NFL, L.A. Making Progress

Three of the five NFL owners appointed to evaluate the Los Angeles situation say they are optimistic that the league will find a stadium solution and bring football back to the nation’s second-largest market within four years.

“We have a caldron brewing,” said Carmen Policy, president and part-owner of the Cleveland Browns. “I think the likelihood of something coming to fruition appears more likely than it ever has.”

Policy is a member of the league’s “L.A. working group,” along with owners Dan Rooney of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Bob Kraft of the New England Patriots, Wayne Huizenga of the Miami Dolphins and Jerry Richardson of the Carolina Panthers. Policy, Rooney and Kraft spoke to The Times for this story; Huizenga and Richardson could not be reached.

“I believe the stage is right to make something happen over the next few years,” Kraft said, calling the lack of a team in L.A. “one of the big strategic gaps that we have to fill.”

Rooney said there had been “movement in the right direction” on the L.A. front, although he was slightly more guarded than Policy and Kraft.

“I wouldn’t jump to the situation of saying that this is going to happen right away,” he said, later adding, “There are still a lot of questions that have to be answered.”

The league, which has not had a team in L.A. since the Raiders and Rams left after the 1994 season, has grown more aggressive during the last few months about changing that situation. It is primarily evaluating two concepts: renovating the Rose Bowl and building a stadium from scratch on a landfill in Carson. Owners voted in May to authorize Commissioner Paul Tagliabue to advance the Carson group as much as $10 million to prove the feasibility of that site. Then, partly in the interest of even-handedness, the commissioner met in New York with Pasadena officials to emphasize the league’s continued interest in the Rose Bowl.

“Especially after meeting with the commissioner, the Rose Bowl is more motivated than ever to put together a deal that works for the NFL,” Policy said. “I also feel that there’s some semblance of rationality to the Carson site. And there’s also an inkling that some other opportunity might even come out of the city of Los Angeles.”

In Carson on Tuesday, the topic of GMS Realty “negotiations” -- referring to the developer of the potential stadium site -- was on the city’s redevelopment agency’s meeting agenda for closed session. City Manager Jerry Groomes said that was to extend the exclusive-negotiating period, which is about to expire, with GMS. He also said the city may receive a letter this week from the NFL that formalizes the league’s interest in the site and in working with GMS, but the letter is not expected to shed any new details on what the league has in mind.

Coliseum officials have been working on putting together a proposal of their own, and General Manager Pat Lynch and L.A. City Councilman Bernard C. Parks flew to Philadelphia last month to mingle outside the NFL meetings and remind owners and league officials that their venue is an option. Although several owners have dismissed the Coliseum as a serious contender, Lynch has said that’s partly because no formal proposal has been made. He also has said that getting a team could be largely accomplished by making the right offer to the right owner.

The Rose Bowl and Carson groups are taking a different approach. They are appealing directly to the league, not to an owner who might want to relocate. The league then would decide which team might best fit the L.A. market. Tagliabue has not ruled out the possibility of expanding by a team to 33, but several owners say they have no appetite for such a move. Besides, if it’s so difficult to build a stadium in L.A. -- largely because it would cost as much as $500 million with little to no taxpayer contribution -- the league would be hard-pressed to find someone willing to pay an expansion fee in the neighborhood of $1 billion.

The Chargers are beginning a critical two-month stretch in their stadium negotiations with San Diego. Charger owners have proposed paying for a new stadium in exchange for the right to build a residential and retail complex on a portion of the 166-acre Qualcomm Stadium site. They want to know, before the season starts, whether the city is willing to pursue the proposal or if the team should start hunting for a new home, most likely in Los Angeles.

The group appointed to negotiate on behalf of the San Diego City Council met in closed session with the council Tuesday night to give an update on how the talks are progressing. The Chargers will be officially briefed today on the closed-council session.

Time is of the essence for the Chargers. They are worried that their bid for new digs will be severely hampered by the city’s much-reviled ticket guarantee. The city gets stuck with the tab for every unsold general-admission ticket through the 2007 season, and the exhibition games alone typically cost the city $3 million a year. That will make for a frosty bargaining environment in late August, when the 90-day negotiating period is drawing to a close. After that period ends, the Chargers have an 18-month window during which they can seek offers from other cities.

If they cannot work out a deal for a new stadium in San Diego, the Chargers conceivably could be gone by the 2004 season. That’s two years before the New Orleans Saints can get out of their lease, and three years before the Indianapolis Colts can get out of theirs. Tagliabue said the earliest he could envision a team playing in L.A. was 2006.

If the league has a team already in, or headed for, L.A., it will have even more bargaining power when its TV contracts expire after the 2005 season. But there are other reasons for putting a team here.

“We’ve let a decade go by without young people feeling a passion about the NFL and loving the NFL,” Kraft said. “We’re not building the foundation for the long term here, in one of the most important cities in the country. If we don’t get young people interested in the game, then as they get older, there are too many great choices out there.”

The last concerted effort to strike a stadium deal in L.A. was made a year ago, when a coalition of local businessmen, among them supermarket billionaire Ron Burkle and L.A. Avenger owner Casey Wasserman, proposed building a state-of-the-art venue adjacent to Staples Center. That stadium would have been largely privately financed. That group scrapped its concept in the face of legal threats from the county and stepped-up competition from the Coliseum. Wasserman still aspires to own an NFL team but is watching from the sideline as the NFL sorts through its stadium options.

“We thought we’d solved all the problems that prevented an NFL team from coming to Los Angeles,” Wasserman said. “But it’s a very difficult political environment to achieve that goal. My interest in owning an NFL team hasn’t waned.”

Because building a stadium in the L.A. area means getting little or no public money, the NFL is considering paying for the venue on its own and then, in Tagliabue’s words, “passing the baton” to the incoming team. That’s what the league did for the expansion Cleveland Browns, whose stadium was constructed before the team was formed or even had an owner. But Cleveland knew an expansion team was in the offing. The picture is far less clear with L.A.

For one thing, the Oakland Raiders were granted a new trial in their lawsuit against the NFL over the rights to the L.A. market. That complicates matters. Also, Tampa Bay owner Malcolm Glazer is a leading candidate to buy the Dodgers -- a deal muddied by cross-ownership rules in both leagues -- and one scenario involves him positioning himself to own an NFL franchise in L.A.

Red McCombs, owner of the Minnesota Vikings, met with Tagliabue in New York recently and discussed the L.A. situation at length. McCombs is unhappy with his stadium in Minneapolis and for more than a year has tried to sell the team. But the Viking lease runs through 2011 and, many experts say, has precious few loopholes, if any. That is partly why McCombs was able to buy the team for a relatively cheap $246 million in 1998.

“I sense that the league is not too anxious about talking about relocating a team to L.A. as long as there’s a reasonable chance that that team could do well in the market where it’s at,” McCombs said recently.

The league has far more influence on which team would relocate to L.A. than it had, say, when the Colts moved from Baltimore to Indianapolis or when the Cardinals moved from St. Louis to Phoenix. That’s because virtually every stadium proposal can be derailed if the league withholds its $150-million G-3 loan, a financing cornerstone. Teams are ineligible for G-3s if they have broken their leases, or -- and this is a direct slap at the Raiders -- are suing the league.

Rooney said the unwillingness of L.A. to help in building a stadium could be a problem when it comes to getting a deal done.

“It’s going to cost a lot of money to build a stadium out there,” he said. “Their participation probably would be pretty well needed. It’s one of those situations where you need the involvement of the team, the involvement of the league, and the involvement of the community. I think if a community’s involved ... then they’re going to try to make it successful.”

Indianapolis appears ready to dip into public funds to keep its team. Although their lease runs through the 2013 season, the Colts can opt out in 2007 if the city fails to bring the team up to the league median in gross revenue in two of the next three seasons. The lease also requires that the city provide a “first-class” facility. Colt owner Jim Irsay recently said those two payments could approach $30 million.

The 56,000-seat RCA Dome is not only the league’s smallest venue but one of its oldest.

Even if no payments are made to keep the Colts, the team is required to stay through the 2006 season. If the team leaves after that, it will owe the city $11 million a year through 2013.

“We’re not working with a gun against our heads here,” said Fred Glass, president of the Capital Improvement Board, the city agency that owns and operates the RCA Dome. “We’re going to work together to see if we can come up with a long-term deal.”

Earlier this month in Louisiana, the state House of Representatives said in a nonbinding resolution that public funds should not be used to pay for a new stadium for the Saints.

The Saints’ lease keeps them in the Superdome through the 2010 season, but they can terminate after the 2005 season, at a cost of $81 million. As part of a deal signed in 2001, the team receives escalating financial inducements from the state -- $12.5 million this year, $15 million after each of the next three seasons, $20 million after the 2006 and ’07 seasons, and $23.5 million after each of the last three years.

Already, the state has had problems making those payments because the money is tied to hotel-motel taxes, and the tourist industry has been struggling. Even so, considering the amount of money that can be generated by a new stadium loaded with luxury suites and club seats, those payments might not be large enough.

That doesn’t sit well in a city with just one Fortune 500 company and a new NBA team to support. Saint owner Tom Benson’s threat to build a stadium in Mississippi also has angered people throughout Louisiana.

Louisiana Rep. Roy “Hoppy” Hopkins of Oil City voiced those frustrations recently, asking of the organization that has won one playoff game in 35 seasons, “Do they have any intention of building a team before they build a new stadium?”