Rams Say They’ll Pass on Efforts to Save Team : Sports: Club executive John Shaw expresses disappointment in Wednesday’s news reports that O.C. group may offer package short of a new stadium.

The Rams dumped icy cold water Wednesday on an emerging Orange County strategy for keeping the football team here.

John Shaw, the team’s executive vice president, said he was “disappointed” that Save the Rams, the group working to keep the team in Orange County, is “already switching gears and will not be able to make an offer that includes a new football-only stadium.”

Shaw said he was responding to news reports Tuesday that the group was shelving plans to build the Rams a new stadium and focusing instead on giving Anaheim Stadium a $50-million to $70-million overhaul while building the California Angels a new $100-million stadium nearby.

Shaw said he believed, after an exploratory meeting with Save the Rams members last month, that the group planned to offer a proposal similar to those offered by Baltimore, St. Louis and Hartford, Conn., “one which would include a new football-only stadium.”

Newport Beach sports agent Leigh Steinberg, co-chairman of the group, responded that it would be a mistake for the Rams to “prejudge” the group’s proposal for upgrading the 28-year-old Anaheim Stadium. “Until Monday, my concept of a remodeled stadium was a new paint job. It’s hardly that,” he said.

Members of Save the Rams met with a representative of HNTB, a Kansas City-based stadium construction firm, Monday night to hear about remodeling options. It was after this meeting that the group decided it could not raise the funds to build a new stadium for the Rams before the team accepted another city’s offer, said members of the group, which includes about 45 local political and business people.

Steinberg said it had always been the group’s position “whether it’s new or remodeled, that a football-only stadium with better sight lines, with premium seating, with luxury boxes and guaranteed sales, is the only one that would be acceptable to the Rams.”

In comments conveyed in a letter to The Times through the Burson-Marsteller public relations firm on Wednesday, Shaw also took issue with Save the Rams’ efforts to round up investors to buy up to 40% of the team from owner Georgia Frontiere.

“Rams owner Georgia Frontiere has repeatedly stated that the Rams are not for sale,” he said.

That contradicts Frontiere’s statement to The Times last May, however, when she said she was open to selling a non-controlling interest in the team should that figure in a deal to keep the Rams in town.

Steinberg said no one in his group was “attempting to be presumptuous,” and it was Frontiere’s “prerogative to make decisions about ownership.”

But, Steinberg said, “Most owners would at least listen with interest to the possibility of a strong cash infusion.”

Shaw also made a rare reference to what the other cities courting the team have put on the table. He said Steinberg’s comments to The Times that Save the Rams would have to guarantee at least 10,000 to 15,000 season ticket holders and a substantial number of luxury box seats fell short of what other cities were offering.

“Other cities are providing seat guarantees of upwards of 60,000, and guarantees all club seating and box suites,” he said.

Steinberg said his group “will be competitive. We are obviously exploring the ability to guarantee the highest possible number of seats.”

Shaw said that at this time, the Rams had no timeline for when the team will announce its plans. A “move-related” announcement will not be made before the football season begins in September, he said.

However, Shaw said the team remains hopeful that if Save the Rams makes a formal proposal, “it will be competitive to those from other cities.”

Steinberg said the group’s proposal, which it hopes to unveil at the annual Rams booster luncheon Sept. 19, will “achieve the same effect and goal” of a new stadium. “We hope to present the Rams with an offer they won’t want to refuse,” he said.