State legislators heed L.A. mayor and council, spurn McCourt on gondola legislation
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Frank McCourt will have to pursue his proposed Dodger Stadium gondola without legislation that would have limited potential legal challenges to the project.
After The Times reported on the legislation, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and the City Council publicly opposed it, asking a state Assembly committee to strip the language that would have benefited the gondola project or kill the bill entirely.
On Friday, the committee stripped the language and moved ahead with the remainder of the bill, which is designed to expedite transit projects in California. Under the now-removed language, future legal challenges to certain Los Angeles transit projects would have been limited to 12 months.
The language of the bill did not cite any specific project, but a staff report called the gondola proposal “one project that would benefit.”
California legislators are set to consider a bill that would limit environmental challenges to transportation projects such as the Dodger Stadium gondola proposal.
A court fight over Metro’s approval of the environmental impact report for the project is at 17 months and counting.
In a letter to state legislators in which she shared the council resolution opposing the language in question, City Councilwoman Eunisses Hernandez said the language would amount to “carve outs” from a worthy bill in order to ease challenges to “a billionaire’s private project.”
McCourt, the former Dodgers owner, first proposed a gondola from Union Station to Dodger Stadium in 2018. The project requires approvals from four public agencies, including the City Council, which is expected to consider the gondola after the completion of a city-commissioned Dodger Stadium traffic study next year.
