Pasadena to Double Events at Rose Bowl

With little outcry from residents, the Pasadena City Council has tentatively voted to more than double the number of major events it allows at the Rose Bowl each year.

For more than a decade, the stadium’s famously fussy neighbors have successfully fought efforts to expand use of the facility, which is home already to UCLA football, the L.A. Galaxy soccer team and the “granddaddy of them all” postseason college football bowl game.

But there was not the usual grumbling last Monday when the council, facing an increasingly competitive business environment, tentatively voted to increase from 12 to 25 the number of allowable “major events” at the venue. As defined by city ordinance, a major Rose Bowl event is one that draws 20,000 or more fans to the 92,500-seat stadium.

The vote is the first step toward expanding a city limit capping the number of major events, which send thousands of cars through otherwise quiet streets leading to the 88-year-old landmark.

Regular tenants such as the Galaxy and UCLA use all but one of the bowl’s allotted 12 major events each year, city officials say. Under the current ordinance governing use of the city-owned venue, the council has the power to waive that limit, but only on a case-by-case basis and after a public hearing.

During the 1999-2000 fiscal year, the council granted four waivers, bringing to 16 the number of major events. Six years ago, it granted eight waivers, most of them for soccer’s World Cup.

With last Monday’s change, selling the Rose Bowl to promoters will be a lot easier, said Councilman Paul Little.

“Prospective tenants now know they won’t go through what can be a horrendous political process with the council,” he said.

Despite the tentative move, stadium neighbors and area Councilman Steve Madison persuaded the council to keep the definition of major event to a crowd of 20,000 fans or more. Originally, the proposal would have increased the threshold to 30,000 fans, a change that neighbors feared would have allowed an unlimited number of smaller events.

“Do you want measles or do you want cancer? That’s the choice we faced,” said Lee Zanteson, former president of the Linda Vista/ Annandale Assn. “When things are inevitable, you do your best.”

Zanteson said the neighborhood didn’t kick up a bigger fuss and accepted the compromise because council members are less willing than before to listen to complaints about blocked driveways and litter in the streets.

“Anything that makes a buck, the City Council will approve--including nude mud wrestling,” he said.

Madison said last week’s tentative decision strikes a good balance between the neighborhoods’ needs and keeping the stadium viable. He said the ordinance allowing up to 25 major events is “more realistic,” given that the council has granted waivers over the years.

But not all neighbors are taking the change well.

“The city has little if any regards for the neighborhoods around the bowl,” said resident Cam Currier, who became active in limiting Rose Bowl use before he became a spokesman for Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich.

“This ordinance has been ignored, but it’s all we had. People bought their homes with the knowledge of the 12-event ordinance and now they’ve changed the rules of the game--after the game has begun,” he said.

The bowl has been at the center of one of Pasadena’s most persistent land use debates, pitting the city--which needs the money generated by the stadium--against the neighbors, some of whom own million-dollar homes that surround the pristine Arroyo Seco in which it sits.

As Pasadena has changed from a tweedy enclave to an ethnically diverse suburb, the stadium has been transformed. Before the 1970s, it was a virtual mausoleum except for New Year’s Day.

But by the 1980s it had become a big-time venue, spurred by rock concerts and Super Bowl games. Under pressure from neighbors, the council passed a 1988 ordinance limiting the Rose Bowl’s use.

Into the 1990s, however, council members faced a different pressure--financial--to use the stadium even more.

After investing in a new press box and a major make-over, including new seats and scoreboard upgrades, the city had to pay off a $45-million capital improvement debt. Without events that bring thousands of dollars into city coffers, the taxpayers would have to foot the bill, officials say.

“If you don’t do special events, you’re not going to pay off the stadium’s debt,” said Little.

Currently, the Rose Bowl nets the city $1 million a year. But Little said that amount will drop appreciably in the next few years, when the Galaxy soccer team is expected to leave and thus cut revenues.

Before the city gives final approval to the idea, it will do an environmental review, Little said.