Honing his narrative Thursday for the big battles that await in the months ahead, super-salesman Tim Leiweke — the shining star of LA’s civic-business-political culture of the last decade — offered the city a deal so fantastically sweet that it seems pointless to even bothered with a public debate.
An NFL team back in LA by 2012, a spectacular stadium with a retractable roof by 2015, three Super Bowls in 10 years, the World Cup in 2022, a giant new Convention Center that will bring millions of visitors to town, billions in new tourism dollars, five new luxury hotels, 25,000 new jobs and a revitalized downtown that will make us all proud.
And not one red cent in public money.AEG will put up all the money and pay all the bills. You can take Leiweke’s word for it.
Despite fighting a cold, Leiweke held a small Town Hall Los Angeles crowd Thursday at the Millennium Biltmore spellbound as he spun a seamless tale of government that’s useless, a mayor that’s powerless and how entrepreneurs like AEG’s Phil Anschutz perform economic miracles with sports and entertainment venues on five continents.
Leiweke’s sales pitch captured exactly the headlines he wanted. “Tim Leiweke says L.A. stadium could be ready for 2016 Super Bowl,” said the LA Times. “AEG executive says a stadium in L.A. would be super,” said the Daily News.
There are a few problems to overcome — not the least of which is that there has been no sign of a groundswell of popular demand for an NFL team in the 16 years since public apathy and political in-fighting chased away the Rams and Raiders and that former partner Ed Roski has a shovel-ready stadium set to break ground in the City of Industry..
But Leiweke already is negotiating a deal with Chief Legislative Analyst Gerry Miller and will have City Hall on board by January, then he’ll get the state Legislature and Gov. Jerry Brown to exempt him from environmental laws and start the process of getting all the entitlements needed even as he turns a loose concept into concrete and steel plans.
The concept is to tear down the old West Hall of the Convention Center and parking lot and double the size of the I.M. Pei new hall to more than one million square feet, which would put LA at the top of the list for big conventions..
The 78,000-seat stadium — a wonder of environmental sensitivity — would double as an “events center” as part of the Convention Center complex.
AEG doesn’t even plan to build much new parking because the light rail station near Staples will be rebuilt to meet the new stadium’s needs and street cars will be running along downtown streets to connect fans to the stadium from the region’s expanded 30-10 subway and rail system.
All this can happen with $1 billion from AEG and $300 million in city bonds for the Convention Center that AEG will guarantee if soaring revenue from conventions fall short.
Needless to say, Leiweke skipped over the tough questions about public transit construction costs, about AEG keeping all the sources of various tax revenues and the profits from running the convention center.
But it doesn’t matter. The downtown business and City Hall political forces that have done such a good job for so long of looking after themselves at the expense of the rest of the city are already all aboard this plan to provide a playground for corporate America and the rich foks Leiweke talked about who live in beach communities and the Westside who will spend fortunes for luxury boxes and make the whole project a gold mine.
There wasn’t a word about what how this benefits the rest of the city’s four million people beyond the pride and joy of having a football team.
If you want to be informed and involved in the public debate that’s coming, you need to start by hearing Leiweke’s pitch for yourselves in these eight video segments. I’m sure you will be as convinced as I am that this is a deal too good to be true.
Oh, Good Grief!
Not one red cent of public money on a deal that will drive the city further into the crimson danger zone?
Where does $300 MILLION in bonds fall into that fantasy?
Bruno, take a bite out of this guy! And anyone who believes the fairy tale being spun by the crazed, money-grabbing man.
As many have said a thousands times and where are the NC’s on this issue and why hasn’t ONE spoken out or submitted a negative impact statement. If all 91 NC’s started to do their job of rep’ing the people things like this wouldn’t go through. But I’m yet to see what the NC’s do to help the people they’re suppose to represent.
Just what we need, another traffic jam on the 110 and the 10 on the one day in the week when there hasn’t been one. And if anybody remembers what Monday Night Football did to downtown freeways and streets back in the days of Coliseum pro football, you will oppose this from the outset. Not to mention the traffic and dust just from tearing down one side of the convention center, then rebuilding. And of course, the transportation part of the whole show will be the first element to be ditched, because the MTA or somebody will find better ways to spend the money.
A brief reply to anon at 9:22 am: Neighborhood councils will surely react to a specific proposal, particularly one that goes before the City Council. There have been so many false alarms over the past couple of decades that it generally seems premature to jump all over each new suggestion. In terms of the traffic on the 110, harbor area neighborhood councils have made clear their concerns over the creation of a toll road out of the current diamond lane. A predictable backup down to Manchester on game Sundays ought to be incentive enough for people to object, and not just neighborhood councils, but everyone who lives south of the 10. The same logic holds for the westside, the eastside, and the central city.
I suspect that the main reason that angelenos have been cool to bringing back the NFL is that we don’t seem to need professional football to feel that Los Angeles is important. Small town egotism may drive Green Bay and Tampa, but we seem to have things to do here on nice fall and winter days that don’t involve purchasing corporate logos to wear on our chests, nor $10 hot dogs to sate our hunger. In addition, we have come to understand that pro football teams are at best sometime companions, who are quick to pack up and leave for Oakland or St Louis when the better stadium deal comes along. If some billionaire can bring a team and a self-funded stadium to Industry or Irwindale, far from the congested city core, than let him go through the Environmental Review process and if that works out, build it. But stay away from the perpetual jam that is the northbound 110 as it approaches the downtown area.
The NFL should pay us because of all of the additional advertising revenue.
Where to begin? Bob G hit one of the main points on the head – LA doesn’t need a football team to feel good about itself. Sports are overrated. There are more than enough other events that give the communal experience and don’t cause the train wreck of issues this proposal presents.
Sandy Sand – fantasy indeed. This snake oil salesman, LIEweke, is the same song and dance man who has helped his absentee boss reap millions from city coffers in tax breaks, subsidies and other benefits – allegedly all in the name of being a good corporate citizen (the profit they make as a result is just incidental.) Remember the contest they got into with the city on paying their fair share for the Jackson memorial? Their event, their concept, their profit – but apparently, LA’s responsibility to fund. I guess we needed to feel good about ourselves with all the attention good old AEG was able to direct here.
Will the NC’s really stand up and put the brakes to this? Is one of Jerry Brown’s first acts as Governor to grant an environmental waiver to this mess? Will the city council be bought off again to look the other way? How many times can little Timmy tap dance his way to another payday for the reclusive Phil while we watch?
If AEG wants this so badly, then it’s on their nickel – all of it. We’ve lived, very happily, without the NFL for a long time. We don’t need and don’t want your latest ego play. The other stuff – X games (seriously?), World Cup (another way for them to promote their soccer investment we can live without) and miscellaneous other events are nice but somehow we’ve all managed to live fulfilling lives without being “the event and convention center of the world.” Go peddle your papers elsewhere, Tim. I’m happy to drive to Industry once or twice a year and let them deal with the problems. On this one, we all need to get involved, get loud and tell AEG to GET OUT!
Jan Perry is to carry water for this – again. But unfortunately she and Clown Carmen cancel each other out when it comes to credibility, gravitas and basic intelligence or the slightest bit of class. We certainly can’t look to Tony V for that, either. Of course there’s the Dynamic Duo, make that trio, of Hahn, LaBong and Rosendull. You pretty much put Alarcon and Cardenas in context yesterday, and Reyes sounds like he’s chewing cotton balls.
Then there are Garcetti and Wendy competing with Perry for AEG money. And above all two-faced Zine or Zman or whatever he calls himself.
Looks like Leiwike has a cake walk.
But Ron, why not a word on Cooley’s HUGE gaffe in calling the election early, hosting some 20 VIP’s that night in $2500 box seats at the game in what was supposed to be a victory party, a foregone conclusion. Or how he and his Clown puppet had to cancel the presser which was to have annointed the Clown as heir apparent, their plot from the beginning.
Jerks though the Democrats are above included, can’t you PRETEND just a tiny bit to be a newsman instead of a shill for these clowns? We KNOW what hay you’d have made of it if it were Kamala doing it, and gawd forbid, our Mayor!
I pray that the City of Industry starts pouring concrete soon.
According to today’s Daily News informal poll, two-thirds don’t want an NFL team here.
85 Yes. 130 No.
Ditto! Ditto! Ditto! All of the above.
I want an NFL team but would like to see it in the City of Industry and so does a lot of other people. AEG is the scum who are sucking and conieving its way through city hall corridors. Shocking they actually got to put up those ugly billboards around LA Live and they didn’t have a permit. But thanks to Jan Perry and all the city council members who got campaign donations anything can be done in LA. When is this city going to rise like the City of Bell and rebel???
I don’t want any NFL team, especially in LA downtown, which has miserable traffic most of the time. Liweweke gets to make the dough, his boy Villar and gal Perry get to stash some and we all pay the price.
Jack is right. The NFL should pay us. The ratings in LA have gone down and the NFL desperately, DESPERATELY, wants to be in the nations 2nd largest television market.
The NFL is strong, popular, and cognizant of the economy. The only growth is thru the LA market.
They need us more than we need, or want them.
Make them pay.
One could make the obvious joke and say we already have two “professional” football teams in Los Angeles, the Bruins and the Trojans…
Funny this comes out the same day as Garfield-Roosevelt. That’s a football game.
So’s Army-Navy.
So’s USC-UCLA, for that matter…
But given the record of the Rams and Raiders “deals” with Los Angeles and Anaheim (and Irwindale, for that matter), I’d suggest “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is” should be the default with regards to the NFL…
- Brad Smith
bradsmith@smithforcouncil.org
The NFL has done quite well without being in Los Angeles. In fact, based on things like TV ratings, word-of-mouth and the hobby of Fantasy Football, pro-football has become America’s most popular sport.
LA, which is well on its way to becoming a bigger version of Tijuana — and our friends up north have longer considered LA to be merely a bigger version of some dreary Midwestern hinterlands — could fall off the map and no one would raise an eyebrow. Even growing segments of the city’s one claim to fame, the entertainment industry, have been gradually disconnecting from it—is the NBC/Universal Studio’s project sort of a last gasp?
And how many here even spend much or any time around the oldest portion of Los Angeles south of the Hollywood hills? Downtown is a tiny island trapped in the middle of mainly deteriorated, deprived, low-income urban southern California.
As for the San Fernando Valley, it’s not looking much better. An area bogged down by a lot of increasingly working-class-poor, moribund neighborhoods built back in the 1940s and 1950s. Flint, Michigan with sunshine. Peeeuw.