New Football Stadium Proposals for L.A.

* I am 100% for the proposed new NFL stadium next to the L.A. Convention Center. A new football stadium next to Dodger Stadium would not bring more new peripheral business to the core downtown area. Neither would the aged Coliseum that the NFL has already rejected anyway.

This new stadium along with the proposed new sports arena certainly would help our downtown businesses. It would, of course, attract even more tourists. It might even bring those locals who, up to now, have rejected downtown.

JOHN F. MENDEZ

Los Angeles

* I am a relatively new Angeleno. (I moved here from the Big Apple 18 months ago.) In the late ‘80s, I was tangentially involved in the proposals submitted by some major players relative to a new Yankee Stadium (which never got built). After all this time neither George Steinbrenner nor the American League, in spite of the ingenious and aesthetic stadium models and brilliant state of the art, architectural and engineering reports, has found the situs of the Bronx acceptable. The area is too crime-ridden. Exposition Park, likewise, carries Cain’s mark.

The politically astute and the baseball people have really given up on the Yankees staying in the Bronx. It seems that the NFL has likewise rejected the Coliseum, renovated or not. The Hollywood Park site will also be rejected.

Both the Chavez Ravine site and the South Park site, near the Convention Center, are surely acceptable to the NFL. I pray that our city fathers stop procrastinating and get on with the business of getting Los Angeles a football franchise. Our citizens will suffer if they fail.

SEYMOUR FRIEDMAN

Los Angeles

* It seems to me, there is no good reason to start building new facilities anywhere but where they are now. To build an arena next to the Convention Center makes no sense: Is that part of downtown really that much safer than Exposition Park? What will happen with traffic and parking if there is a convention during a sporting event?

Why don’t our civic leaders come up with a plan to revitalize the Exposition Park area--better facilities, security, lighting, etc.--like so many other cities have done with blighted areas. Spend whatever it takes to make the Coliseum desirable (it’s one of our great treasures, and I thought we were halfway there already), and tear down and rebuild the Sports Arena since everyone seems to think it’s useless as is. Why face the higher costs and probable opposition to other concepts, when a focused effort to get this thing done will benefit the city, the fans, the teams and neigh- borhood?

ANDY PEARLMAN

Marina del Rey

* While L.A. city and county officials perform financial wizardry to lure sports teams to the downtown area, they might recall that up the street is the still-uncompleted home for their world-renowned philharmonic orchestra. What a fine reflection of Los Angeles’ sense of cultural values!

DAVID SADAVA

Pasadena