2 cities in fight to finish for L.A.-area NFL teams
CARSON, Calif. -- The ball now belongs to the Raiders, the Chargers, the Rams - and the NFL.
A second City Council has approved a second proposed pro football stadium in the Los Angeles area, putting local issues to rest in the NFL's return to the region and leaving the next move in the hands of the teams that would seek to relocate and the league that must give its final approval.
The latest significant step was Tuesday night's 3-0 vote by the Carson City Council, which cleared the path for a $1.7 billion stadium that could become the shared home to the San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders.
It was intended to lure the NFL back to the Los Angeles area after two-decades without a team in the nation's second-largest media market.
Under current rules, the next opportunity for a team to file to relocate, either to the Carson stadium or a nearby proposed stadium in Inglewood, would be in January 2016. Any decision to move would have to clear a tangle of league hurdles, including winning the support of at least 24 of the 32 teams.
Carson Mayor Albert Robles likened the absence of the NFL in greater Los Angeles to the state's deep drought.
"There are two things that are needed here in Southern California," Robles said after the vote. "One of them is rain ... the other is football. And today, hopefully, we took care of that, because football is coming to Carson."
The vote came with a loud cheer from a crowd dotted with Raiders jerseys and Chargers banners, and faced virtually no opposition from the room.
A financial analysis by consultant AECOM released Monday by Carson suggested that any stadium built in L.A. would need to house two teams to be profitable, reports CBS Los Angeles.
Mike Haynes, who played for the then-LA Raiders in their 1984 Super Bowl title year and also grew up in the area, spoke strongly in favor of the stadium.
"It might not be too long 'til sometime another local kid will have an opportunity to play in a Super Bowl right down the street from here," Haynes said.
The stadium would be part of a massive complex that would include a 350-room hotel and at least 10,000 parking spaces, says CBS Los Angeles. About 850,000 square feet would ultimately be used for commercial space.
Council members could have opted to put the issue before Carson voters, but instead chose to approve it outright themselves, as state law allows.
In the Inglewood project, St. Louis Rams owner Stan Kroenke is part of a group planning to build an 80,000-seat stadium. Its City Council already gave it the same green light given by Carson Tuesday night.
The sudden rush to Los Angeles is tempered by a 20-year history of disappointment for fans. A string of stadium proposals have come and gone since the Rams and the Raiders fled Southern California after the 1994 season. Last month, the Anschutz Entertainment Group spiked plans for a field in downtown Los Angeles, although Mayor Eric Garcetti has suggested that it could be revived.
The Kroenke blueprint envisions a $1.86 billion stadium rising on the site of a former horse track, as part of a nearly 300-acre development of homes, parks and office space.
The 168-acre Carson site, edged by a freeway, is a former landfill.
The Chargers' talks with San Diego City Hall to replace the nearly 50-year-old Qualcomm Stadium have grown increasingly strained. The Raiders' even older Oakland Coliseum has had sewage and electrical problems and is now the only stadium in the U.S. used as the home for both an NFL and Major League Baseball team, the Oakland Athletics.