Advertisement

It’s $100 Million and Punt : Coliseum: L.A. fixed up the Raiders’ playpen, but that’s not good enough for Al Davis.

Share
<i> Sam Hall Kaplan, whose books include "L.A. Lost & Found" (Crown) and "L.A. Follies" (Cityscape), is an essayist for Fox KTTV News and Los Angeles Magazine</i>

Stop the game! Stop the clock! Send to the showers and flush the recent proposal for a $200-million stadium to house the Raiders and UCLA football teams in Inglewood.

There should also be a penalty for ingratitude, with the proposal coming so soon after the city spent $100 million in public funds to fix quake damage and renovate the Coliseum, including a considerable sum to speed work on a round-the-clock schedule to accommodate football.

But apparently there were not enough luxury boxes among the Coliseum’s 92,517 seats to assuage the fickle Raiders owner. It was hard enough to swallow the overtime inflated federal emergency funds spent on the Coliseum, especially considering the dire need to repair the city’s crumbling streets, sewers and schools and perhaps provide some desperately needed affordable housing. Talk about a sense of priorities.

Advertisement

And let us not be kidded that the new stadium will be privately funded. Look for “creative financing” by bond issues and so-called public trusts, softened by deferred or special-use taxes, packaged by a host of consultants and lawyers.

But before the proposal gets any further, we should blow the whistle on it. Raiders owner Al Davis and the other luxury-box leeches need to be reminded that Los Angeles is more than a political construct for them to pad their seats; that Los Angeles as a region has a few priorities beyond providing a playpen for a some overpaid adults and their pets; that if they don’t like the Coliseum, some other team can be found to play there, and the Raiders can go to, say, Fresno.

Advertisement