Plan Unveiled for Stadium Next to Proposed Arena

Two longtime Los Angeles business and civic leaders became the latest players to enter Southern California’s increasingly crowded and complex football stadium derby Friday, unveiling a plan for a $300-million-plus showpiece next to the proposed downtown site of a new sports arena.

In an interview with The Times, retired Arco Chairman Lodwrick M. Cook and businessman Sheldon Ausman--who headed L.A.’s 1993 Super Bowl host committee--revealed their vision for a largely privately financed 72,000-seat stadium complete with luxury boxes and club seats.

The businessmen said they plan to sell personal seat licenses as well as shares of stock in the stadium to create a broad sense of ownership, but are also seeking large-scale investors.

At this point, however, such investors have yet to come forward. Nor do Cook and Ausman have an NFL team lined up to play ball in the three-tiered stadium. They said they may also have to seek some taxpayer funding.

But both businessmen insist that their proposal is serious and could serve as a strong lure to the NFL if it continues to turn a cold shoulder to the landmark Coliseum and the rest of the entries in what is becoming a bewildering array of possible football stadium sites--from Dodger Stadium and Hollywood Park to Anaheim and West L.A.

A video intended to promote the project to the National Football League, local officials, potential investors and community leaders describes the South Park Sports Complex to be sandwiched between the Los Angeles Convention Center and the TransAmerica building as part of a vast entertainment mecca. Other elements would include the proposed basketball and hockey arena as well as a multiplex movie theater, an American music museum, shops, restaurants and about 500,000 square feet of exhibit space for art festivals and conventions.

Ausman, a former four-year president of the city’s Convention and Visitors Bureau, said a football stadium next to the proposed hockey and basketball arena would provide the critical mass necessary to spur economic development of the restaurants, shops and--most important--one or more large hotels to house convention-goers.

“I’m convinced that this is the place to support,” he said via conference call from Phoenix. “If we don’t do it now, then when?”

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Although the concept for a stadium in South Park--an underdeveloped downtown neighborhood of parking lots and half-empty warehouses--has been bandied about for more than a year, the project has become more concrete over the past two months and gained momentum this week with the Los Angeles Kings’ proposal to build an arena near the Convention Center. Cook and others say they have donated several hundred thousand dollars in seed money to found South Park Sports Inc., with a project team including a dozen high-powered corporations such as William Morris, Smith Barney and the law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips.

The group met last week with NFL officials, and is finishing research on financing plans and stadium design, intending to make a formal proposal in the coming weeks. Project leaders also met recently with more than half of the two-dozen-plus property owners in the area, and expect that they could purchase the necessary land for about $45 million.

“We need to put a new image on this city, that it is alive and well and vibrant,” Cook, former chairman of RLA, the nonprofit riot recovery agency, said Friday. “We all feel that otherwise, this city just looks second-rate. And it isn’t. But it needs some new jewels.”

South Park joins an already crowded field of contenders for a new pro football stadium. Although none so far has found favor in the eyes of NFL owners, league and city sources said the long-running stadium sweepstakes has been sparked anew since the announcement this month that Los Angeles Kings owners Ed Roski and Phil Anschutz want to build their arena, with the Lakers, in downtown Los Angeles.

“A new building and the energy from a new building will serve as an impetus for people to re-look at issues and reconsider,” said Fred Rosen, chairman of Football L.A., a committee created a year ago by Mayor Richard Riordan to help bring a new NFL team to town.

“The city of Los Angeles, in all rowing in the same boat, showed [NFL leaders] that the city can do something they didn’t think the city could do,” added Steven Soboroff, a Riordan advisor and key negotiator for the arena deal and stadium proposals. “It’s a once-in-a-hundred-year opportunity, and it’s transcending everything political.”

Since the Raiders left town last year, politicians and business leaders have been scrambling to bring pro football back to the nation’s second-largest city. Among the proposed sites:

* The Coliseum. The City Council and Riordan have endorsed the 73-year-old national landmark in Exposition Park, and are at work on a new proposal that would place a state-of-the-art facility--including luxury boxes and club seats--inside the walls that hosted the 1932 and 1984 Olympic Games. Kansas City-based HOK Sports Facilities Group, renowned architects of several new NFL stadiums, is at work on a design to show the League at its October meeting.

Spearheaded by the Community Redevelopment Agency and Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas--whose district includes the Coliseum--the proposal garnered new attention this week when a dozen key officials signed a rare proactive statement of political unity backing it as the No. 1 choice for a stadium, and NFL leaders offered specific suggestions on how the Coliseum should focus its proposal.

“We are in this, and it is a mistake to count the Coliseum out,” said Ridley-Thomas, noting that the Coliseum could be renovated for about $150 million, far less than building a stadium from the ground up.

* Dodger Stadium. Owner Peter O’Malley and Catellus Development are researching the idea of a stadium next to his ballpark in Chavez Ravine. A feasibility study due in June is nearing completion.

“The study was more complicated than anticipated, which is the main reason it’s taken more time,” O’Malley said this week. “We’re in the ninth inning on that study.”

O’Malley said that he plans to announce soon afterward whether he will attempt to build a football stadium next to the Dodgers’ home.

* Hollywood Park. R.D. Hubbard and sports agent Leigh Steinberg have joined forces behind building a stadium at the Inglewood site as part of a $250-million sports complex. Proponents say they could quickly break ground if a team emerged to play there.

* Various other sites, including Union Station, 190th and Western, the Van Nuys airport vicinity or old General Motors plant, and West Los Angeles near the L.A. National Cemetery. Outside the city, there is talk of bringing a team to Pasadena’s Rose Bowl or to Anaheim.

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As politicians and investors research and debate the merits of each proposed site, insiders say they will ultimately have little say in the matter.

“The NFL, obviously, is going to decide what they’re going to decide,” said Catellus President Nelson Rising, echoing many of those working on competing proposals. “The issue is, where will the NFL be comfortable having a team locate.”

Roger Goodell, NFL’s senior vice president for league development, said this week that he is encouraged by political leaders’ embracing of the Kings’ arena proposal, and that he is open to a variety of options in L.A.

“It’s an attractive concept and we look forward to discussing it further with them,” Goodell said Friday of the South Park project.

Regarding the Coliseum, he said: “We continue to believe that the answer for Los Angeles is a new stadium--not fixing up an antiquated one . . . but we’re always willing to listen.”

Like O’Malley, leaders of the South Park project said they are not eager to compete with the Coliseum, and see their proposal as a “backup” if the NFL continues to frown on the Coliseum option.

“If the NFL decides it doesn’t go to the Coliseum, and we’re not there with this proposal for South Park, then both of them are losers,” Cook said.

Although the City Council and Riordan have endorsed the Coliseum as their No. 1 choice, Councilman Richard Alatorre said Friday that he thinks South Park or Chavez Ravine are more viable.

“I don’t want anything to jeopardize an NFL team,” said Councilman Richard Alatorre. “As long as the Coliseum is still out there, I think it becomes a nuisance.”

Times staff writer T.J. Simers contributed to this story.