Galaxy Likes Its Surroundings
The Galaxy will not be moving to the Coliseum but instead will continue to call the Rose Bowl home, at least for the next two Major League Soccer seasons.
Tim Luce, the team’s general manager and vice president of business operations, said Wednesday that a tentative agreement had been reached in contract talks between the Galaxy and stadium officials.
If, as expected, the agreement is approved by the Rose Bowl Operating Co. and the Pasadena City Council, the Galaxy will continue to play in the Arroyo Seco through the end of the 2002 MLS season.
After that, it expects to move into its projected new stadium on the campus of Cal State Dominguez Hills in Carson.
“We’ve been here for the past five years [and] there’s no reason really for us to change things,” Luce said.
“When the new stadium comes about, if and when that happens, that’s of course a different story. But I think the family atmosphere that Pasadena provides, the amenities, the grass, the ability for fans to have cookouts and play soccer, it really is a good fit for us for the time being.”
The Galaxy had raised the possibility of a temporary move to the Coliseum after the Rose Bowl substantially increased its rent.
After protracted negotiations, however, an agreement was reached whereby the Galaxy, in Luce’s words, is “definitely increasing our financial commitment to the Rose Bowl,” but the Rose Bowl also is addressing Galaxy concerns, especially those regarding access for training and locker room availability.
“That [access] has always been a challenge for us,” Luce said. “When UCLA comes in toward the end of the [MLS] season, there are certain limitations we have from a practice standpoint.
“There had to be compromise on both sides moving forward.
“The bottom line is that if they [Rose Bowl officials] didn’t feel that the final agreement is beneficial to them, they wouldn’t have agreed and we wouldn’t have agreed if we didn’t feel it was beneficial to us.”
Terms of the agreement were not revealed.
As for the projected 30,000-seat stadium and multisport complex in Carson, Luce said the Galaxy is awaiting completion of the necessary environmental impact reports before anything can be done.
“We’ve had nothing but good news as far as developments with the environmental impact reports,” he said. “We hope that possibly by February or March that they get the green light so that we can go ahead and break ground.
“There is a great deal of interest, and luckily for us there has been a great deal of support from the community, from the university and from the soccer community.
“It’s just a matter of time, and hopefully we’ll also get some positive words from U.S. Soccer regarding the national training center [also being part of the sports complex]. That would give us some momentum moving forward as well.”
The planned Carson complex is under consideration, along with a site in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., as a home training base for all men’s and women’s U.S. national soccer teams.
