SAN FRANCISCO — The redevelopment agency in Los Angeles has approved two agreements detailing potential tax-increment bond financing for a potential professional football team in Los Angeles.
The board of the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency Thursday approved an agreement with the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Commission to finance $25 million of improvement projects if the Coliseum panel signs a lease with a National Football League team.
It also approved a preliminary agreement with the city of Los Angeles, designating $112.5 million of projects in the stadium area as being eligible for tax-increment financing.
The agreements were approved last week to send a message to the NFL in advance of an owners’ meeting this week in Denver, where the possibility of placing a team in Los Angeles is to be on the agenda.
League officials, while showing clear interest in putting a team back in the nation’s second-largest market, have no formal timetable for action.
A special committee of 11 team owners met in the Dallas area earlier this month to hear pitches from California politicians, including Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Curt Pringle, the mayor of Anaheim, which is also trying to land an NFL franchise.
The Los Angeles Coliseum, which opened in 1923, has in the past housed the Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Raiders teams. The 92,000-seat stadium, still home to the University of Southern California Trojans football team, is considered obsolete for the revenue-generating needs of pro football, due to a lack of luxury boxes and poor sight lines at many of its seats.
Villaraigosa and other backers of the NFL stadium arrangement have indicated that they will offer no general fund support for a stadium project, a position that does not exclude tax-increment bond support. The higher incremental property values generated by a football franchise would finance debt support for such bonds.
The NFL or its new franchise are still expected to finance most of the roughly $800 million tab for a Coliseum project, which would essentially build a new stadium within the site of the current one with 67,000 seats, including 15,000 expensive club seats and 500 even-more-expensive luxury boxes.
The $25 million Coliseum commission agreement was made possible by special state legislation that extended by 12 years the life of the redevelopment project area where the Coliseum is situated.
It would finance roadwork and landscaping in the areas around the stadium, and finance asbestos removal from the current stadium.
The legislation would allow the financing to go forward only if the Coliseum commission signs a 15-year lease with an NFL team that is not currently located in California — thereby excluding the San Diego Chargers, the San Francisco 49ers, and the Oakland Raiders.
The $112.6 million agreement with the city is more preliminary — all projects would require further approvals — but is not bound by the limits of the special state law that applies to the Coliseum commission.
Projects deemed eligible for tax-increment financing include a light-rail station, parking structures, utility work, and streetscaping.
