Proposed Los Angeles NFL stadiums
Over the 20-year absence of the National Football League from Los Angeles many proposals were made for stadiums that would attract an NFL team to the Los Angeles Area. The trend began in 1995 when a stadium planned to be built in Hollywood Park was rejected by Los Angeles Raiders owner Al Davis in favor of relocating back to Oakland, California due to a stipulation that he would have had to share the stadium with a future second team.
It was SoFi Stadium in Inglewood that the league ultimately accepted in a January 2016 meeting ending the league's absence in the market and the absence of a suitable long term stadium for NFL football. After five years of construction the stadium became the home of the Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Chargers in 2020. This article covers the numerous stadium proposals for Los Angeles between 1995 and 2016.
Los Angeles Seahawks
In 1996, Ken Behring, the then-owner of the Seattle Seahawks, expressed unhappiness with his team's facility, the Kingdome, and moved the team's offices to Anaheim, California, where the Rams had played from 1980 until they moved to St. Louis in 1995. However, the move was never completed, and the Seahawks eventually were sold to Paul Allen, who was instrumental in getting a new deal done with Seattle to build what is now Lumen Field. The Seahawks moved into the new stadium for the 2002 season.1999 expansion team plans
In early May 1998, entertainment guru Michael Ovitz announced he would lead a largely privately financed $750 million project to build a stadium and shopping center called "The Hacienda" in Carson, California in hopes of landing the expansion team.In late October 1998, NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue announced that the NFL owners would indeed expand the league to 32 teams, and would decide by April 1999 which city would be awarded the NFL expansion franchise. Meanwhile, Ovitz now had competition coming from his own market, as real estate developer Ed Roski announced a rival bid for a future Los Angeles team; his proposal centered around putting a 68,000-seat stadium inside the shell of the historic Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
On March 16, 1999, the NFL owners, by a 29-2 vote, approved a resolution to award Los Angeles the expansion 32nd franchise. However, the award was contingent on the city's putting together an acceptable ownership team and stadium deal by September 15. If the parties could not reach an agreement or be reasonably close to doing so, the committee would then turn its recommendation to Houston, who had put in an expansion team bid to replace the Houston Oilers, who had relocated to Nashville and subsequently rebranded as the Tennessee Titans.
A month later, NFL executives flew to Los Angeles, and were shocked at the lack of progress: Los Angeles would not allow tax dollars to be used for a new stadium, the competing groups were locked in a standoff as neither would concede its bid to the other nor would the groups agree to combine their efforts in attempts to put together a deal, and neither group was prepared to build a state-of-the-art facility, which rival expansion team bidder Houston had promised since 1997.
A return visit in late May yielded little change: Ovitz and Roski were still locked in a standoff; Roski's bid remained unchanged since the onset, while Ovitz unveiled plans to turn the area around the Coliseum into a complex of parks, parking garages, shopping areas and a brand-new stadium. Though Tagliabue and the NFL officials were pleased with the concept, they were daunted by the costs which included $225 million for parking garages, especially since neither Los Angeles nor the State of California was willing to commit the necessary funds.
At this point, Tagliabue expressed his frustration with Los Angeles’ inability to get a plan together, and the next month, he advised Houston bidder Bob McNair to resume his discussions with the expansion committee.
On September 9, 1999, the league's expansion committee indicated that McNair and other Houston officials should be prepared to attend an October 6 meeting of the NFL owners in Atlanta. The NFL noted that the Los Angeles effort was still making no progress and now featured a three-way battle between Ovitz, Roski, and newcomer Marvin Davis. Although the league would still entertain an offer from any of the competing Los Angeles groups, the league would now consider an offer from McNair and Houston as well.
In the first week of October, Ovitz announced that his group was prepared to offer $540 million for the 32nd NFL franchise to be awarded to Los Angeles. However, later that week, McNair's Houston NFL Holdings proposed a bid of $700 million to the owners for the NFL to award the 32nd franchise to Houston instead.
On the morning of October 6, 1999, McNair's persistence finally paid off as the NFL owners voted 29-0 to accept McNair's higher offer, thus leading to the formation of the Houston Texans.
Rose Bowl Stadium (2003)
The Rose Bowl was a proposed site for an NFL relocation or even an expansion team to Los Angeles. In 2003, architects proposed a $500 million renovation to the Rose Bowl Stadium in order to meet the needs of an NFL team, but also appease the residents of Pasadena. This charge was led by John Moag, an investment banker who was a leader in the attempt to relocate the Cleveland Browns to Baltimore. Los Angeles had been without a team since 1994, but with the second best TV market in the nation, the NFL was eyeing bringing a team back. The renovation would take a minimum of 23 months and would focus on renovating the interior of the stadium. While the outer shell would stay the same, the capacity would drop from 92,000 people to 68,000 people. Most of the historical and culturally important aspects of the stadium, such as the marquee outside, would stay.The Pasadena residents were not on board with this proposal. The traffic and parking issues that would come with this new team would be tremendously difficult. Furthermore, they worried about losing their neighborhood stadium to the NFL. Regarding the proposed underground parking, one resident reported “‘That’s ridiculous that they can build underground parking in a streambed. It’s inappropriate, it’s far too expensive, and it just isn’t going to work’”. The President of the Tournament of Roses at the time, Mitch Dorger, stated that “‘We’re very interested in maintaining a viable venue for our game. We would like to see a proposal that finds a way to do that’”. Based on the residents of the neighborhood and the Tournament of Roses committee, the main reason for not wanting the new NFL stadium was the disturbance to both the neighborhood and the historical and cultural values of the stadium and area.
Furthermore, the Rose Bowl decided against hosting even a temporary NFL team in 2015 due to attempts at establishing a music and arts festival. Other contenders for this temporary site were the Los Angeles Coliseum, Dodger Stadium, Angel Stadium, and StubHub Center.
Dodger Stadium parking lot (2005)
Several other sites were mentioned as possible locations for a new stadium. Then Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt had expressed interest in building a new football stadium next to Dodger Stadium. Angel Stadium of Anaheim was reconfigured as a baseball-only park in the mid-1990s, but there had been proposals to build a new football stadium next to it. The Dodger Stadium parking lot had been discussed by NFL owners, in private, as possibly being the best site in Southern California to build a new professional football stadium. Officials with the Dodgers and the NFL met in secret twice in 2005 to discuss the possibility of constructing a stadium and retail complex adjacent to Dodger Stadium. After the Boston Herald reported the details of the plan, political pressure forced both the NFL and Dodgers owner Frank McCourt to deny that either party was aggressively pursuing the idea.Los Angeles Stadium in the City of Industry (2008)
Los Angeles Stadium was a proposed 75,000-seat football stadium, the centerpiece of a 600-acre entertainment district in the City of Industry, California. Edward P. Roski, a part-owner of the Los Angeles Lakers of the NBA and Los Angeles Kings of the NHL, announced plans for a stadium on the northern side of the interchange of state routes 57 and 60, east of Downtown Los Angeles with the purpose of attracting an NFL team to the Los Angeles region.The City of Industry proposal, which received a full approval from all regulatory authorities but never found a willing team to move into the proposed stadium, sat dormant from 2011 until the Inglewood proposal was approved.
History
Roski, who helped build Staples Center, stated that the new 75,000-seat stadium would be privately financed and would be the centerpiece of a new 600-acre entertainment and retail complex in the City of Industry which would have included 25,000 ample on-site parking spaces. The proposed stadium and mixed-use development was designed by Dan Meis, FAIA, and Aedas Sport out of Los Angeles. The Los Angeles County site would have put it in reach of 12 million people in a radius, including in Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino Counties, San Gabriel Valley and the San Fernando Valley. Roski and his spokesman asserted that a football stadium in the city could have meant as much as $400 million in yearly revenue to businesses and brought more than 18,000 jobs to the area. Project supporters asserted that aspects of the stadium design, such as the use of hilly terrain to vastly reduce the cost of construction and the multi-use capabilities of the planned surrounding development, as well as Roski's success in gaining support from local elected officials in the City of Industry, where the proposed stadium site was located, gave the plan a strong possibility of success. Project critics asserted that it required more public funding than had been stated, and questioned the costs and benefits of the project.Roski said he would not break ground on the stadium until he has a commitment from an NFL team to move to Los Angeles. In exchange for footing the bill to construct the stadium, Roski wanted at least a 30% ownership stake in any team that moved to Los Angeles to play there.
Given that the National Football League was not planning on expanding, the developers of the new stadium stated on their website that their tenant would be an existing team "that needs to move because they cannot build a new stadium or financially they are not successful in their current market. We can not disclose which teams we are talking with." The three teams which used to play in Los Angeles but moved elsewhere were suspected possible tenants. The Jacksonville Jaguars and the Minnesota Vikings had also been identified by Roski and others as possible prime tenants of the new stadium. The Vikings ceased to be candidates after a financial package providing for construction of a new stadium in Minneapolis was approved by both the Minnesota State Legislature and the Minneapolis City Council. The Jaguars also fell out of contention for Roski. Wayne Weaver, during his press conference announcement of selling the Jaguars to Shahid Khan during mid-season in 2011, explained that Roski did call him in an attempt to buy the team, but was instantly turned down, saying "It was a waste of my time and his". Khan said that he wanted to put the city of Jacksonville on the map and had no plans to move the team. The Buffalo Bills were also considered a potential relocation candidate, but Erie County was able to force the team to sign an ironclad lease in 2012 prohibiting them from relocating and, through political and community pressure, dissuaded all Los Angeles-based prospective buyers from bidding on the team when it came up for sale in 2014, eventually selling to Terry and Kim Pegula.
On February 28, 2009 the City of Industry city council approved the environmental impact report 5-0. The neighboring cities of Diamond Bar and Walnut both expressed concerns about the noise, traffic, and environmental impacts of the proposed stadium. Walnut and a Walnut-based citizens group comprising eight homeowners filed lawsuits to block the project, but were unsuccessful.
Shortly after the Inglewood stadium was chosen, Roski shifted focus to Las Vegas, where what is now known as Allegiant Stadium was being proposed for the Raiders. He withdrew his involvement from the project in October 2016.
Ultimately, the land was developed as part of the Industry Business Center, a tract of warehouses.