O’Malley Signs On as Coliseum Booster

Adding an all-star to a growing roster of boosters, Dodger owner Peter O’Malley on Monday joined city officials in touting the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum as the best home for a new National Football League franchise in the city.

O’Malley, who many view as a potential owner of a new Los Angeles franchise, said a year of research showed it would be feasible to build a football field next to Dodger Stadium, but he would prefer to see a pro team play in the landmark venue where the Dodgers made their Los Angeles debut in 1958.

“We are impressed by the show of unity for the Coliseum site by the city’s elected officials. . . . The Dodgers will join you,” O’Malley wrote in a letter to City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, the Coliseum’s chief advocate.

“Your vision for the ‘Figueroa Corridor’ heading south [from Dodger Stadium to Exposition Park] is important for the future of Los Angeles, and to its image as the sports and entertainment capital of the world,” O’Malley continued in his response to efforts last week by city officials to draft him for the Coliseum campaign team. “We will certainly do our part to ensure the realization of that vision.”

O’Malley is the latest in a string of potential competitors who have vowed not to offer their own proposals for a new stadium until the NFL has thoroughly considered the Coliseum. The chairman of Hollywood Park, and a group of investors who had developed plans for a stadium in South Park next to the Los Angeles Convention Center and a proposed hockey and basketball arena, last week said they would stay mum about their own sites and back the Coliseum instead.

The momentum is largely a result of new plans to place a state-of-the-art stadium within the Coliseum’s historic walls rather than renovate the aging landmark, a proposal that has made NFL officials reconsider the Exposition Park facility as an option.

“Competition has been replaced by unity,” Ridley-Thomas said. “This solidifies the team in a very significant way.”

Besides leaving the Coliseum virtually without rivals in what once was a crowded field, Monday’s announcement also lends the underdog project badly needed credibility because of O’Malley’s strong reputation in the professional sports world and personal relationships with NFL owners.

“There are specific hurdles--some high, some low--for the Coliseum still to get over. With people like O’Malley on board, it makes it a lot easier to get over the high ones,” said Steven Soboroff, a senior advisor to Mayor Richard Riordan and vice chairman of Football L.A. “It’s a great plus. I hope he gets very, very much involved in this project. There’s as much room as he wants there to be.”

Those working on the project, and O’Malley himself, would not specify what role the Dodger owner might take. Many close to the negotiations guessed that it might be as owner of a new team or as an investor in the stadium, whose cost is pegged at $200 million. No financing plan for the project has yet been disclosed.

“If I was to pick a list of people who I think might be best at owning a franchise, you’d have to put him at the top of the list. He has done it successfully,” Coliseum Commission President Roger Kozberg said Monday.

Kozberg said O’Malley could have a great impact helping sell luxury suites and club seats--a crucial bargaining chip with the NFL.

“That’s what, at the end of the day, the NFL is going to look at: the economics,” Kozberg said. “You need to have a road map in order to get there, and I can’t think of a better road map than an owner with the kind of credibility of Peter O’Malley.”

NFL officials said O’Malley’s perspective on football in Los Angeles is “very important” but that his announcement Monday does not change their position on the Coliseum, which is that it will be considered as a possible site during meetings next week in New York and next month in New Orleans.

“The situation speaks for itself. Obviously, there is a growing consensus behind the Coliseum, [but] there are still issues that have to be addressed,” NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said Monday. “There’s a process we have to go through here, and there are decisions that have to be made by our owners.”

As for O’Malley’s prospects as a potential franchise owner, Aiello added: “That’s premature for us. We’re not looking at ownership yet. We’re focused on the stadium, because none of that can happen without a stadium being in place. And we’re still a long way off from having a solid stadium plan in place in Los Angeles.”

Times staff writer Bill Plaschke contributed to this report.