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Tim Leiweke and the boosters who turned up the pressure today for swift approval of the NFL stadium at L.A. Live tried to frame their greatest obstacle as nay-saying by rubes in the suburbs who "don't get it." Actually, the biggest political threat to the stadium might be skepticism among die-hard Angelenos (and sports fans) who have heard it all promised before.
Times columnist Michael Hiltzik wasn't impressed by today's show:
There are several cardinal rules governing public works projects that smart municipal leaders have learned from grim experience. Here are the most important:•Never name public edifices after politicians until they're dead and buried, and therefore safely beyond the reach of embarrassing indictments.
•Never let land developers think you need them more than they need you.
•Never, ever, kiss the National Football League's butt.
The best thing that could be said for the Los Angeles city officials who participated in a televised love-in Tuesday over a proposed downtown football stadium/"event center" is that they violated only two of these three rules.
Tuesday's show, he writes, "set a new standard for a public-private partnership in self-interested boosterish flapdoodle." He rips Mayor Villaraigosa's role, but this is the line that will likely chafe Leiweke the most: "Do you really think this project will be built without any taxpayer contribution? Me neither."
Author and KCET blogger D.J. Waldie, a bus-riding urbanist and a historian, viewed today's media event through the long lens:
It's a classic Los Angeles sales pitch. And it compares favorably to those boomtimes in the 1880s when real estate developers stuck oranges on the green spikes of a Joshua tree and told sales prospects that their desert lot was really an orange grove.
Yowza. So yeah, Leiweke has some work to do to win over skeptics, and they aren't just of the Ron Kaye ilk. If nothing else, the day's events confirm how much this is a big-time politics and business and power story for L.A., and barely a sports story at all.