Stadium groups brief NFL
Carson’s backers feel they got their message across. An Inglewood update is presented.
The NFL’s committee on Los Angeles opportunities met at league headquarters in New York on Wednesday and heard updated presentations from backers of stadium proposals in Carson and Inglewood.
In attendance at the meeting were the owners on the committee, headed by Art Rooney II of the Pittsburgh Steelers, as well as NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and several of the league’s other top executives.
It was the first time the committee heard from Carmen Policy, who is representing both the San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders, serving as one voice for the Carson concept.
“We as a group felt the presentation went extremely well, and we got our entire message across,” said Policy, who formerly was president of the San Francisco 49ers and later president and a minority owner of the Cleveland Browns. “We were able, maybe for the first time, to totally organize what we’ve been doing, what we’ve accomplished, and what we’re going to continue to do, and why Carson is absolutely the site for a new stadium.”
Policy said the two-team solution “is the right move for the league” in returning to the nation’s No. 2 market, as long as those teams are on an equal footing.
“All the people who have evaluated these scenarios say that if you’re going to have two teams in the market, you can’t let one have an established base and start over the other,” Policy said.
“The league doesn’t want a situation where you have an owner and a tenant. You don’t want it the way it used to be for the [New York] Giants and Jets. Both teams have to have equal status in the building.”
Meanwhile, St. Louis Rams owner Stan Kroenke is touting his own stadium project on nearly 300 acres in Inglewood, on the site of the former Hollywood Park racetrack.
Pending league approval — which could come by year’s end — Kroenke intends to begin construction in December on a complex that includes a stadium, a performing-arts theater and a massive area of housing and retail space.
Representatives of Kroenke declined to comment on the meeting, but they presented an update on the Inglewood design and costs, as well as bringing the owners up to speed on what’s happening in the St. Louis market.
The NFL is keeping close tabs on the competing proposals and what the three current home markets are doing to keep their teams.
The league has taken the unusual step of scheduling an owners’ meeting in August in Chicago so the entire membership can hear the stadium presentations.