Wachs Opens Hotline for Calls Against Arena

Saying city taxpayers deserve a better deal if they are to help wealthy pro sports team owners build a new arena in downtown Los Angeles, Councilman Joel Wachs on Monday opened a 24-hour telephone hotline to receive citizens’ complaints on the proposal.

“People can make a difference, but they are going to have to act quickly,” Wachs said at a City Hall news conference to publicize the hotline.

Wachs’ announcement came as city officials acknowledged that the taxpayers’ price tag has increased by $24 million.

Wachs was the lone dissenter in last week’s 11-1 council vote giving conceptual approval to the project. The council is due to make a final, binding decision no later than Oct. 15.

Under the proposal delivered by Kings hockey team owners last month after a year of quiet negotiations, the city would provide land around the Los Angeles Convention Center and prepare it for team owners to build a $200-million sports and entertainment arena. The arena itself would be privately financed, owned and operated by the Kings’ owners, who would keep all the profits; the Lakers have agreed to join the Kings there for at least 25 years.

Inglewood is also in talks to keep the two sports teams there.

Citing newly received information, Los Angeles fiscal officials Monday upped their estimate of the proposal’s minimum cost to taxpayers--from $60.5 million to more than $80 million. They added a $20-million appraisal on the Convention Center’s North Hall, which would be torn down to make way for the arena (which would revert to the city after 55 years) and $4 million to reflect the value of small pieces of city-owned land along Figueroa Street and Olympic Boulevard (which the arena developers could buy for $1 at the end of the lease period). Cost overruns during the land-assembly period could add up to $10 million more to the city’s tab.

Wachs on Monday put the price tag at closer to $279 million, factoring in the annual cost to repay a 25-year bond issue for the city’s $60.5 million share. He also has included several other items, including $12 million worth of affordable housing for residents displaced by the arena project. (City officials said the Community Redevelopment Agency already has this housing in the pipeline anyway and disputed Wachs’ including it in the arena bill).

Wachs said developers are also likely to seek a $50-million taxpayer subsidy if they later decide to build a hotel at the site, based on earlier CRA estimates. A spokesman for arena developers, however, said team owners have never raised the possibility of seeking a subsidy. “I have no idea where that came from,” spokesman John Semcken said.

“I believe the deal can be restructured,” Wachs said, noting that can happen only if city residents make their views known.

The councilman’s telephone hotline greeting implores callers: “If don’t want your hard-earned tax money going to the Lakers and Kings, then leave your message for the City Council and mayor.” Wachs also urges hotline callers to ring up “your own city council member’s office as soon as you are finished” with the hotline.

Councilman Nate Holden, who missed last week’s council vote, applauded Wachs’s hotline idea and threw in a couple of battle plan suggestions of his own--filing a lawsuit to stop the proposal and urging the Los Angeles County grand jury to investigate.

Steven Soboroff, the senior advisor to Mayor Richard Riordan who led negotiations with team owners, said he doesn’t put much stock in the response Wachs is likely to draw from his “flawed and biased argument.”

“He’s showing just half the picture,” Soboroff said, citing a chance to create jobs and tax revenues in a stagnant downtown and an opportunity to boost business prospects for the underbooked and heavily subsidized Convention Center.

He said he welcomes Wachs’ suggestion to get an independent analysis of the project. “The more people look at this, the more they’ll like it,” Soboroff said.

Wachs’ hotline number is (213) 485-3322; toll-free from the San Fernando Valley, (818) 756-8121, ext. 485-3322).