
The Angels and the city of Anaheim aren’t talking. The Memorandums of Understanding on a proposed parking lot development deal that could finance major renovations or a new stadium is long dead. All along, our friends at CATER, many of whom haven’t been to a game at the Big A in years, have a mantra: “where will the Angels go?”
Just look at all the stories about proposed NFL stadiums in Carson and Inglewood that the city councils there seem to be fast tracking for approval and the new obvious choice is the Farmer’s Field location in Downtown Los Angeles. Plenty of room and plenty of parking — with a re-do from a football stadium to a baseball park.
From Sunday’s LA Times:
“We are nowhere,” owner Arte Moreno said Friday, as the Angels held their first spring-training workout. “We’ve had zero conversations with them since a long time before September, and we have no planned conversations.”
The Angels have a four-year window, from 2016-2019, to opt out of their lease on the 50-year-old stadium. If they don’t, it extends through 2029.
In September 2013, the Anaheim City Council voted, 4-1, to approve the framework of a deal in which the Angels would pay an estimated $150 million to refurbish the infrastructure of the stadium. In exchange, the city would lease the parking lot to Moreno for $1 per year, enabling him to develop the land and use the proceeds to recoup renovation costs.
Mayor Tom Tait objected, saying the land was worth too much — $225 million, according to a commissioned appraisal — for the city to lease it for so little without sharing in the development proceeds.
Anaheim council member Kris Murray tells the LiberalOC, “The risk of losing the team to another city is very real and I have always taken that risk seriously. The city is prepared to negotiate in good faith with the team and I believe the dedicated fan base in Anaheim/Orange County and our central location in Southern California at Angels Stadium — with access to transit and major freeways — make us uniquely competitive. We also have major challenges with an older stadium that must be addressed in any agreement. It is time to move forward quickly and get a deal done and I remain optimistic that we will get to a good place for the city and the team.”
While we won’t see the Angels in Inglewood, look how fast the city council moved to make it happen. And construction of a new stadium could be done in three years. From this story in the LA Times:
Inglewood city officials unanimously approved zoning changes Tuesday night for a $1.86-billion stadium at the old Hollywood Park racetrack. That vote gave Kroenke a clear head start in the NFL-to-Los Angeles derby that intensified last week with the unveiling of a competing stadium in Carson that would be shared by the San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders. That plan could yet derail Kroenke’s ambitions.
The real estate baron’s partnership with the developers of Hollywood Park reflects how profits from modern-day stadiums come from more than just the stadium.
The Rams owner bought a stake in Hollywood Park Land Co., which is turning a nearly 300-acre racetrack site into homes, office buildings, a big shopping center and now potentially an NFL stadium. It’s the kind of thing that Kroenke can’t do in St. Louis, which is proposing a publicly owned riverfront stadium surrounded mainly by parking lots.
The Inglewood plan follows a model increasingly popular among stadium owners, said Rodney Fort, a sports economist at the University of Michigan.
“You’ve got to spend money to make money, and he can make a lot more off his own development in L.A.,” Fort said. “It’s more like a real estate development than a stadium.”
Earlier this month, the San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders revealed plans for a shared stadium in Carson. The State of California has declared that site ready to go. From the LA Times story:
“It is safe,” said Emad Yemut, a supervising engineer for the state Toxic Substances Control Department, which oversees the decontamination effort. “Everything is done.”
Yemut said the site still needs a series of extraction wells to remove methane and other gases from 157 tainted acres, but it could be installed in six months to a year once a final plan for a stadium is approved.
….
The Times reported Thursday that the Chargers and Raiders had come up with a plan — or perhaps a negotiating ploy — to build and share the $1.7-billion, 68,000-seat stadium. The parcel, known as Carson Marketplace, thus again became part of the prospective NFL map in L.A., along with proposed arenas in Inglewood, downtown and City of Industry.
The Chargers and Raiders said they would commit to Carson if they fail to get public subsidies for new stadiums in their home markets. The Carson project would be privately financed, they said.
A group of business and labor leaders formed to push the plan, Carson2gether, launched a ballot initiative drive Friday to get voter approval to build the stadium.
The Farmer’s Field football stadium deal to place an NFL stadium in downtown LA near the convention center is set to expire in March. Baseball stadiums don’t take three years to build and don’t be surprised if Angels owner Arte Moreno works with officials in the city of Los Angeles on a new stadium and a bid to drop “of Anaheim” from the Angels official name. The Farmer’s Field project was announced in 2011, so the developers have had plenty of time to do any environmental studies required for building a stadium.
What does Arte think? He gave this nugget to the LA Times:
“It’s really interesting, that whole landscape of the football thing.”
Personality, who care if the Angels moved. I think with all the plans for the NFL teams in Carson, the Angels should go home to La County The stadium should be destroy and a high tech incubator office should be created. Anaheim needs something besides some manufacturing and tourism.
Many options? Man, what a joke.
The clock is still ticking. Arte has already burned through half of that three years the bought-for members of the City Council gave him for free. He only has four years to find a site, get planning approval, get an EIR done, design a stadium, bid a stadium, and then build it.
Haha, you go Arte, Godspeed!