Nearly 50 years ago, L.A. City Councilwoman Rosalind Wyman, Mayor Frank Poulson and L.A. County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn teamed up to bring the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles.

Twenty years later, Mayor Tom Bradley and City Council President John Ferraro joined forces to bring the Olympics back to L.A.

But today, there is no such roster of powerful politicians publicly leading the charge to bring a National Football League team to Los Angeles or to otherwise boost the city’s sports profile. Certainly there’s no one like New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is using every lever of power at his disposal to build a new stadium for the New York Jets on Manhattan’s West Side and bring the Olympics to New York for the first time.

“There has not been a focal point in local government or an individual who has promoted sports single-handedly in Los Angeles,” said Richard Lichtenstein, a veteran political consultant who represents the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum’s bid for an NFL team.

It’s certainly not coming from the two mayoral candidates.

L.A. Mayor James Hahn, who three years ago backed an ill-fated proposal to bring a football stadium to the South Park neighborhood near Staples Center, has not spent much time rounding up support for the Coliseum bid, although he has expressed support for the plan.

Hahn’s opponent, City Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa, has put getting football back to L.A. well down on his list of priorities if elected mayor only noting that he, too, supports the Coliseum bid.

Limited appetites


The lack of political leadership on sports reflects, among other things, a city where political and economic power are so dispersed it’s difficult to achieve consensus.

Just as important, the public has little appetite for taxpayer dollars subsidizing sports stadiums. This has put the city and the region at loggerheads with the National Football League, which has demanded millions of dollars in public funds for a new football stadium. It also puts more emphasis on private developers to cut the deal.

And unlike other cities, L.A. doesn’t need any more sports franchises to announce that it’s made it to the big time. It’s already there. With so many college and professional sports teams here already, the addition of one more team is unlikely to enhance the city’s status or create an economic revenue stream of any magnitude.

“L.A. will never be like Cleveland or Green Bay, where citizens live or die with their sports teams,” said David Simon, president of the Los Angeles Sports Council. “Elected officials here realize this and so are a bit more cautious.”

As a result, few politicians are willing to stick their neck out to cut major sports deals. Most aggressive was former L.A. City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas (now a state assemblyman), to little avail. His successor, Bernard Parks, has also tried to work with the NFL, though he has not focused on the issue as much as Ridley-Thomas did.

Contrast that with the late 1950s, when Wyman and the others negotiated a deal with team owner Walter O’Malley that brought the Dodgers to Los Angeles and eventually a new stadium in Chavez Ravine. At the time, L.A. was still largely a minor league town the Lakers had yet to arrive and the NFL Rams had only a limited following.

“Bringing the Dodgers here was something we all agreed upon,” Wyman said in an interview last week. “It was important for the growth of Los Angeles and for the business community. We felt that we weren’t a big league city if we didn’t have major league ball.”

Downtown Bellwether


Wyman remembered a study concluding that businesses would be more likely to place facilities and headquarters in L.A. if there were more arts and sports opportunities.

What’s more, powerful downtown booster Dorothy Chandler was waiting for the bellwether Dodgers deal to be completed before moving ahead with her own plan for what would become the Music Center on Bunker Hill, which opened in 1964.

Yet even then L.A. had an independent streak. Dodger Stadium was one of the first ballparks to be built with private funds. (The city’s contribution to the project was clearing away the residents mostly Hispanics and donating the land.)

That pattern continued with the Olympics. Under the deal cut by Bradley and Ferraro, the 1984 games would be privately financed. Bradley brought on businessman Peter Ueberroth, who spearheaded a fundraising effort that generated tens of millions of dollars in surplus money. (Those funds were gradually disbursed to youth sports leagues and facilities.)

So it was not surprising that in 1997 the City Council balked at efforts by Philip Anschutz and Ed Roski to have the city turn over land for $1 a year and provide $70 million in additional subsidies in order to develop what is now Staples Center. Then-Councilman Joel Wachs threatened to put an initiative before voters banning subsidies for sports franchises.

Anschutz and Roski were forced to accept a compromise in which they paid the city for the land and guaranteed that if revenues did not meet projections, they would pay back the $70 million loan out of their own pockets.

“The Staples deal was a watershed moment for sports in this town and sports around the country,” said David Carter, with the Sports Business Group. “It showed that new sports facilities could be built privately.”

Two years later, when the NFL insisted that L.A. put in public dollars for a new football stadium at the Coliseum, city leaders knew that they would face strong public resistance. “The city essentially said, ‘Thanks, but no thanks,” Carter said.

That’s one reason so few politicians have stepped up publicly to make deals. “There’s very little upside and a whole lot of downside,” said one local consultant who has advised on several sports deals.

Lacking unified voice


Complicating matters for football is the lack of unity on a site, with the cities of Carson, Pasadena and Anaheim joining L.A. in proposing locations for a stadium. “This is a huge prize with intense competition, which is why so many cities are interested,” said Ridley-Thomas.

Even in L.A., there’s hardly been a unified voice in favor of the Coliseum, in part because of a perceived concern that NFL owners were leery of the neighborhood around the Coliseum and would look more favorably on other venues.

In 2002, Hahn got behind a proposal from Anschutz Entertainment Group to build a football stadium near the Staples Center part of what was to be a sports and entertainment center.

Within a month the proposal fizzled as AEG and other investors were concerned about the Coliseum remaining in the bidding war.

“All these other proposals kept coming forward and then falling by the wayside,” Ridley-Thomas said. “They found out that these mega projects are very complicated.”

Representatives from all four remaining sites made presentations to the NFL last month. At the recent Super Bowl championship game, Commissioner Paul Tagliabue once again said that the NFL would like to have a team in the L.A. area by the end of the decade, although he gave little in the way of specifics.

“All these competing proposals have only served to complicate things now as the city tries to get a football team,” Wyman said. “It has prevented all the regional leadership from getting behind one proposal, as we had when we brought the Dodgers here. Back then, everybody rooted together.”