Coliseum Joins Modern Age : Renovation: Among improvements are a lowered field and improved visibility.

The Coliseum has a new look.

It looks bigger. And younger.

The stadium’s staff unveiled the first major renovations of the 70-year-old facility in 62 years Wednesday, most visible of which are a lowered playing field and new rows of seats.

Capacity for USC and Raider games will remain largely unchanged--92,000 and 68,000--but the sightlines from seats near the playing field are markedly improved.

The track was removed, the field lowered 11 feet 8 inches and 14 new rows of seats installed. Previously, the first few rows of seats for Coliseum football games were among the worst in the stadium, because spectators couldn’t see over players standing on the sidelines. Now, the first row of seats is 4 1/2 feet above the field. And there are 93 rows from Row 1 to the rim, not 79. The 14 new rows contain 8,100 seats.

Work is still being completed on the $15-million project. This season’s first Coliseum football games are USC vs. Houston on Sept. 4 and the Raiders vs. Minnesota on Sept. 5.

The renovations, which began Feb. 3, are the most significant since capacity was expanded from 75,000 to 105,000--at a cost of $950,293.88--in 1930 and ’31.

Always an imposing sight, the old Coliseum looks even more vast with the added sideline and tunnel-end seats. With the 1984 Olympic track gone, the lowered football field seems to rest at the bottom of an even larger stadium.

Some front-row spectators will be as close as 19 feet to the football sidelines. A 2,400-seat permanent grandstand is about to go up immediately behind the peristyle end zone, with the first row only 20 feet from the rear of the end zone.

Other highlights of the new Coliseum:

--All seats at the peristyle end have been removed and will not be replaced. Next year, the area will be landscaped with terraced gardens.

--Eight new wheelchair areas accommodating 200 wheelchairs have been added.

--Maximum distance from the new first-row seats to the sideline is 54 feet. Previously, it was 120 feet.

--All restrooms were demolished, and there are now five new, bigger restroom buildings.

Capacity for USC and Raider games, through use of a tarpaulin, will be 68,000. However, USC can remove the tarpaulin if it chooses, boosting capacity to 92,000.

Lowering the field almost 12 feet also meant lowering the Coliseum’s tunnel. Players emerging from the tunnel will walk downhill to the field.

Coliseum project manager Don Webb said jackhammer operators found a second Coliseum tunnel during demolition work last spring.

“We found what was left of an athletes’ tunnel that went under the track for the 1932 Olympics,” he said.

“It had been filled with dirt and just paved over. And when we jackhammered space for one new wheelchair area, we found concrete supports for press seating for the ’32 Olympics.”

Webb, 42, who attended Miami of Ohio on a track scholarship, lamented the removal of the track. It officially marks the end of an era. In the post-World War II period, major track and field meets were highly popular Coliseum events. The Coliseum Relays of the 1950s and ‘60s sometimes drew crowds of 50,000.

“It’s sad, but it’s a sign of the times,” Webb said.

“Any track promoter will tell you that a big outdoor track crowd these days is 10,000. And we see the priority events for this stadium in future years as football and international soccer.”

Southern Californians have attended sports events at the Coliseum site since the 1870s, when the area was known as Agricultural Park. A horse and greyhound racing facility was built. Auto racing came to the racing facility at the turn of the century. Barney Oldfield, the first American to drive an automobile faster than a mile-a-minute, drew 10,000 people to Agricultural Park on Nov. 22, 1903.

In 1920, 21 Los Angeles leaders formed a group and called themselves the Community Development Assn. Among their goals was to develop a plan to build a stadium suitable for holding the Olympic Games.

The original 75,000-seat version of the Coliseum was built on a gravel pit in what had then been renamed Exposition Park.

The Coliseum was completed in 1923, at a cost of $954,873.98.

On Jan. 16, 1926, it was the site of a defining moment in the history of the NFL.

The Chicago Bears’ George Halas, who had just signed Illinois running back Red Grange, scheduled a Coliseum game against a team of Pacific Coast all-stars. Grange and the Bears won, 17-7, but the story was the paid crowd--65,270.

It was the NFL’s biggest crowd at the time . . . and Grange’s share of the proceeds came to $49,000.

It was an era when NFL teams played on high school fields, in towns such as Pottstown, Benoit, Canton, Racine and Rock Island. Star players earned $250 a game.

Red Grange, more than any other player, changed that. And the Coliseum, which became 70 years old last May 1, was the setting.