Poll Finds Strong Opposition to Downtown L.A. Arena Project

Three-quarters of frequent voters in Los Angeles oppose spending public money to build a hockey and basketball arena--or a hotel and entertainment complex--near the Convention Center downtown, and more than a third would prefer to see the new arena built in Inglewood rather than L.A., according to a poll released Tuesday by one of the project’s most vigorous opponents.

The survey of 1,000 high-propensity voters, funded with $15,000 from three Inglewood-based institutions and conducted over the weekend, found that only 4% of respondents would visit a downtown sports and entertainment complex “frequently,” while 43% said they would “never” use the facility.

“The public is outraged, believe me,” said Councilman Nate Holden, who commissioned the survey by Pacific Research & Strategies of Claremont after the council refused to conduct one of its own. “They want a chance to vote on it, they don’t want it, and they want to know why they’re [city officials] rushing it through.”

But the 15-question survey failed to point out that the public money planned for the project would probably come from taxes on hotel rooms and arena tickets, and implied it would be used to construct the $230-million facility, rather than to acquire and clear land as the proposal specifies. Nor did the questions mention points raised by arena supporters: the potential economic benefits of the project, or a comparison of the proposed arena subsidy to the $21 million taxpayers are paying this year--or the $38 million projected for next year--to bail out the debt-ridden Convention Center.

Arena supporters and independent polling experts also questioned the use of high-propensity voters rather than random samples of residents, and said several questions appeared skewed or loaded.

An earlier poll by the project developers produced vastly different results, with 72% of respondents agreeing that the arena is a worthwhile project and 64% saying the city should commit to it even if it would cost $5 million to $7 million annually for 27 years. The arena developers refused to release the full results of their poll.

An independent poll by Loyola Marymount University researchers found that 55% of city voters oppose construction of a new arena next to the Convention Center, but that number dropped to 43% if visitors were to pick up the tab through a hotel tax.

“You poison the well, and you get a lot of acidity in the water,” Carol Schatz, president of the Central City Assn., said sardonically. “It’s up to the City Council of this city, not a public opinion poll, to really determine what’s best for this city.”

The council last month approved the arena concept 11 to 1, and will consider a more detailed agreement as soon as it is hammered out, perhaps as early as Friday.

“Council members are going to pay a price if they vote to subsidize this deal to this amount,” Councilman Joel Wachs, the lone dissenter in the original vote, said Tuesday upon learning of Holden’s survey results. (Holden was absent the day of the vote.) “There is a very strong feeling out there that it’s simply wrong to use tax money for something like this when there are so many pressing needs for our money.”

Told the estimated cost to L.A. taxpayers for building an arena would be $140 million to $250 million over 25 years, 78% of those surveyed in the new poll opposed the proposal and 15% supported it. Asked about an additional $100 million subsidy to launch an entertainment complex nearby, 76% of those surveyed were opposed and 15% in favor.

Richard Maullin, a partner in the firm that conducted a confidential survey for the project developers, criticized those questions for straying from the specifics of the proposal, which calls for a taxpayer subsidy of $5 million to $7 million a year for 27 years to pay off debt issued to acquire land for the facility.

In the poll commissioned by Holden, 83% of those surveyed said local residents deserve a chance to vote on whether the city should subsidize a new arena.

Even though all those surveyed are L.A. residents, only 31% said they would like to see a new arena downtown, compared with 38% who favored a competing site near Hollywood Park in Inglewood and 31% who did not know.

But acting Times Poll Director Susan Pinkus said the poll failed to ask the most basic question: Should a new arena be built at all? Pinkus also criticized the methodology of the pollster, Claremont-McKenna College political science professor Fred Balitzer, saying that using prepared lists of voters rather than random phone numbers skews the sample.

“Voters are disproportionately older and white . . . and who are the people that go to these arenas? Young people,” she said. “Voters might have a different view than the population at large. You’re talking about taxes, and that affects everybody.”

According to Pacific Research, 27% of the respondents are 70 or older and 40% are in their 50s or 60s.

Balitzer, whose firm conducts about 300 polls a year, said he selected people who have voted in two of the past three local elections because their opinions, ultimately, are more important.

“High-propensity voters are a window into the life of the electorate,” he said.