Public Funds for a New Arena

Re the interview with Janet Marie Smith, Opinion, Sept. 29:

So Los Angeles, you say you want a professional football team and you think all you have to do is build a new stadium and they will come? Or perhaps a sports corridor to ensure vital support from the public (meaning the voters won’t complain about tax money being used to subsidize the wealthy owners).

Yeah, Camden Yards is a success and the woman who consulted is some kind of wunderkind, but let me tell you, downtown L.A. is no Baltimore. If you want it to really have a neighborhood “feel,” then let’s get real and build this stadium on the Westside, in the South Bay or even Pasadena, but not downtown.

The only things you will find downtown on the weekends and evenings are the things the average sports fan is not interested in: crime, traffic and no support services. Look at Yankee Stadium and the Bronx. Sure, we can build it in downtown and clean it up like Coors Field, but that has not been exactly a panacea.

Let’s not be hasty here. There may be a reason to attract a sports team to Los Angeles and clean up the downtown neighborhood, but the two don’t necessarily go hand in hand.

MICHAEL L. SHERRILL

Los Angeles

* I find it obscene that anyone can talk about any kind of public funding for a new sports facility in Los Angeles. When athletes and teams make billions of dollars while our teachers are paid chump change, how can you even think of giving our hard-earned taxes for them?

The “corporations” that constitute these local teams should pay their way. Or else we may end up cheering for our “heroes” from our very own homeless shelters.

DAVID V. GREGOLI

Encino

* For what it is worth regarding downtown: I take the train and Metro to get to the Music Center for Saturday matinees. I would go to a stadium as well for a sports event if I could travel the same way. It is not easy to get to the Coliseum or Dodger Stadium publicly.

MARILYN YANCEY

Fallbrook