Galaxy in Market for Smaller Place It Can Call Home
A home of their own.
It has been the dream of Galaxy players ever since Jorge Campos began swinging from the crossbar and Eduardo “El Tanque” Hurtado started shouldering aside opposing defenders.
Ever since the spring of 1996, in fact, when the original Galaxy team walked into the Rose Bowl and the players said, “This is nice, but when do we get our own stadium?”
Although Campos, Hurtado and all but five members of the original roster long ago left for more distant fields, the dream lives on.
Now, with the Galaxy one victory away from its first Major League Soccer championship, a new stadium appears much closer to becoming a reality.
Tim Leiweke, the team’s president, held out that hope the other night, offering it almost as a reward if the Galaxy can defeat two-time champion Washington D.C. United and win MLS Cup ’99 on Sunday.
“Maybe if we had that championship trophy,” he said, “we could wave it in front of city councils and they’ll suddenly want to do things with us. We’ll see.”
It has become apparent that Denver billionaire Phil Anschutz, who counts the Galaxy among his many possessions, wants to build a soccer-specific stadium in Los Angeles.
Not at some nebulous point in the future, but soon.
“I’ve learned in L.A. you don’t say ‘soon’ because ‘soon enough’ is a better description,” Leiweke said. “I think we are committed to doing it if we can find the land. The key in L.A. is finding the land.
“If we find that piece [of the puzzle], then we’re not afraid of stepping up, as we showed with Staples Center. Doing a privately financed construction project of a soccer stadium doesn’t scare us at all.”
For MLS to become what it wants to be--the fifth major team sport in the U.S.--two things need to occur: The league has to expand from the dozen teams it now fields and those teams have to be playing in their own stadiums.
Expansion will not come for at least two more seasons, but the first step on the stadium front was taken this year when Lamar Hunt reached into his pocket, removed $28.5 million and built a 22,485-seat stadium for the Crew in Columbus.
Anschutz’s vision for Los Angeles is a little more grand.
“It would be better,” Leiweke said. “This is nothing against the Crew, give them credit, they have done a great job there and they’ve laid the groundwork for all of us. But in L.A. we’d have to do it better.
“And ours would not be just for MLS. Ours would also be for international [games], so we’d want to build something that is more of a showcase for soccer.”
The questions are: When and where?
“After building that beast downtown [Staples Center] in 18 months, I have great confidence that we can do it in two years, easy,” Leiweke said.
The location is more problematic. Talk has centered on two locations in Los Angeles, one near Chinatown and the other near Staples Center. Hollywood Park also has been mentioned, as has Carson.
The Coliseum?
“I think a stadium would fit in there,” Leiweke said, tongue-in-cheek. “It’s a big place. I don’t know, ultimately, how you make that into an intimate soccer field.”
What the Galaxy has in mind is a 30,000- to 35,000-seat, two-tier stadium that duplicates some of the design features--and the atmosphere--found at European soccer grounds.
Such a stadium, Leiweke said, would have been perfect for last Thursday night’s playoff game against the Dallas Burn, for which 25,703 showed up at the Rose Bowl.
“Obviously, this crowd would look very nice in a 30,000- to 35,000-seat stadium,” he said, adding that if the Galaxy had such a venue, “We’d be sold out tonight.”
The team has drawn more than 1.4 million fans to its 64 regular-season games during its four seasons at the Rose Bowl (an average of 22,239 a game), but still is struggling to find a way to attract a broader audience.
“We haven’t figured that one out yet,” Leiweke said. “But clearly if you look at the passion out here and the excitement for the team and the way this team plays, this is a very marketable commodity.
“Clearly, the game works here. I don’t think it’s a matter of, ‘Is there something wrong with the game?’ I’d say there’s something wrong with us. We just have to figure out a way to spread this passion and this excitement and build a base that’s more than maybe 4,000 or 5,000 people from a season-ticket standpoint.”
Anschutz, who owns two other MLS teams, the Colorado Rapids and Chicago Fire, has talked about building a stadium in Denver too, but Leiweke said that has no bearing on the L.A. decision.
“It isn’t even a competition [with Denver],” he said. “The key for us is land. If we can find land, then it’s an automatic.
“We’re not that picky. Right now we’re open to any suggestions. We’ve looked at some land [in the San Fernando Valley] that doesn’t work, so it’s not first-come, first-chosen. It’s a matter of finding the right location.”
In the quarter-century that professional soccer has been played in the Los Angeles area, teams have been based everywhere from the Coliseum, Rose Bowl and Anaheim Stadium to El Camino College and even Van Nuys High School.
The sport has outgrown the smaller venues but is not yet ready to fill the larger ones. In any event, establishing its own identity requires its own home.
“I think it would have a tremendous impact for us,” said Galaxy Coach Sigi Schmid, “not only getting our own stadium but we’re also talking about a practice facility and so forth.
“That just offers us all kinds of opportunities in terms of what we can do in the community and what we can offer in terms of youth development.”
Depending on how soon a suitable parcel of land can be found, the decision on construction of a stadium could be made before the 2000 MLS season kicks off in March.
Soccer Notes
Galaxy Coach Sigi Schmid and goalkeeper Kevin Hartman were named coach of the year and goalkeeper of the year Tuesday in Major League Soccer. Schmid, in his first pro season, led the Galaxy to a 20-12 regular-season record after taking over from Octavio Zambrano and is 4-1 in the playoffs going into Sunday’s MLS championship game. Hartman was 20-12, broke the league record with a 0.91 goals-against average and had a league-high 11 shutouts.
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A Stadium Sized for Soccer
The Los Angeles Galaxy is considering building a stadium that would house only soccer. The capacity would be much smaller than the Rose Bowl, which was built for football. The Columbus Crew is the only MLS team to currently have a soccer-only facility. The stadium in Columbus, Ohio, seats 22,475.
Rose Bowl: The current Galaxy Home, has a capacity of 92,542, but the team has averaged 17,632 fans this season and 22,239 over the past four seasons.
Soccer-only site: The stadium built in Columbus, Ohio, holds nearly 22,500, but the Galaxy is hoping for a stadium that would accommodate 30,000 to 35,000.
*Note: Soccer fields may be at least 100 to 120 yards long and 50 to 100 yards wide.
