In June, I wrote about Los Angeles developer Ed Roski’s effort to lure an NFL team to Los Angeles, centered around a plan to build a state-of-the-art, 75,000 seat outdoor stadium in the City of Industry.
The promise of the NFL’s return to the Los Angeles market has been fleeting since the tandem departure of the Rams and Raiders in 1994 (coincidentally, due to the fact that neither team was able to secure a proper venue in the Los Angeles area at the time despite assurances to the contrary),
In 1999, Los Angeles even managed to fumble away the rights to an expansion team that had been promised to them by the NFL, due in no small part to that same inability to construct a suitable stadium – that expansion team was quickly lost to Houston, who jumped at the chance to steal away the would-be LA franchise and quickly built Reliant Stadium, one of the world’s finest sports venues, for the team that would become the Houston Texans.
In my earlier post, I wrote that “Several proposals for new football stadiums in the greater Los Angleles area have come and gone over the past twenty years, but none has appeared to be quite as refined or thought out as that put forth by Roski.”
The likelihood of Roski’s success rise, as the developer refuses to follow the path set forth by those advocates for LA football in years past who have always failed miserably in their efforts by refusing to follow up on their grandiose plans. The bottom line – Ed Roski is serious about bringing an NFL team to LA, and he’s putting his money where is mouth is.
So what’s the news in all this? According to a Contra Costa Times interview with John Semcken, Roski’s business partner, the developer has been busy advancing his plan, opening dialogue with up to seven separate NFL teams, with the intent to purchase and move a franchise to Los Angeles as early as next season. He even claims that their company, Majestic Realty, has a ‘handshake deal’ with Pasadena’s Rose Bowl to use the college football venue as a temporary home for an LA team for the 2009 and 2010 seasons while the new stadium is under construction.
Is this speculation serious, and could an NFL team be in Los Angeles by next season? It might seem unlikely, but it’s not without prescedent. In 1994, when the Raiders fled Los Angeles for a renovated Oakland Coliseum, the move was made at the drop of a hat as promises to renovate their Los Angeles venue fell through. A handful of current NFL franchses are currently faced with similar circumstances, including the Jacksonville Jaguars and Minnesota Vikings – if the right deal came through, I wouldn’t be surprised in the least to see either of these teams in LA next season.
I ended my June post with the following – “Business and Political leaders from throughout California should see the obvious benefits to the success of the Los Angeles project, as well as others across the state seeking to build modern outdoor venues. If Ed Roski is able to pull his plan off, he will have played a large part in helping jumpstart a stagnant part of our state’s economy – something California desperately needs.”
The possibility still exists, as I stated then, that Roski’s stadium project could inject up to eight billion dollars into the California economy. Given the history of the various failed efforts to bring football back to LA, it’s good to see someone finally work to follow through with their promises.