Tackling the NFL’s Idea for a New Stadium

Philip Anschutz, call me immediately.

I know you’re a billionaire, but go ahead and call collect. I’m well aware that guys like you don’t get that stupidly rich without learning how to do business on someone else’s dime.

Actually, just ring me up at 1-800-LATIMES. We’ll have operators standing by, waiting for your call. And listen, Phil, don’t hand this off to one of your flunkies. I already tried getting hold of you through one of those sports, and here’s the useless message he left me:

“We really have not publicly commented on any part of the process at this point.”

Yeah. That’s why I was calling, professor.

The “process” he referred to is bringing a National Football League franchise to L.A., possibly in a downtown stadium.

That’s right, folks. Anschutz, who isn’t even from here, was in New York last week talking up NFL officials about possibly transforming the face of downtown Los Angeles for generations to come, and the “process” is top-secret stuff, leaving you and me entirely out of the loop. No one has even bothered to ask whether any of us wants a stadium.

By the strangest of coincidences, Los Angeles City Council members tripped over themselves in a mad dash to vote yes on a downtown redevelopment plan last week, even as Denver resident Anschutz and his crew--which includes a few Southern California boys with nearly as much money as Anschutz--were lobbying the NFL.

Look, we’re out in the sun a lot here in L.A., but we’re not completely daft.

Redevelopment authorities are supposed to be for blighted areas, not the kind of prime real estate surrounding Staples Center. So why include it in a district that will divert taxes from general funds and plow them into redevelopment projects? Perhaps because that makes it easier to finance a stadium.

Can you imagine what it was like at that meeting in New York?

I can see NFL bosses asking the Anschutz crew if it’s got L.A. public officials in the sack. Fade to a room full of sly grins. It’s probably harder to get a Hollywood hooker in the sack.

Stadium backers had lobbied city officials to approve the redevelopment plan, and something tells you the motivating principle was something other than a teeming passion for urban renewal and human reclamation.

They met with, among others, Slim Jim Hahn. So why have we heard scarcely a peep out of our fearless mayor on such an epic undertaking? Everyone else but him is talking about it.

Well at least the mayor, unlike Punxsutawney Phil Anschutz, popped out of his gopher hole and returned my call Friday.

The reason he hasn’t had much to say, Hahn claimed, is that he doesn’t know of a specific stadium plan, even though the Anschutz gang called him from New York on Thursday to report that the meeting with the NFL was going well.

There were no specifics, according to Hahn. They didn’t call him back when the meetings were done, and he didn’t call them to find out what happened.

When my eyeballs sprang back into my head, I wasn’t sure how to respond. Either Hahn wasn’t being entirely truthful with me, or--and this is the more horrifying possibility--he was.

How can the mayor of Los Angeles not know every last detail of a high-level discussion among billionaires and NFL pooh-bahs on the subject of bringing a franchise to the burg he runs? Wouldn’t you be the least bit curious about how it went, given that these guys might be scheming to erect a ball yard the size of a small planet in the heart of the city?

Come to think of it, why wasn’t Hahn at the meeting instead of waiting for a courtesy call?

Well, Hahn told me, he’s very much interested in transforming downtown into a vibrant, neighborhoody place, and if a football stadium helps, he’s in favor.

He’s not sure how a stadium that sits empty 340 days a year would accomplish that, and he’s not sure there’s a way to move the Dodgers to a downtown stadium, which would at least mean more play dates.

But all this stadium talk is very preliminary, Hahn said. And since he doesn’t intend to put up any public money to build one, he’s just sitting back, waiting for the principals to drop a proposal in front of him.

Where do I begin?

No. 1, you don’t build a stadium in a redevelopment area without some public cost for land acquisition or road improvements and the like.

No. 2, the kind of leader this city needs wouldn’t be sitting on his hands, waiting for the phone to ring. He’d be telling developers the way it’s going to be, rather than vice versa.

I see no alternative but to corner Phil Anschutz myself, and make sure we don’t get fleeced, like so many other cities have been by rich sports moguls.

Despite the best efforts of our City Hall gang, Phil, this is not a town of pushovers.

And just because you rode in here on a horse and built Staples Center, it ain’t your city to make or remake.

Philip Anschutz, call me immediately.

That’s 1-800-LATIMES.

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Steve Lopez writes Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Reach him at steve.lopez@latimes.com.