Backers Pitch Downtown Arena

With a mid-October deadline for a City Council decision fast approaching, the selling of a taxpayer-subsidized, privately owned and operated sports arena in downtown Los Angeles kicked into high gear Thursday.

Backers of a proposal for the city to spend at least $60.5 million to provide a site at the underbooked Convention Center for a new home for the Kings and Lakers delivered their pitch before an enthusiastic downtown business luncheon group. Although arena owners would keep all the profits, they promised everything from money for a new youth sports foundation to a rejuvenated downtown, from a shot at hosting national and international sports championships to the opportunity to put the heavily subsidized Convention Center into the black.

And they asked the 250 people who jammed a Sheraton Grande banquet room for their help with the project--for which taxpayers would have to ante up a $60.5-million bond issue for land purchase and clearing costs.

The city would also kick in $24 million in city-owned land and could pay up to $10 million more in unanticipated costs. Critics say the $60.5-million bond figure is deceiving, because taxpayers would actually have to pay out at least $125 million over 25 years to repay the bonds.

“If you really want this to happen,” Kings hockey team representative John Semcken said during a panel on the arena project, “it’s important that you get together with your elected officials, not only where you work but also where you live.”

Semcken, who spoke on a panel that also included City Councilwoman Rita Walters, gave the strongest indication to date that Los Angeles is the Kings owners’ preferred site.

Inglewood is competing to keep the Kings and the basketball Lakers, who play at the Forum, by pushing for a new arena on vacant land at the Hollywood Park racetrack complex. In addition to securing the land, Inglewood is offering up to $30 million in cash and touting other advantages--a unified political front and a building-ready site that guarantees the September 1997 groundbreaking the teams say they need if they are to open the arena two years later.

“I’m supposed to be telling you I’m neutral between Inglewood and downtown Los Angeles,” Semcken said wryly, evoking delighted laughter from members of the Central City Assn. But he added there is “still a real chance” the teams will end up in Inglewood even if “that may not be where we want to.”

But, Semcken said, the Kings owners see the Los Angeles site as a chance “to build a whole community” by adding a hotel and other attractions to the long-stagnant Convention Center neighborhood. “In Inglewood, we would build just an arena,” he said.

Earlier, talking about the numbers of fans--and business opportunities--within a 15-mile radius of downtown Los Angeles, Semcken said that “15 miles out from [Inglewood’s proposed site], you’re 12 miles out to sea.”

But he also listed some “negatives” of the Los Angeles site, including a $100-million-higher cost of building a project here and the need to clear land and move residents and businesses.