NFL Move Apparently Dooms L.A. as Site for New Franchise

The National Football League announced Thursday that it has abandoned its exclusive focus on the Coliseum as the potential home of a new franchise, a decision that sources on both sides of the long-running negotiations say all but assures that the league’s 32nd team will not be awarded to Los Angeles.

“We’re putting a stake in the heart of the Coliseum because it’s clear now we can’t make a deal there,” said a high-ranking NFL official. “We will turn our focus on the other sites, but let’s face it, it would have to be a miracle to get something done there at this time. It just doesn’t look like it’s going to work out in Los Angeles.”

Local government officials and sources close to both the private groups hoping to obtain a Los Angeles franchise agreed that it is improbable that any local site other than the Coliseum could make itself acceptable before the NFL’s self-imposed mid-September deadline.

“It would be near impossible to get all the deal points required to meet the NFL’s demands at any other site,” said a Los Angeles official close to the Coliseum. “If they don’t want the Coliseum, then it looks like it’s Houston’s team.”

The NFL has given Los Angeles until Sept. 15 to present an acceptable stadium design and financial plan. If the city fails to produce such a plan, the league has said, it will accept a Houston proposal that includes substantial public money for the construction of a stadium. As the deadline’s creator, of course, the NFL can extend it if the owners wish.

The NFL announced its decision shortly after Gov. Gray Davis released a statement saying Sacramento will not make additional public money available to bring professional football back to Exposition Park.

“The NFL has to appreciate that there are a number of higher priorities for the use of public funds in California than attracting an NFL team,” Davis said. Most of the Coliseum proposals being contemplated would require large infusions of taxpayer money, something no elected official will publicly embrace.

The league’s abrupt response to the governor’s statement came hard on the heels of its dismissal of a “last ditch” proposal by one of the private partnerships competing for the Coliseum franchise.

In a letter sent to NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue on Aug. 3, billionaire financial services executive Eli Broad and his partner, developer Ed Roski Jr., proposed to “pay the NFL $2 million for a nonrefundable 60-day option to acquire an expansion franchise.” The Broad-Roski group committed itself to obtaining $150 million in public funds for parking at the site, as well as the acceptance of “public responsibility” for all costs incurred for “demolition and site work” and preservation of the stadium’s historic character.

Broad and Roski also proposed paying the NFL a franchise fee of $550 million to renovate the Coliseum for an estimated $400 million. “We are prepared to invest $275 million without a return for many years, other than the hoped-for appreciation in franchise value,” Broad and Roski wrote.

NFL sources, however, said the proposal was inadequate because it appeared to rely on public money, which state and local government officials repeatedly have said is unavailable.

Thus, when the league--already angry with conflicting comments made by Bill Chadwick, the governor’s appointee to represent the state’s interests--received Davis’ statement Thursday, it responded immediately with a dramatic shift in its position.

“We have concluded,” wrote Tagliabue, “that our effort to reach agreements for the operation of an NFL team in Los Angeles can no longer be limited to the Coliseum and Exposition Park and will in the weeks remaining before Sept. 15 focus on other potential stadium sites in the Los Angeles area.”

At last week’s meeting of NFL owners in Chicago to review Los Angeles’ proposal, Tennessee owner Bud Adams stood up in a closed session and said: “Why are we jerking around with this [Coliseum] thing? Can’t we go to that Hollywood Park place?”

In fact, on Thursday NFL sources said the league will revisit onetime entertainment executive Michael Ovitz’s proposal to build a stadium in Carson, along with Hollywood Park.

“We’ll wait to hear from Marvin Davis now,” said an NFL official.

Davis, a Los Angeles billionaire, took an option on a little less than 100 acres at Hollywood Park with the intention of building a football stadium if the NFL shifted its attention from the Coliseum. He has until early September to purchase the land. If Davis does not exercise his option, Hollywood Park already has agreed to sell the land to a non-sports developer.

The NFL earlier dismissed Carson as an alternative after several owners expressed reservations about trying to build on a toxic dump. There has been controversy over whether the Carson site is contaminated by past dumping of industrial waste.

The governor left room for Chadwick to continue talks with the NFL, but league sources indicated Thursday that the NFL probably would want someone else to lead the effort. Chadwick asked the NFL to sign a nonbinding letter of intent at last week’s owners meetings, and then announced at a news conference that he expected the league to give its approval in a matter of days.

A short time later Tagliabue emerged from meetings to say the league would not sign Chadwick’s proposal, indicating there were some things that were acceptable in the letter of intent and some things that were not. He said negotiations would continue.

Chadwick, however, returned to Los Angeles embarrassed, and submitted his letter of resignation.

“Mr. Chadwick presented a fair and reasonable proposal to the NFL regarding the placement of an expansion team at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum,” Gov. Davis said in his release. “That proposal has apparently been rejected.”

Public Concessions Required

The NFL maintains that it has not rejected Los Angeles’ proposal, but requires additional public concessions to ensure the success of whoever might ultimately own the team. It blames Chadwick for a breakdown in communication and the strong position taken by the governor.

So does Los Angeles City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, who has led the effort to bring pro football back to Exposition Park.

“I think the NFL is trying to say in the best way that it can that it still wants to do the deal at the Coliseum, but they need help in getting it done,” Ridley-Thomas said. “We are in the midst of negotiations. There is going to be give and take. What is not allowable when you are negotiating on this sort of tight timeline is people throwing up their hands and walking away, which is essentially what was done by Chadwick. What he did was say: ‘Here’s a deal, take it or leave it.’ What kind of negotiating is that?”

NFL officials contend that Chadwick told them in private meetings that the deal he was presenting at the Coliseum was not acceptable, but it was one he would be willing to continue working on. They said that after his ego was bruised, however, he stopped listening.

“Chadwick hasn’t been listening; we have been so clear with the officials of L.A. in what we need,” an NFL official said. “We need minimal rent--$1 million--we need to control the facility and we need money for public parking with the revenue from that parking going to the team’s owner.

“We’re willing to privately finance the entire stadium project--$400 million put in between the NFL and the owner of the team. But most of the revenue streams have to come to the owner to make this work. We can’t have a ticket tax to pay for parking; we need that revenue.”

After Chadwick’s appearance in Chicago, many of the owners left thinking it a foregone conclusion that the league was headed to Houston. They were outraged by Chadwick’s request for $5 million a year in rent.

But the NFL’s abrupt change in direction Thursday caught many local officials by surprise.

“I first learned of this latest development through a media inquiry late this afternoon,” Mayor Richard Riordan said Thursday. “I spoke with an NFL executive as recently as yesterday and he showed no indication that the NFL was interested in backing away from the Coliseum. I believe Eli Broad’s proposal is sound and responsible. . . .

“I believe the Coliseum is the best site for professional football. Further, I am confident that the vast majority of the business community of Los Angeles agrees with me,” Riordan said.

But the NFL never has been enamored of the proposed return to the Coliseum and, after discovering the difficulties of trying to rebuild a historic landmark, several owners considered the project doomed.

Several other owners began looking more favorably toward Houston after listening to a legal update on a pair of Oakland Raiders lawsuits. There is a growing feeling in the NFL ranks that Los Angeles might be their only escape route in dealing with Raiders owner Al Davis, dropping their lawsuits against each other and solving his problems in the Bay Area by allowing him to move back to Los Angeles. Those problems include a longstanding dispute over Davis’ financial arrangements with the Oakland Stadium Authority.

“I don’t know about that,” said an NFL executive. “But maybe the people of L.A. think we have to go there at all costs. We never have gotten past that ‘who needs who more’ argument. We have given L.A. until Sept. 15 and will honor that. But we can’t go to L.A. under the terms of the deal that has been discussed, which makes it look like we will be moving toward Houston.”

But county Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, a member of the Coliseum Commission, said Thursday that “whether the NFL comes to the Coliseum or goes to another Southern California site, they must recognize that an investment of public funds in stadium construction or in the franchise fee is unobtainable.”