Move’s Dollars and Sense : Businesses Say They’ll Adjust to Life After the Rams

Spearing plastic letters with a lance, employee Jesse Ornela created a timely message this week on the sign in front of The Catch restaurant, across the street from Anaheim Stadium:

“Today’s Special,” read the marquee, “Lack of Ram.”

A guy driving by in green Ford offered a twist. “Hey, it should read ‘Barbecue Georgia,’ ” he yelled, a reference to Rams owner Georgia Frontiere, who on Tuesday made official her decision to try to move the football franchise to St. Louis.

The Catch is among the more visible victims of the Rams’ plan to pack up and leave. The upscale eatery shuttled upward of 300 fans to the stadium gate, directly across State College Boulevard, on game days. It poured liquid sympathy to many more who stopped by after one of the team’s many disappointing afternoons in recent years.

Yet, like other businesses near the stadium, The Catch’s owners minimize the effect of losing the football team. Fewer patrons have been showing up on game days in direct proportion to Ram’s flagging attendance, which dropped as low as 25,705 in one game last season. Hockey’s Mighty Ducks have become a hotter ticket.

“It’s almost a relief for them to finally be saying, ‘We’re out of here,’ ” said Don Myers, The Catch’s managing partner.

Losing a National Football League franchise is more a blow to the region’s image than to its finances, local economic development officials say.

The Rams contributed $30 million a year to the Orange County economy and as much as $78 million in overall spending benefits, said Wayne Wedin, chairman of the Orange County Chamber of Industry & Commerce, citing figures based on a 1987 Anaheim city-sponsored study. Though a significant sum, this is but a fraction of the county’s $77-billion annual economy.

It is important, however, because an NFL team lends prestige to a city and is the kind of amenity that business leaders appreciate when they scout communities.

“This is not a devastating economic loss,” Wedin said, vowing to continue to fight to retain the team. But “it would be a very negative thing from the standpoint of business retention.”

The situation underscores what sports tycoons have long known: Having a professional team in a city is not enough. To attract fans, a team had better establish local roots and have a winning season. The Rams did neither.

“The Rams never moved completely to Orange County,” lamented Anaheim Mayor Tom Daly, who is among the locals miffed that the team never dropped “Los Angeles” from its name. “They took to residing in Orange County on a temporary basis and never a permanent basis.”

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The team finished the 1994 season with four wins and 12 losses, dead last in the NFC Western Division for the fifth straight season. As a result, it never had the fan or business support that some cities have lavished on its sports franchises.

As businesses withered from lack of fan patronage outside the stadium, corporations all but deserted the Rams inside. Some gave up renewing their $40,000-a-season luxury boxes because they said clients weren’t interested anymore. They would rather see the Lakers.

“In the last couple of years, we have had trouble finding clients who wanted to go to Rams games,” said Jon Anderson, managing partner of the law firm of Latham & Watkins in Costa Mesa.

He said the law firm plans to retain its lease because clients still enjoy going to Angels baseball games.

Other companies say luxury boxes are a perk they can no longer afford. Lisa Riordan, spokeswoman for Bergen Brunswig Corp. in Orange, said the pharmaceuticals company debated ways to cut its budget and decided to jettison the box even before the Rams decided to leave.

“If we still had (our box seats) . . . we would have given them up,” she said.

As fans of all varieties have soured on the Rams, they have also stopped patronizing the small businesses near the stadium.

Bruce Lee, desk clerk at the 60-room Angel Inn motel, chats at length about the huge crowds that packed the place for the Freedom Bowl college football game last month at Anaheim Stadium, but little is said about the Rams.

He points out the front window to the shuttered Fitzgerald Restaurant, a once-thriving steakhouse and coffee shop next door. He said the restaurant used to rack up $1 million a year in sales and now is closed.

The Rams’ decision to depart is the latest in a triple play of pain for businesses dependent on sports in Anaheim. First came the baseball strike that idled the Angels, then the hockey strike that delayed the second season of the Mighty Ducks, and now the Rams’ decision.

More than 10,000 form letters--signed by customers--were sent in support of keeping the Rams in Anaheim by the National Sports Grill, which opened last June cater-corner to Anaheim Stadium. The bar has become one of the top producers in its six-unit chain, according to manager Steve Higgins, by not only running a shuttle to the stadium on Sundays but by having Ram players or cheerleaders stop by after games.

Still, far from lamenting the Rams’ decision, Higgins said he instead looks forward to what’s left of the Mighty Ducks’ season. The first home game at The Pond is Monday against the Edmonton Oilers.

The Catch’s Myers said he is taking the Rams’ planned move in stride as well. As fan interest has waned in the Rams, Myers said the restaurant has aggressively targeted its marketing beyond dependency on the stadium, such as working to attract tourists from local hotels.

“It is not going to be that devastating,” Myers said. “We haven’t been so dependent on the Rams.”

Still, he said, for a place that has former Rams quarterback Jim Everett’s jersey on display, it will be hard to see the team go.

Perhaps, he said, they will hang it upside down.

* THE BIG MOVE: A1, A12-16