L.A.’s Leaders Have Got to Pull Together on This One

The City of the Angels has another big dream: a sports and entertainment complex that would be built at the downtown Convention Center.

No firm commitments have been made by the city or any other party. Financing for the $200-million, 20,000-seat stadium--which the Lakers basketball team and the Kings hockey franchise might decide to call home--is far from determined, although the sale of taxable municipal bonds is one method under discussion.

The potential benefits to the city and the region are obvious: Steve Soboroff, president of the city’s Board of Recreation and Parks Commissioners and a key negotiator in the matter, described the proposed project as nothing less than “the signal event downtown in the last 50 years.”

It would certainly be that or close to it--if it happens. There have been other projects that seemed to be shaping up as saviors of Los Angeles’ central core, only to fade, victims of bad planning and political infighting. Some are still in the works, like the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Cathedral of Our Lady of Los Angeles, which is proposed as a replacement for St. Vibiana’s. Both have the potential to generate large numbers of visitors and enthusiasm in the downtown area.

The biggest problem has been a lack of focused political leadership. There’s been leadership of sorts, but the only kind capable of making a difference would be coordinated, in sync, clear in its goals. This is not a hard idea to understand, but understanding has been slow in coming in Los Angeles. Quite simply, all of this means that the people who work with the mayor and the people who work with City Council members must talk to each other and combine their energies for the public welfare.

Already there are signs that familiar bureaucratic obstacles and political tensions might jeopardize this deal. Several representatives of the city, including Mayor Richard Riordan, who enthusiastically champions the project, sent a letter last week to the Kings’ owners, who are eager to build a new arena. The letter invited developers to submit a proposal for the new complex, but it was filled with qualifiers and a warning that the road to the first faceoff in a new arena could be long and rocky. City Councilwoman Rita Walters, in whose district the new facility would sit, says she was brought into the long-running discussions about the project only within the last two weeks. Who did what and when is less important than the central point: If the city brokers a deal that helps revive downtown and thus creates jobs, then that is to the good of all of Los Angeles.

Revival of downtown depends on its ability to draw paying crowds in the evening, after the offices close and the commuter trains depart. The arena project could achieve that and promise redevelopment of the decaying area around the Convention Center as well. The project, which would be built at 11th and Figueroa streets, might also bolster the Convention Center itself. Partly because of the lack of nearby hotels, that ambitious facility has lost more than 50 convention opportunities over the last three years and is now operating at a deficit. The sports arena project, with hotels, retail shopping and entertainment sites, could dramatically change the Convention Center’s revenue picture.

But none of this can come about without an agreement. The City Council, developers, team owners and myriad city agencies and officials must forge one and then stick to it. That’s going to be the hard part; a seemingly immovable bureaucracy, as well as political bickering, has buried many a good idea in this city. The stakes are too high for that to happen again.