Grandstanding Mayor Slim Jim Needs New Game Plan for NFL Stadium

As I watch the new football stadium materialize, mushrooming up from the dreams of small-minded men, I keep thinking of the Charles Bukowski character in “Barfly.”

Bukowski’s girl goes off and sleeps with the buff bozo bartender, and a raging Bukowski demands to know how she could do that with somebody who stands for everything he’s against.

What are you against? She asks.

Obviousness, Bukowski says. Unoriginal, macho sports energy.

I don’t have anything against an NFL franchise in Los Angeles, or a new stadium, for that matter. But it’s embarrassing to watch city leaders jump on the wagon lickety-split, with no public discussion or sophistication, as if this were some hick town desperate for the NFL to throw us a lifeline.

When I first referred to Mayor Hahn as Slim Jim months ago, because there wasn’t much there, I had no idea.

One day last week he was telling me he hadn’t seen a solid proposal, the next day the would-be owners magically produced a model of the new stadium, and the day after that Hahn was nodding like a bobble-head Dodger doll at the press conference, throwing himself behind the deal.

First of all, downtown is a ridiculous place for a stadium, because it’s going to be empty as a cheerleader’s head 90% of the time, and there are a thousand better ways to re-imagine and revitalize downtown.

Second, wrangling the stadium into a redevelopment area by calling the property blighted is a flat-out lie, if not a lawsuit-worthy misuse of redevelopment money. Unless the plan is to have the stadium double as a mental hospital, detox center and homeless shelter, downtown L.A. is going to have the same problems it has today.

Third, these incessant claims from Hahn and the would-be owners about there being no risk to taxpayers are unadulterated hokum, unless they agree to a plan I’m about to explain.

The city says it’s going to finance the land purchase with up to $100 million in municipal bonds, but we shouldn’t worry. The new billionaire owners promise to pay it back in time with ticket taxes and whatnot.

What if the billionaires get hit by a bus?

What if the team is a dud and attendance sags?

What if the franchise up and leaves L.A., as two others did in a span of three months?

The answer is that taxpayers could be left holding the bag, and spending millions more to sue the billionaires. It wouldn’t be the first time a city got fleeced and was left wondering what to do with an empty, useless eyesore of a stadium.

Marc Ganis, a Chicago sports stadium consultant who was involved in the departure of the Raiders and Rams from L.A., says city officials have to insist that “a third-party insurer structure this deal, so there’s no flimflam involved and you’re truly protecting the taxpayers.”

Repayment, he says, shouldn’t be predicated on ticket sales or anything else. It should be a guarantee written in stone, “almost like a letter of credit.”

That means the deal could cost more, Ganis says. But as L.A. City Councilman Jack Weiss keeps telling me, the city ought not to be shy about dictating terms. The NFL needs Los Angeles and its TV market more than L.A. needs the NFL.

Ganis, who lectures at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government on the role of the public sector in sports facility development, said he’s surprised Los Angeles is even considering a downtown site, particularly since football stadiums have little or no economic impact on surrounding areas.

“The best, most effective site for an NFL stadium in Los Angeles is Chavez Ravine,” Ganis said, and he claims it’s obvious to everyone in the sports business except the principals behind the downtown project.

Ganis recommends building the stadium next to Dodger Stadium, and double-decking some of the parking lot to compensate for lost spaces. The acreage is available. The sports theme is already established. The access roads are already in. And the Dodgers are affiliated with Fox, an NFL partner.

“The deal with Fox could be worked out in a day,” Ganis said with only slight exaggeration. “You could build the stadium faster, cheaper, with less public risk, the best potential economic return for an NFL team, and you don’t have to create this contorted procedural mechanism to acquire the land like they’re doing downtown.”

I’m not sure it would be quite as easy as Ganis says. But his arguments should have been part of a public discussion that never took place, and we’re running out of time, given the headfirst rush.

In the span of a week, we’ve gone from City Hall promises that a football stadium wasn’t part of the redevelopment plan to a pom-pom waving celebration with Slim Jim as head cheerleader.

Go team.

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Steve Lopez writes Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Reach him at [email protected].