Angels President Makes Pitch for Better Stadium

Richard Brown, president of the California Angels, watches the growing effort to keep football’s Rams in Orange County, and he wonders when a similar push for his baseball team will begin.

“When one team (the Angels) plays 82 games a year here and the other (the Rams) plays eight to 10 games a year,” Anaheim’s priorities “seem to be misplaced,” Brown said.

“It bothers me to see a lack of concern for the Angels,” he added. “We’ve been assured that’s not the case, but actions speak louder than words, and we’re looking for action.”

The Angels are looking for things the Rams also want. On top of their wish list is a new stadium--or a renovated Anaheim Stadium--and a new, more profitable lease.

With the Rams already fielding lucrative relocation offers for 1995 from cities like Baltimore and St. Louis and the Angels securely under contract through 2001, football has been the more pressing concern for city officials.

But the problem facing Anaheim is that whatever improvements it might make to 28-year-old, 69,000-seat Anaheim Stadium to satisfy the Rams could drive a deeper wedge between the city and the Angels.

The bottom line: If Anaheim entices the Rams to stay, that success might drive the Angels away.

“If Anaheim builds a new stadium for the Rams and tells us to get used to this one, then that would bother me,” Brown said of the present site now used by both teams. “We’re hopeful the city will present a plan for us soon about renovating this stadium or building a new (baseball) stadium, but if that doesn’t happen, we’re going to have to start looking elsewhere.

“Our lease expires in 2001. It takes five years to construct a baseball stadium--two to find a site and get the necessary permits, one to design and two to build. We’d have to get started in 1996, and it’s practically 1995.”

If the Rams stay, he said, the city will have to build a new stadium for the Angels.

Anaheim Mayor Tom Daly, acknowledging the city’s difficult position, said the two teams probably can’t be co-tenants for much longer. When the stadium was enclosed to accommodate the Rams in 1980, it essentially went from a “baseball facility” to a “football facility where baseball is also played”--in an atmosphere that often features 40,000 empty seats a night.

A recent trend toward building single-use stadiums has given baseball fans Oriole Park at Camden Yards and The Ballpark at Arlington and football enthusiasts the Georgia Dome. New stadiums like these offer more revenue-generating opportunities and have much more charm than the concrete-laden multiuse Anaheim Stadium, which has become a relic. Executive Vice President John Shaw of the Rams has called it “economically obsolete.”

“In the short run, it might be possible to satisfy both the Rams and Angels in Anaheim Stadium,” Daly said. “In the long run, it probably won’t be.”

The logical solution, said the Angels’ Brown, is to build a new baseball stadium for the Angels and renovate Anaheim Stadium for the Rams. It’s a great idea, city officials say, but one that could cost up to $200 million.

The three most recently completed baseball stadium projects, in Baltimore (1992), Arlington, Tex. (1994) and Cleveland (1994), ranged in price from $105 million to $167 million.

An Anaheim Stadium renovation for the Rams could be done for about $47 million, says Iskander Abdulla, an Orange-based construction cost engineer who worked on the stadium enclosure project.

That would include complete remodeling of some 100 luxury suites and moving them closer to the field, turning the middle level into a club concourse similar to that in The Pond of Anaheim (with upgraded amenities, finishes and concession stands and lounges) and replacing all 69,000 seats.

Though several Anaheim council members don’t think money should be spent on the Rams, the city and the recently formed Task Force to Keep the Rams in Orange County are exploring the possibilities.

Several task force members are scheduled to meet Monday night with a stadium project manager from Kansas City-based HNTB Corp., which has been contracted to repair the earthquake-damaged Los Angeles Coliseum and renovate Buffalo’s Rich Stadium.

Sports agent Leigh Steinberg, who is heading the Rams task force, said any discussion of stadium construction or renovation would include the Angels, and some Anaheim city officials have said privately that if a new stadium is built, it would be for baseball.

Anaheim City Manager James D. Ruth said funding for any stadium project would have to come from a variety of sources, including the county and the private sector. Arlington and Baltimore have placed a surtax on tickets, established special lotteries and tapped luxury-suite revenue to help fund their new stadiums.

The Anaheim City Council last week approved a plan to designate the stadium and its parking lot a redevelopment project, which would allow the city to use any increase in tax revenue for future development of the 150-acre stadium site. The city is also considering plans to turn the area into a retail and entertainment center.

“The involvement of private money makes all these things more possible,” Daly said.

The most likely spot for a new baseball stadium would be on the southwest corner of the Anaheim Stadium lot, closest to Orangewood Avenue and State College Boulevard.

Greg Smith, Anaheim Stadium general manager, said a baseball stadium would cover 15 to 18 acres, but he added that about 45 acres next to the stadium, owned by the county to store maintenance and flood-control equipment, could be purchased and converted to parking lots.

“There’s an awful lot of interest being focused on the Rams, but in my opinion there’s as much interest in retaining the Angels,” said Smith, who is employed by the city and is also involved with the Rams task force. “We’re not ignoring them.”

Would the city be more inclined to build a stadium for baseball than for football?

“There are merits to both,” Daly said, “but most of the experts will tell you that it’s easier to finance a new baseball stadium, because the (increased) number of game dates gives you the potential for more revenue.”

Baseball stadiums are also smaller and less expensive to build. And the consensus among city officials seems to be: Why build a football stadium when you might risk losing your baseball team in the process and when you already have a facility that can be renovated?

Smith, a city employee since 1972 and stadium general manager since 1988, thinks it’s possible for Anaheim Stadium to keep both teams.

He favors an upgrade of the club level, which would benefit everyone, and he thinks the negative visual impact of empty outfield seats during baseball games could be minimized by covering them with tarpaulin, much the way San Diego has covered the upper deck of Jack Murphy Stadium for the Padres.

Other possibilities: Some architectural changes could be made to give the stadium a unique flavor. In-house advertising plans could be modified to bring more revenue to the teams. And the task force’s drive for county corporations to purchase Ram season tickets and invest in luxury suites would benefit the football team.

“The existing stadium has a lot of good opportunities for changes that could satisfy both teams,” Smith said. “It would be difficult to keep them both in the same stadium, but it’s not an insurmountable task.”

The major roadblock from the Angels’ perspective is luxury suites. The Rams currently receive 80% of luxury-box revenue, and the city receives 20%, but the Angels receive nothing.

Brown, who claims the Angels’ lease is the second-worst in the major leagues, said most baseball teams net $4 million to $10 million a year in luxury-suite revenue alone, an amount that “would take us from the red into the black and give us more discretionary cash to spend to improve the team.”

What it all boils down to, Brown says, is money. When the Angels compete against teams that have doubled attendance with new stadiums, resulting in vastly increased revenue they can use to hire better ballplayers, the Angels are at a competitive disadvantage.

Working in the Angels’ favor is the fact that, despite an 11-year legal battle with the city and the Rams over development of the parking lot, the Angels have had a much more harmonious relationship with the city than the Rams and have closer community ties.

And the Angels, unlike the Rams, have no real desire to leave Anaheim.

Does Anaheim want to keep the Angels?

“I’ve dealt with Anaheim long enough to know they’re creative, bright, and if they want to, they’ll do it,” Brown said. “Our job is to make sure they want to. I’ve often said that the only way we’ll leave is if we’re driven out. That could happen by failing to meet our needs for a new stadium.”

* OUTDATED BALLPARK: Officials are debating whether to update Anaheim Stadium or build a new facility. A11