Champion of the ‘New Coliseum’ Cause

Back when legendary football coach John McKay and his assistant Al Davis were at USC, a stocky, crew-cut freshman named Ed Roski Jr. tried hard to get their attention.

Day after day, Roski jumped onto the field as one of the red-shirted linemen--the wannabes who routinely took a beating from the traveling team on the slim hope of making the roster. Bull-strong as he was, the 5-foot-9-inch Roski never made it. He went on to graduate; served as a Marine infantryman in Vietnam, where he was wounded; then quietly amassed a fortune by expanding his father’s real estate business.

Now, some 40 years later, the millionaire developer and avid outdoorsman is nearing the critical moment of his second, equally daunting football quest--this time as a would-be owner of an NFL team that would play at USC’s home field, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

Along with Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, Roski has been championing pro football’s return to a renovated Coliseum for nearly two years, despite widespread skepticism that the vaunted NFL would ever come back to the storied but aging stadium and its locale in the image-marred community of South-Central Los Angeles.

Early on, Roski was “like the lone missionary out in the wilderness,” said Leigh Steinberg, the noted sports lawyer and agent in Newport Beach.

But Steinberg and many others, including Roski’s new financial partner, billionaire Eli Broad, now seem convinced that the so-called New Coliseum venture has the best shot at winning the NFL’s 32nd franchise. A decision could come as early as Tuesday, at the league owners’ next meeting in Atlanta.

The NFL is considering a rival bid from former Hollywood super-agent Michael Ovitz, who has assembled a star-studded cast--including Tom Cruise and Kevin Costner--to back the idea of a glitzy new stadium in the South Bay city of Carson. There is also a third proposal, from Houston.

The league has hinted it might forgo naming a specific owner or stadium site and instead award a franchise to Los Angeles, hoping that would touch off an auction that could fetch $750 million or more for the expansion club. Even so, analysts think Roski will prevail, especially now that he has the financial commitment from Broad, whose civic leadership and close ties to Mayor Richard Riordan also enhance the political support for the New Coliseum effort.

Broad, one of the nation’s 50 wealthiest people, recalls Roski’s approaching him about football a year ago. Too busy with his own business and civic projects, Broad said he wasn’t ready. But he followed Roski’s progress, and last month pledged his full financial support.

The pair agreed to be equal owners, with Broad heading marketing and Roski the real estate portion. “He’s carried this quite a way,” Broad said.

Roski, 60, would seem an unlikely candidate to join the most exclusive club in professional sports.

Unlike such flamboyant NFL owners as the Dallas Cowboys’ Jerry Jones or the late Jack Kent Cooke, onetime owner of the Washington Redskins as well as of the NBA’s L.A. Lakers, Roski is a reticent man who doesn’t chomp on cigars or seek the limelight. Nor does he invite comparison with owners such as the Oakland Raiders’ flashy Al Davis, the same man coaching at USC when Roski labored in obscurity.

Roski has a closet full of black suits. He does not fly around in a private jet (but treats himself to long rides on his black Yeti mountain bike), and has been married to the former Gayle Garner for 38 years, living for most of that time in the same Toluca Lake home.

As co-owner with his father of Majestic Realty Co., Southern California’s biggest industrial development firm, Roski is undoubtedly worth millions. He says he doesn’t know how much, but Majestic owns more than 32 million square feet of properties from California to Georgia, conservatively valued at $1 billion. Still, Roski’s holdings pale next to most of the NFL’s owners, such as Microsoft Corp. co-founder and multibillionaire Paul Allen of the Seattle Seahawks.

Roski knows that he could one day see a big payoff as a pro football owner, though such ventures can also prove a bust. But he insists that’s not what drives him. “I look at it as an opportunity for Los Angeles to join the club, not for me,” he said. “It doesn’t do anything for me.”

What it does do for Roski is provide perhaps the ultimate test of his real estate development prowess, honed over 35 years of ferreting out raw land, finding ownership partners, negotiating aggressively--critics say too aggressively--for entitlements and then seeing the building go up and renting it out.

“He thrives on that kind of stuff, on making deals,” said Los Angeles federal Judge Dickran Tevrizian, a fraternity brother of Roski at USC and one of his closest friends. “He wasn’t a straight-A student in cerebral courses,” Tevrizian recalled, “but he was a damn straight-A student when it came to real estate.”

Roski says his venture into the business of sports, which began in 1995 with the Los Angeles Kings hockey team, was aimed at adding a new entertainment dimension around which Majestic could build.

He partnered with Denver billionaire Philip Anchutz and took a small ownership stake in the Kings. Later, again with the help of Anchutz’s financial muscle, Roski led the charge to build the Staples Center downtown, where the Kings, Lakers and Clippers are set to begin playing this fall. Roski, who also owns a tiny share of the Lakers, says he holds about a 10% stake in the $350-million Staples arena, with the rest split between Anchutz and media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

During the push for the Staples project, Roski’s barreling, at times secretive, style drew criticism and stirred strong debate about public subsidies going to developers for projects that could put taxpayers at risk. The financing for Staples was eventually recast, and Roski admits it was a painful learning experience. But as soon as the deal cleared, an emboldened Roski set his sights on football.

The New Coliseum effort has been much more than a real estate deal for Roski, say his friends, family and associates. His wife, Gayle, an artist who met Roski when they attended USC, says her husband is passionate about the Coliseum. He describes the stadium as Los Angeles’ Eiffel Tower. As a teenager, Roski pumped gas at a service station on Flower Street across from the Coliseum, and during his USC days he worked part-time as a lineman for a utility, climbing power poles in the area.

Still, Gayle Roski finds it hard to explain his near-fanaticism about football. “He’s a Marine Corps man,” she says. “He believes in discipline, in a rite of passage. Perhaps that’s what football is, a rite of passage.”

Then she relates how her husband had pushed each of their three children--two daughters and a son--to train for months to prepare for treks to the Mt. Everest base camp, at 17,600 feet. When each child turned 13, he would pull him or her out of school and they would make the long, rigorous climb together.

Roski’s eldest, Reon Amendola, a Los Angeles attorney, remembers her father rousing her from bed at 4 in the morning on school days for 13-mile runs. “It taught me I could set a goal and succeed, and do whatever I want if I work hard.”

In interviews, Roski continually diverted attention from himself and would say little about his service in Vietnam or his youthful interest in football and other sports. His military records show Roski led an infantry unit and was awarded two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star for valor in 1965. He still carries shrapnel in his body, but shows no effects from the injury. Years ago, after a bout with pancreatitis, he gave up drinking. He exercises dutifully, biking 100 miles up Mt. Wilson on weekends.

Roski had rather humble beginnings. His parents labored at a meatpacking company in Oklahoma City when he was born. His father, Ed Sr., later enlisted in the Navy, and after World War II joined the rush of veterans heading to Southern California.

Ed Jr., their only child, was 8 when they moved to California in 1946, settling first in a bungalow at 103rd and Figueroa streets in South-Central, then later in the Westchester area. Roski’s father started a real estate brokerage and before long, according to family accounts, young Roski was pounding signs into yards and jotting down property listings as his father drove around the city and his mother called out addresses.

That company, Majestic, moved into development in the 1960s, buying land from the railroad and constructing “build-to-suit” industrial buildings in Vernon and Commerce. The firm later formed a construction company, and by the 1980s Majestic was a full-service development operation. It expanded eastward, building industrial parks and warehouses in the Inland Empire, then Las Vegas, Denver and as far away as Atlanta. Last year, the 140-employee firm had gross revenue of more than $150 million, said Roski, whose father, at age 82, is still active in the business.

Over the years, Majestic has attracted its share of lawsuits and of critics, who have complained about what they viewed as overly aggressive demands for municipal support and back-room deal-making that would lock out the smaller player.

But even critics and rivals express respect for the quality of Majestic’s developments, its staff’s depth of knowledge and experience, and its willingness to pass up immediate profits in favor of an uncommon development strategy of long-term ownership and management of all its projects.

“Majestic has shown consistent financial strength. Their ability to incubate their tenants and grow with them is probably unique,” said Michael J. Cushing, who heads the Western regional operations for Atlanta-based IDI Inc., a key rival.

Swen Larson, a former mayor of Redlands, had in recent years blasted Majestic for employing hardball tactics during a protracted battle over a development agreement with his city. Yet he said in an interview, “They’re smart and shrewd, and if I were a stockholder or owner in that business, that is the type of person I would want to represent me.”

Roski says he has spent more than $3 million in his pro football odyssey. With Ridley-Thomas, Roski has chipped away at the negative perceptions about the Coliseum.

Over the last 18 months, Roski has crisscrossed the country five times and met with more than 20 NFL owners. He has talked by phone with the rest, except for Oakland’s Davis, who remains locked in a battle with Los Angeles over football rights in this city.

The owners have said little publicly. But, according to Steinberg and others, Roski has surprised them with his sincere style and forceful delivery.

Roski has presented evidence of the project’s financial viability from Merrill Lynch, police reports showing few incidents during night USC games at the stadium, artists’ conceptions of a renewed Exposition Park, and dazzling models of a renovation that would accentuate the Coliseum’s venerable peristyle entrance and Olympic symbol yet enhance sideline seating and other revenue-generating features. He has also lined up an impressive list of supporters, including prominent lawyers George Mihlsten and Alan Rothenberg; businessman and L.A. Marathon director William Burke; and lawyer John K. McKay, the late USC coach’s son, who is well-connected in the NFL. Roski’s last links were Broad and Riordan, who had been reluctant to stick his neck out on a project that might not fly.

“I think Ed Roski is on course to bring this to a completion,” said Steve Soboroff, a senior Riordan advisor and former developer who has known Roski for 15 years as they’ve worked together for the Big Brothers charity.

“Ed reminds me a little of Peter O’Malley in that he’s soft-spoken and knows what he’s going to do,” Soboroff said, referring to the former Dodgers owner. “Roski’s real.”

Tom Kardashian, a business executive in Encino and also a USC alumnus, was the manager of USC’s football team four decades ago when Roski kept trying to rise above the other red shirts to make the white-jersey varsity squad.

“He came out every single day,” Kardashian said. “What he didn’t have in size or natural talent he had in persistence. He gutted it out and fought that much harder, all the way through to the end.”

Soon, Roski will know whether he has made the cut.

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Edward P. Roski Jr.

Born: Oklahoma City, Dec. 25, 1938

Education: Bachelor’s degree, USC, class of 1962

Profession: Developer, co-owner Majestic Realty Co.

Guiding creed: “One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen.” --Rene Daumal, French philosopher

Proudest accomplishment: Family

Most memorable outing: First trip to Mt. Everest base camp, 1976

Favorite book: “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds,” by Charles MacKay

Preferred mode of transportation: Walking