding plan.

The Spectacor Management Ltd. Partnership disclosed Thursday evening that it is trying to renegotiate its 1990 management contracts with the Los Angeles Raiders, USC and the Coliseum Commission and wants the commission, a public body, to join as a financial partner in the renovation.

Commissioner N. Matthew Grossman, in discussing the developments at a special commission meeting Thursday night, said that although he has been a longtime champion of the renovation, which has been trimmed back from $240 million to $116 million, he has doubts that the commission should go along with Spectacor’s latest proposal.

“It would not be prudent” for the commission to give Spectacor the $4 million without “reasonable assurances that this time (its) financial plan is feasible, the financing is available and the renovation of the stadium will be completed,” Grossman said in a written statement.

Grossman reminded commissioners that when Spectacor signed an agreement with the commission March 26, 1990, it promised that the renovation would be “totally privately financed with no taxpayer liability” and that the firm would “have sole financial responsibility for the project.”

Commission President William Robertson said later that no vote will be taken on providing the $4 million without further negotiations with Spectacor.

Efforts to renovate the Coliseum go back 15 years to when the Rams were playing there. The Raiders replaced the Rams, and in 1990, to keep the Raiders, Spectacor committed to the renovation.

Wayne Ratkovich, the real estate developer retained this spring by Spectacor to put together a scaled-down project after a more ambitious proposal was abandoned, told the commission Thursday that the $4 million is needed to complete design and engineering work before December.

He said this would facilitate “heroic” efforts needed to start construction on the first phase of the renovation by January.

Asked what money Spectacor would put into the preparatory design work, Ratkovich answered “some.” Joe Cohen, a Spectacor executive, said the management firm is spending $100,000 a month “just to keep this project afloat.”

Ratkovich said the Bank of America is working with Spectacor on a financing plan. But he said financing arrangements cannot be made without renegotiating Spectacor contracts with the Raiders, USC and the Coliseum Commission.

Grossman said he would not favor committing the $4 million without a Spectacor agreement with the Raiders and USC, a feasible financial plan, a lending institution’s approval, an acceptable design plan for the stadium, a new commission agreement with Spectacor, and a budget.

Asked by Commissioner Jesse Brewer what a partnership with Spectacor would entail, Grossman said he and Robertson have been talking with Spectacor representatives, but have gotten only vague details of the proposed partnership.

Robertson held out hope for a new agreement with Spectacor, but he said that failure to fulfill commitments to the Raiders for renovation of the Coliseum could lead team owner Al Davis to explore other options. This was an apparent reference to Davis’ aborted negotiations two years ago to move the Raiders.

A Raiders spokeswoman said the team remains hopeful about Coliseum renovation.

“We are optimistic and positive,” said Amy Trask, a team attorney. “We are disappointed (now), but we hope that the commitments that have been made to this organization will be fulfilled and that this project will soon become a reality.”

Spectacor’s Cohen said the firm has “a major multimillion dollar source of capital (available for the renovation) that I am not at liberty to disclose.”

But commissioners said if there is such a source, it has not been made known to them.

Under the latest renovation plan, as outlined Thursday by Ratkovich, the floor of the Coliseum would be lowered as in previous plans, and 14 rows of seats would be put in at the lower level. However, the number of special club seats would be reduced from the original 15,000 to 4,000 and the number of luxury suites from 282 to 150.

All would not be built at once, but in at least three phases. The first two phases would come between two football seasons, and the third “years out” in the future, Ratkovich said. The first phase would be the south side of the stadium, the second the north side and the third the west end.

The original plan envisioned annual Coliseum revenues of $64 million, Ratkovich said. He said the scaled-down plan envisions revenues of $24 million a year.

The developer said negotiations with the Raiders for a new deal, to supersede the one signed in 1990, were “progressing well.”

“I am very, very close to being able to say our work with the Raiders is nearing a successful end,” he said.

But a somewhat different note was struck regarding negotiations between Spectacor and USC when USC athletic director Mike McGee said the school had made financial sacrifices and “there is a point beyond which we cannot go with respect to financing.”