South Park Rerun for Stadium Site?

At least three years have passed since Sheldon Ausman last looked at the architectural drawings. He retrieved them from storage this week and unfurled them like scrolls, spreading them across the desk of his Century City office. Before him lay the forgotten plans for a state-of-the-art NFL stadium in the South Park area of downtown Los Angeles, a dream derailed when the city cast its lot with the New Coliseum.

“South Park has always been a real opportunity,” said Ausman, who in the early 1990s teamed with Lodwrick M. Cook, former Arco chairman, to form South Park Sports Inc. in order to create the stadium proposal. “In conjunction with Staples Center, it could be the focal point in Los Angeles.”

The plans could have new relevance. Denver billionaire Philip Anschutz, who owns Staples Center, is looking into building a downtown football stadium that will bring the NFL back to L.A. There are indications he and his high-powered coalition have turned their attention to South Park--an underdeveloped neighborhood filled with parking lots and half-empty warehouses--an area just east of Staples.

The coalition includes Tim Leiweke, president of Anschutz Entertainment Group and Staples Center; Casey Wasserman, owner of arena football’s L.A. Avengers; supermarket billionaire Ron Burkle; and real estate magnate Ed Roski.

An AEG spokesman said Leiweke left on vacation Wednesday and would not be available for comment.

Although sources told The Times the project would require about 55 acres, it is now believed the complex could be constructed on a smaller plot. As a comparative gauge, the Coliseum and all the land encircled by the sidewalks that border it encompass 28 acres, and it is more bowl-shaped and almost 25,000 seats larger than modern NFL stadiums. The Baltimore Ravens’ stadium sits on 36 acres, five more than the new home of the Cleveland Browns.

The average city block in L.A. is 600 feet long and 300 feet wide. One block represents about five acres.

Parking is paramount. According to the original South Park plan, there were some 24,000 parking spaces within six blocks of the property and more than 50,000 spaces in the adjacent downtown area. In general, the NFL wants a stadium to have at least 17,000 available parking spaces.

“If you’ve got your parking, you’re home free,” said John Moag, chairman of Moag & Co., a Baltimore-based sports investment banking firm. “If you’ve got that taken care of, you don’t need a whole lot more than the footprint of the building.”

Ausman has not been approached to join the Anschutz group. Recently, however, the Anschutz coalition, through an intermediary, asked for a copy of the promotional video that touted the original South Park stadium.

That plan called for a three-tiered, 72,000-seat facility on a 35-acre area bordered by Grand, Pico, Flower and 11th streets. That would include a 700-room hotel and 3,500 premium parking spots.

Critics of the proposal said the project would create traffic snarls by cutting off some high-volume streets.

A potential deal-breaker in South Park is the number of low-income housing units in the area. Anyone who built a stadium would have to find a new place for those units with at least a one-for-one replacement ratio, and the replacement units would have to be ready before residents were displaced.

For example, a 64-unit residential building of affordable housing for families was completed on the corner of Olympic and Hope streets in the fall. A developer could be hard-pressed to convince city fathers it is reasonable to tear that down in the name of NFL football.

“It’s fraught with complications,” said City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, who represents neighboring District 8, which includes the Coliseum. “The land assemblage itself is enough to cause someone to think twice about it.”

Ausman, a former managing partner at Arthur Andersen who was chairman of the committee that brought the Super Bowl to Pasadena in 1993, was convinced of the viability of a stadium in South Park but reluctantly stepped aside in 1996 when Ridley-Thomas asked him (and others with stadium proposals) to abandon their projects to support the Coliseum plans.

Three years later, after Robert McNair bowled over NFL owners by offering a $700-million franchise fee, the league awarded the 32nd franchise to Houston.

“It was very disappointing because we truly believed in that [South Park] location,” Ausman said. “Had we gotten football in Los Angeles, it would have been an accomplishment. That’s all we were after.”

The proposed site was immediately adjacent to Metro Rail’s Blue Line station on Pico, which further enhanced its accessibility and would have cut down on traffic and parking difficulties.

Ausman said everything was in place to privately finance the stadium by way of a football-only Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT), a publicly held entity that pays dividends. Fans could earn the right to buy seats at the 50-yard line by buying a certain number of shares in the stadium. Those who bought fewer shares might be entitled to seats on the 20. The group figured it could raise an additional $100 million by selling personal seat licenses.

The group estimated the cost of constructing the stadium at $350 million, of which $40 million to $50 million would be used for land acquisition.

Some people raised questions about the feasibility of the plan, whether the REIT would work and enough PSLs could be sold, and no one imagined McNair would raise the ante so high by paying a franchise fee of $700 million. (That fee, coupled with the cost of the new stadium in Houston, means the Houston Texans have run up a bill in excess of $1 billion.)

Convinced as he is about the prospects of a stadium in South Park, Ausman has no desire to be involved with any new proposals. However, he is in favor of any project that brings the NFL back to L.A.

Ridley-Thomas wants that too. But, the way he sees it, South Park is not the answer.

“I suspect there will be several competing sites all over again,” he said. “Let the best site win.”