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Originally Posted by pesto
Love the entertainment value, but I can't take this seriously. LA already has 2 football stadiums within 5 miles of this one.
A baseball stadium is a tight fit in that area and questionable due to the proximity and stature of Dodger Stadium. But football requires 10,000 parking places and then lies vacant 355 days per year. And it's 1 mile from the Coliseum, at a ludicrously over-crowded freeway intersection and next to 4 other sports teams, film festivals, conventions, clubs. Almost always going to be a traffic issue.
What govt. official could vote for it and keep his job? Even South Park residents are going to sue.
NY, SF, Dallas, Boston: when large cities build football stadiums they move them to the outer suburbs. There's a reason for this: they are huge and empty 95 percent of the time and the nature of the experience is to drive and tailgate. Even the Air Quality people wouldn't let this happen in DT.
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The economic windfall as a result of a NFL stadium plunked down in the middle of Downtown would be absolutely enormous. Not only would it guarantee continuous sellouts (at least for the first few years as the novelty of the NFL-back-in-LA is still fresh) for whatever NFL team was there, but it would more than likely bring the Super Bowl to Los Angeles every 3 or 4 years, at least for the next 20 years (the NFL loves to rotate around warm weather cities, such as San Diego, Tampa/Miami, and soon, Dallas). Super Bowls bring in ~$500 million in outsider spending every year to the host city, and usually results in a net boost of $150-200 million to the local economy (which will undoubtedly be greater in a city like Los Angeles).
Constructing a retractable roof stadium (a la Phoenix and Dallas) opens up Los Angeles to more sporting events (think Summer Olympics, NCAA Final Four, high-profile NCAA college football games (neutral turf site), and, gasp, Wrestlemania) and other large scale activities (such as large-venue concerts that usually go to the Rose Bowl, not within city limits).
Wasserman and Leiwike stand to make a mint with an NFL stadium near LA Live, and they realize this; otherwise, this wouldn't be in the news. What I hope they have is the foresight to realize that pledging to formulate and/or support preventative solutions to potential problems (such as the already-existing traffic issues), preferably monetarily, would help gain the public's favor (i'm not just talking about NFL fans, but residents of the neighborhood as well) Perhaps promising to pledge investments to improve the infrastructure in and around L.A. Live (i.e throwing money at the "Downtown Commuter" trolley system, for example) to help alleviate the flooding of cars to the area during multiple events (i.e Lakers game, a concert, AND an NFL game) CONCURRENT with the stadium construction would kill two birds with one stone (get the stadium built, improve public transportation (albeit on a small scale))
What we can't quantitatively assess (and understate) is the positive publicity that L.A. (not the Hollywood stylized sense of L.A., but the *real* L.A. core) would get out of this Stadium. People outside L.A. don't fully realize what's going on in and around Downtown...They don't realize that Los Angeles is evolving into a full-scale metropolis along the vein of NY, Boston, Philadelphia, etc.....The kind of word-of-mouth goodwill as a result of tourists coming into our fair city and sharing their *wonderful* experiences with friends abroad is an economic ripple effect that will be felt for years and years down the line.
And on the whole "tailgating" culture issue: Yes, in the traditional sense, that's what NFL fans love to do, however, that doesn't mean we can't circumvent it. Take AT&T Park in San Francisco for example. The old Giant ballpark, Candlestick, was up on a hill, you had to drive to it, and was nowhere near the city core. They build a new stadium by the pier, in the city core, with a fraction of the number or parking spaces usually found at other new baseball stadiums. What happened? Fans travelled via BART and other forms of public transportation, in droves, and sold out that ballpark for years. Sure, Barry Bonds and his roid-riddled HR record had something to do with it, but even today, fans fill up that stadium to near-capacity. The culture of the baseball fan changed to accommodate the location of the new stadium. The same can also be had in Los Angeles. It's been more than 15 years since the NFL was here. Once the NFL comes back, it will be like the "reset" button on football was pushed. Fans can adjust and park further away at already-existing parking lots (again, sending an economic ripple effect through downtown) and/or take the subway (or the trolly, or a taxi, or even WALK) to the Stadium. "Tailgating" does not requiring having to park your car around the new stadium, grilling burgers and hot dogs, and getting wasted on cheap beer. By that time, there should enough eating and extra-curricular options in and around L.A. Live to support 70,000 football fans before the game (and then some). And if there weren't, i'm sure the growing collective of gourmet food trucks, dirty dog ladies, and taco stands would make up the deficit.
And if fans really wanted to tailgate in the tradition sense? Nobody will stop them....but they'll just have to arrive at the stadium MUCH MUCH earlier and get one of those prized and precious few parking spots.
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