• Bill to boost L.A. stadium project clears Assembly committees — NFL.com
• Experts scrutinize AEG's 'carbon neutral' claim for proposed NFL stadium — Daily News
• A Field of Billboards for Farmers Field — LA Weekly
• Key environmental groups support Farmers Field legislation — Profootball Talk
• NFL Stadium Plan Downtown Sees Some Neighborhood Opposition -- LA Weekly
AEG's bill clears first of several hurdles
Arash Markazi, ESPNLosAngeles.com
September 7, 2011
http://espn.go.com/los-angeles/nfl/story/_/id/6938423/aeg-bill-nfl-stadium-la-clears-hurdle
The California State Assembly Committees on Natural Resources and on Appropriations both voted in favor of Senate Bill 292, the bill to expedite legal challenges to Farmers Field, Anschutz Entertainment Group's $1.2 billion proposed football stadium in downtown Los Angeles.
It was the first of several hurdles the bill must clear over the next three days before Friday's deadline for action on bills when Sacramento lawmakers will break for recess.
Senator Alex Padilla, who authored the bill, introduced the legislation last week and on Tuesday spoke to the California State Assembly Committee on Natural Resources, which voted 5-1 in favor of the bill, and later to the California State Assembly Committee on Appropriations, which voted 12-1 in favor of the bill.
"The ball is in our possession and we're beginning to march down the field," Padilla said. "We got a couple of big first downs today. The next step will be tomorrow when the full assembly votes on the bill and if they vote to move the bill out of assembly, which we expect them to, that's basically taking the ball past the 50-yard line and then we're marching towards the red zone and hopefully in the end zone by the end of the week."
For the bill to be moved out of the assembly, a simple majority of the 80-member assembly is needed, although Padilla believes there will be far more than 41 members voting to support the bill.
"The way this bill is growing in popularity, it's enjoying support from both Republicans and Democrats and legislators from different parts of the state," Padilla said. "This is not just a Los Angeles-only bill."
After moving out of the assembly the bill must then go through a senate policy committee and a senate appropriations committee, just like the two committees it went through on the assembly side, before the full senate votes on it on Friday. California governor Jerry Brown then has 30 days to either sign or veto the bill. If he does not sign it, the bill becomes law anyway. After Tuesday's meetings and discussions with other lawmakers, Padilla expects the bill to be passed and become a law soon enough, keeping Farmers Field on track for a potential June 2012 groundbreaking.
"I think we've crafted a bill in a well-balanced way and we're not compromising any California environmental laws," Padilla said. "There is no public subsidy here. There is someone in Los Angeles willing to put over $1 billion of their own money in this proposal. If it is approved and the NFL decides to move a team here it will put 10,000 people at work during construction alone. Once that's done and the convention center is done there is another 10,000 permanent jobs on the tail end of that. This opportunity is huge."
Almost as big as the bill making it out of committee and onto the assembly floor was the support it received from the Natural Resources Defense Council and the California League of Conservation Voters on Tuesday.
After the bill was introduced on Friday, David Pettit, senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, issued a pointed statement, calling the bill a "weak, last-minute, back-room deal" and a "missed opportunity for Los Angeles and a dangerous precedent for California" that "can and should be fixed."
On Tuesday, Pettit, after meeting with assembly speaker John A. Pérez and Padilla, praised the project as he stood in front of the California State Assembly Committee on Natural Resources and supported the bill along with Warner Chabot, CEO of the California League of Conservation Voters.
"We are totally on the same page now," Pettit said. "I think this is a great project, it's in the perfect location and you'll be able to take public transit. I was a Rams fan as a kid and I can't wait to have football back in Los Angeles. I made some very critical remarks about the first draft of the bill that I have taken a lot of heat for but I've worked closely with the speaker's office in innumerable calls and meetings and I think now we're at a place that's way better than we first started."
The bill, which includes no exemption from environmental laws, would allow legal challenges to the stadium's environmental impact report to be heard immediately in the California Court of Appeal, which would then come to a decision within 175 days. The expedited process would bypass the Superior Court and avoid the protracted litigation AEG has been fearful of.
In exchange, AEG has pledged to build a carbon-neutral stadium with more public transit users than any other stadium in the country and have committed to making Farmers Field one of the only stadiums in the country to have a net-zero carbon footprint.
Pettit said he came around to supporting the bill after convincing Perez and Padilla to adjust a few aspects of it, which would make it more acceptable to environmentalists and politicians alike.
"There were discussions all through the holiday weekend and there were three main things we wanted that I had been critical of in the past and we got commitments on all three of them," said Pettit, who was still working on the new provisions in the bill moments before endorsing it. "We got stronger mitigation, we got longer-lasting mitigation for the life of the project, not just for the first ten years, and we got rid of the opt-out provision. There were these opt-out provisions in the bill where AEG could take their ball and go home if they thought they were going to lose in court.
"They could opt out and go back to the normal process and go to the Superior Court. If they did that they weren't bound by the special protections they agreed to in the bill. That had to come out and it is now gone."
A competing stadium proposal in the City of Industry has been "shovel-ready" for two years after developer Ed Roski secured an exemption to the California Environmental Quality Act in 2009. The ruling exempts the Industry project from state environmental laws and protects it from environmental lawsuits. Legislators were roundly criticized for passing the exemption, making it virtually impossible for AEG to secure a similar deal for their stadium proposal.
"We are not asking for an exemption," AEG president and CEO Tim Leiweke said. "We are going to do a full EIR. It will be the best EIR ever done in downtown Los Angeles and we are halfway through it. We are committed to building the most environmentally friendly stadium ever built."
Although the bill seems to have the support of most legislators in Los Angeles, the real battle will be convincing lawmakers to the north and south, which will not be easy considering the two teams most commonly linked to a move to Los Angeles if the stadium is built are the San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders. The San Francisco 49ers, currently trying to secure financing for a new stadium, have also been mentioned.
The topic came up during the California State Assembly Committee on Natural Resources hearing when assembly member Jared Huffman, whose district represents Marin County and Sonoma County in Northern California, was more interested in including provisions that would prevent the proposed stadium from being the future home of a current NFL team in California than any environmental laws.
"My concern is if one of the existing franchises in another part of California is the one that picks up sticks and moves to this wonderful new stadium, it's probably fair to say then we are not creating new jobs in California, we are just relocating jobs," Huffman said. "If you wanted to put us at ease, those of us who are not LA-centric in our NFL support, it would be possible to have a provision that says none of this happens if it's a California franchise. ... I'm not sure why that's an unreasonable condition."
Padilla said the bill was not intended to dictate which NFL team can or can't come to Los Angeles and it would be wrong for lawmakers to put such restrictions on a city and a privately-financed project which would create thousands of new jobs.
With the NFL unwilling to expand its 32-team league anytime soon and with San Diego, Oakland and San Francisco playing in the three oldest stadiums in the league, it is highly likely Los Angeles' next NFL team would come from their neighbors to the north or south. This is not lost on many lawmakers in San Diego, Oakland and San Francisco who don't want to use public funds to finance a new stadium in their backyard but also don't want to lose their team to a privately financed stadium in Los Angeles.
"This has been a hurdle since Friday but we continue to remind everyone that only the NFL decides which teams will move where," Padilla said. "That's not our role here. It's important to remember that unlike other sports stadium and arena conversations we've heard of, this project is completely privately financed. Those legislators in San Diego, Oakland and San Francisco should work with their local partners to try to find a private investment facility of their own but thus far we haven't heard that from them."
Bill to boost L.A. stadium project clears Assembly committees
NFL.com
Sept. 7, 2011 at 05:20 a.m.
http://www.nfl.com/news/story/09000d5d822037ec/article/bill-to-boost-la-stadium-project-clears-assembly-committees-
A bill to expedite legal and environmental challenges to a proposed football stadium in downtown Los Angeles cleared two key legislative committees Tuesday and could be taken up by the full California Assembly on Wednesday.
"The ball is in our possession and we're beginning to march down the field," state Sen. Alex Padilla, who authored the bill, told ESPN. "We got a couple of big first downs today. The next step will be tomorrow when the full assembly votes on the bill and if they vote to move the bill out of assembly, which we expect them to, that's basically taking the ball past the 50-yard line and then we're marching towards the red zone and hopefully in the end zone by the end of the week."
Assembly committees on natural resources and appropriations both voted in favor of Senate Bill 292. The bill would not exempt Farmers Field, Anschutz Entertainment Group's $1.2 billion proposed football stadium next to Staples Center, from environmental laws, but would allow legal challenges to be heard immediately in the California Court of Appeal, which would then come to a decision within 175 days. The expedited process would bypass the Superior Court and potentially avoid protracted litigation.
Two environmental groups that had opposed the bill when it was introduced Friday came out in favor of it on Tuesday, reported ProFootballTalk.com.
The Natural Resources Defense Council and the California League of Conservation Voters apparently were swayed after AEG pledged to build a carbon-neutral stadium with more public transit users than any other stadium in the country.
Even if the bill passes the Assembly, it must still pass the state Senate and be signed by Gov. Jerry Brown.
The AEG project is one of two competing plans to build an NFL stadium in the Los Angeles area. Real estate magnate Ed Roski Jr. wants to build a stadium in City of Industry, and secured an exemption to the California Environmental Quality Act in 2009. The ruling exempts Roski's project from state environmental laws and protects it from environmental lawsuits.
Experts scrutinize AEG's 'carbon neutral' claim for proposed NFL stadium
Dakota Smith Staff Writer
September 7, 2011
http://www.dailybreeze.com/news/ci_18838867
Given Los Angeles' traffic woes, it's no surprise that Anschutz Entertainment Group is pitching its football stadium as a transit-friendly project accessible by several bus and rail lines. And most importantly, AEG officials add, it will be a "carbon neutral" project.
Carbon neutral? The term is a head-scratcher for even the most green Angelenos. It's also a phrase being scrutinized by environmentalists and sports experts as the developer looks to secure protective legislation for Farmers Field in Sacramento this week.
"Carbon neutrality, in general, is an elusive goal," said Ted Bardacke, senior associate at Global Green USA, a Santa Monica-based nonprofit that advises on green building and greenhouse emissions. "It can mean many things to many folks."
For instance, he said, AEG could plant trees around South Park to help offset emissions. But, hypothetically, it could also propose going abroad and capturing methane in a Mexican landfill or saving a Brazilian rain forest from development.
AEG is promising carbon neutrality and other mitigations as part of its pitch to the Legislature and Gov. Jerry Brown for a law that would expedite any legal challenges to the developer's environmental studies.
At this time, the company has not proposed any foreign offsets, but has not ruled them out either. The proposed legislation states offset credits will be sought only after methods to reduce emissions locally are implemented.
AEG argues its project will be carbon-neutral because it will encourage public transit options that will help reduce overall greenhouse emissions caused by private vehicles headed to the stadium.
"The legislation and many of the major environmental groups with whom we are working have identified carbon emissions from automobiles as the key priority," said Dale Goldsmith, attorney for AEG.
By focusing on transportation issues with Farmers Field, AEG will create a 21st stadium, one that capitalizes on the nearby Blue Line, the forthcoming Exposition Line and buses, he said.
Additionally, AEG officials say they could bundle NFL tickets with mass transit tickets or encourage carpooling and van service.
"This is another initiative that the city wants us to be a leader in," Goldsmith said. "The (stadium venue business) also wants us to be a leader with this."
Bardacke remains wary of how the term carbon neutral is being bandied about by both AEG and politicians.
He points to the fact that only the automobile portion is being mitigated, not all the emissions from a stadium that will use electricity and natural gas, as well as tons of concrete and steel in its construction.
"To call it carbon neutral is a parsing of the term that I don't think is appropriate," Bardacke said. "Call it trip neutral, call it offsetting of trip emissions."
For its part, AEG officials point to the solar panels on its Staples Center as an example of their commitment to green building.
Even if the entire project isn't carbon neutral, AEG is seeking LEED certification - a national standard for green buildings.
"It will be energy efficient, it will have natural gases for powering the building," said Jennifer Regan, global sustainability manager for AEG. "It will have the best available (resources) for lighting, and electrical."
Promising mitigations - before the environmental impact report is finished next spring - worries some experts, who point out that the legislation drafted in Sacramento doesn't yet spell out who will oversee monitoring the emission reduction or how it will be achieved.
"I think carbon neutrality is critical," said Jan Chatten-Brown, an environmental attorney who represented Walnut in its battle over developer Majestic Realty Co.'s competing football stadium in the city of Industry.
But before carbon neutrality can be promised, an environmental impact report has to be done to look at how many cars are expected and how those greenhouse gases will be mitigated. "Any realistic plan to achieve carbon neutrality has to be looked at through the EIR," she said.
David Carter, a sports business professor at USC, believes the promise of carbon neutrality is a "marketing pitch, business development, public relations document, and a legal document" all rolled into one.
Among his questions are whether the National Football League, and whoever owns the football team that would play in Farmers Field, will be willing to lose out on substantial parking revenue if AEG pushes itself as a transit-friendly stadium.
Still, he's not surprised by AEG's pitch.
"They will offer some balance of public transportation," he said. "Not because the fans are always going to take it, but because these team owners want to work with their respective city, so as to appear as though they are continuing to help the problem."
A Field of Billboards for Farmers Field
Tibby Rothman, Jill Stewart, LA Weekly
September 7, 2011
http://www.laweekly.com/content/printVersion/1490288/
Stuck in downtown Los Angeles traffic? Grinding your teeth in gridlock at the 10 and 110 interchange, where on average 311,000 motorists pass by each day? The City Council has something to calm your ride through one of the world's busiest intersections.
A proposed field of billboards.
The vista of downtown from the 110 and 10 freeways gives millions of visitors to the region their first view of the heart of L.A.
But if everything goes AEG's way, the company and the Los Angeles City Council will alter the cityscape in a way L.A. residents have never blessed. The plan, peddled as crucial to the financial viability of Farmers Field NFL stadium, would transform a chunk of southwest downtown into a Las Vegas–style advertising platform for up to 41 billboards and ultrabright displays.
"It's hideous politically," says Steve Sann, who chairs the Westwood Community Council. "It's hideous from a policy standpoint that the city is now getting into bed with the billboard industry and a megadeveloper. And, of course, it's going to be hideous visually for generations who are going to have to look at this" — 113 million motorists annually.
Squeezing Farmers Field onto a pinched piece of land hemmed in by the two freeways will require razing the Convention Center's West Hall. Under a "memorandum of understanding" (MOU) approved by the City Council and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a narrow new convention center wing, dubbed Pico Hall, would replace the far larger West Hall.
A quiet part of the deal, never publicly debated, is the major billboard advertising revenue demanded by AEG. It can be achieved only if the City Council exempts the Convention Center and Farmers Field from the city's ban on new billboards, enacted to protect residents and motorists from a proliferation of visual blight in a city with an estimated 10,000 legal and illegal billboards.
In the under-the-radar plan, the City Council soon would adopt a "citywide sign ordinance" that allows it to rezone the area around Farmers Field to create a Blade Runner–esque "sign district."
Documents obtained by the Weekly show that AEG hopes to slather huge billboards and other signs on the big, curved turquoise wall of the Convention Center's South Hall, a public building, as well as on the new, publicly owned Pico Hall and other public structures.
The enabling law, a "citywide sign ordinance," will be debated by the City Council's Planning and Land Use Management committee (PLUM) on Oct. 18. PLUM is chaired by ardent billboard advocates Ed Reyes, Jose Huizar and Paul Krekorian, all of whom have accepted billboard-industry money.
Dennis Hathaway, who leads BanBillboardBlight.org, says the citywide sign ordinance gives developers the right to dramatically alter targeted L.A. neighborhoods with LED-illuminated billboards. Although few Angelenos know about it, the city has already selected 14 neighborhoods where developers could apply for "sign districts," including Koreatown and Studio City.
Tom LaBonge, who has accepted billboard-industry money and is a member of the City Council's ad hoc committee examining the Farmers Field deal, dodged key questions put to him by the Weekly about the MOU allowing AEG to install 41 signs around Farmers Field.
Krekorian, who has effusively praised the concept of wrapping skyscrapers in digital billboard technology, refused to discuss the scheme through an aide. Jan Perry, the council's most aggressive supporter of digital billboards for large developments and freeway routes, responded via an aide, who wrote in an email that Perry "cannot support any signage" until much later in the process. But in fact, she already has backed major signage in the MOU..
New details quietly being worked out allow an even more extensive field of billboards than described in the nonbinding MOU.
According to a July 20 AEG chart and map given to the Weekly by City Councilman Bill Rosendahl, 19 signs could be LED advertisements and displays — images whose light can be seen for up to four miles, piercing the closed curtains of homes and businesses. The 19 would cover 14,866 square feet. Another 25 brightly lit displays and sponsorship billboards are detailed in AEG's private July 20 document sent to city leaders, including chief legislative analyst Jerry Miller.
AEG spokesman Michael Roth told the Weekly, "I'm not familiar with the signage plan document" from AEG dated July 20, and agreed to have AEG's attorney call to comment on it. The attorney, Ted Fikre, did not call back.
The billboard scheme is draped in secrecy — and apparent obfuscation. A key city consultant report describes 37 of the 41 signs proposed in the MOU as "architectural digital prints."
What are they?
Experienced urban planners tell the Weekly the phrase "architectural digital prints" is meaningless. A top city planner admits that city officials have not yet defined the term used in the MOU.
"In my work in the design studio, I never heard that term," says Emily Gable Luddy, the city's former chief urban designer, who oversaw numerous projects in her 20 years before retiring several months ago.
"If it's designed to sell a product," Luddy says, "it's a billboard."
Many Angelenos view L.A.'s thickets of billboards as blight, and express disgust that Villaraigosa and the City Council seem to be in the service of huge outdoor advertisers such as Clear Channel Outdoor and CBS Outdoors. Only Councilman Paul Koretz has not taken billboard-industry money.
The city's consultant, CSL, whose "Los Angeles Event Center Signage Analysis" goes on for 22 pages, used the word "billboard" nowhere, instead repeating the phrase "architectural digital print."
Los Angeles Deputy Director of Planning Alan Bell says he doesn't know what an "architectural digital print" is.
"That's a good question," says Bell, and it's "something that needs to be defined." Bell wonders if it is "analogous to the architectural lighting" the City Council has approved on the proposed 65-story Wilshire Grand skyscraper.
In addition to digital billboards nearly 100 feet high, the Wilshire Grand will be covered in a multistory LED design of images such as vines and leaves. But once those several million LED bulbs are built into the skyscraper's skin, the lights can be transformed to gigantic commercial ads with a flick of a programmable switch — by order of the City Council.
Los Angeles residents are increasingly mistrusting of the avidly pro-billboard City Council. In 2006, billboard proponent and City Council president Eric Garcetti and City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo agreed to let national outdoor advertising giants erect nearly 900 digital billboards in L.A. neighborhoods.
Garcetti's "green" reputation was badly tarnished by the resulting outcry. The widely hated billboards were halted after about 80 had been installed.
Some residents see the emerging Farmers Field details as another sellout to the commercialization of L.A.'s public spaces, forcing 113 million motorists a year to view crass ads that degrade the city's livability but enrich AEG.
Westwood activist Sann says of I.M. Pei, renowned architect and the designer of the Convention Center expansion, "I bet they thought their assignment was to design a building, not a billboard."
Victor Citrin, a substitute teacher, says obnoxious advertising shining from the top floor of AEG's L.A. Live entertainment center has badly degraded Pico-Union, a working-class neighborhood that predates L.A. Live by several decades.
Thanks to an exception granted to AEG by the City Council a few years ago, lights from a handful of huge outdoor billboards stream into his son's bedroom.
Says Citrin: "There's a circular, cupola kind of thing" on the AEG Regal Theaters complex, "and at the top of that building are the signs that advertise. Their light really penetrates into our neighborhood, into my son's bedroom. That thing is on all night long."
Architects and design professionals increasingly question the council's handling of its skyline. "The city has not been very wise about how they're giving away the store to billboard companies or AEG, to allow something that has tremendous impact on how you view the city," says Stuart Magruder, an architect who worked for New York–based Richard Meier & Partners before moving to L.A.
Magruder questions the city's argument that developers need to install commercial billboards to make their projects financially viable. "That's not the case in other cities," he says. "It didn't happen in New York or San Francisco."
Key environmental groups support Farmers Field legislation
Mike Florio, Profootball Talk
September 6, 2011
http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2011/09/06/del-rio-goes-all-in-again/related/
As the competing L.A. stadium projects continue to try to become the one that survives, the downtown proposal backed by AEG has secured a key boost from two major environmental groups.
California Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez announced on Tuesday that the Natural Resources Defense Council and the California League of Conservation Voters support the legislation that would relocate a portion of the L.A. Convention Center and construct Farmers Field, a state-of-the-art multi-purpose venue that would host at least one NFL team.
“It was very important to me that this project and our legislation gain the support of such well-respected environmental champions,” Speaker Pérez said. “We have managed to produce a plan to bring economic prosperity and jobs to Los Angeles while maintaining our environmental standards by building one of the most environmentally conscious stadiums in the country.”
Environmental consciousness will be critical because, unlike Ed Roski’s proposal that would be constructed in the City of Industry, the Farmers Field project won’t get an exemption from certain types of environmental lawsuits.
NFL Stadium Plan Downtown Sees Some Neighborhood Opposition
Dennis Romero, LA Weekly
Sep. 6 2011
http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2011/09/aeg_stadium_opposition.php
For the first time that we know of organized community opposition to the downtown L.A. stadium plan has cropped up. It comes to us in the form of a letter sent to California legislators who are considering letting Anschutz Entertainment Group, the folks behind the NFL proposal, off the hook for possible lawsuits stemming from its environmental impact report for the venue.
A letter endorsed by 27 area residents and businesses states that "we are greatly concerned with traffic, noise, pollution and quality of life issues that only a full and complete environmental review will analyze."
The letter expresses "our opposition to the proposed development of Farmers Field." The document was the brain child of downtown resident and attorney Gina Zapanta, who told the Weekly today that her main concern was traffic:
I do not understand how you're going to fit 80,000 people for a Monday Night Football game downtown. I don't know how you're going to do it logistically. Downtown can be a parking lot. It's not set up for it.
She says her neighbors are also concerned but that there hasn't been an avenue for them to complain about it until now.
Zapanta says she's planning on starting a formal opposition group and website.
"You can imagine how many people are going to be on board," she said. "I know there's a genuine interest in opposition to this."
Meanwhile, the letter, from a self-described "coalition of local residents" continues to hammer the need for a transparent EIR:
The developer -- Anschutz Entertainment Group -- has greatly exaggerated the benefits of this project and is now working the backrooms in Sacramento to avoid having to conduct a full and complete Environmental Impact Report ...
A bill introduced to the state legislature last week would fast-track the EIR process for the proposed stadium.
Zapanta:
Can you imagine 80,000 people trying to get into a game, what kind of air quality there will be for us? The traffic, the noise, the tailgaters ...