Pasadena May Turn Rose Bowl Over to Operating Company

Last spring, as Pasadena city officials were trying to construct a lucrative deal with a rock concert promoter to bring Guns N’ Roses and Metallica to the Rose Bowl, community leaders were doing their best to tear it down.

They squawked at City Council meetings about the potential for noise and traffic in their sedate hillside neighborhoods near the Arroyo Seco, predicted a doomsday scenario of rioting and curfew violations, and attacked heavy metal bands and their fans as drunkards and vulgarians.

For some council members, it seemed an odd way for the struggling proprietors of a major stadium to win over a promoter, who was offering the city $250,000 in profits for a one-night stand. There should be a more businesslike way of booking acts in the Rose Bowl, they reasoned.

Now the council has approved, in principle, the idea of taking the responsibility away from city staff and turning the 101,000-seat stadium over to a quasi-independent operating company.

If all the details can be worked out in the next few months, a nine-member panel--something like a corporate board of directors--will oversee the marketing and maintenance of the stadium.

The board will have three community representatives, a city manager’s appointee, at least one council member, two experts in finance or facilities management, and representatives from two major clients of the bowl--the Tournament of Roses and UCLA.

If all goes according to plan, the new company will assume responsibility for managing the Rose Bowl and the adjacent Brookside Golf Course, either by itself or through a facilities management company much like Spectacor, which runs the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

Profits will either go back into the two facilities for maintenance and improvements, or they will be used to pay off debts, including revenue bonds used for remodeling.