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Photo by Irene Fertik UCLA
Today
Professor of Public Policy and former Massachusetts Gov.
Michael Dukakis moderates a discussion on whether the city
should subsidize a football stadium for the NFL. Public policy
graduate student Holly Campbell raises her hand. |
Should L.A. subsidize nfl stadium?
Grad students enter debate
by AJay Singh
ucla today staff
It’s the Friday before Super Bowl XXXIX, and pro football
is the talk of the nation. In a room atop City Hall in downtown
Los Angeles, 15 graduate students of the School of Public Affairs
are grappling with officials and politicians over a contentious
question: Should Los Angeles give public subsidies to a football
stadium?
The Feb. 4 discussion, co-sponsored by the school and the Office
of Government and Community Relations, was moderated by former Massachusetts
Gov. Michael Dukakis, a UCLA professor of public policy. Besides
offering the graduate students an opportunity to interview City
Hall leaders and analyze an important public policy issue, the event
also enabled students to provide insights and policy recommendations
to Los Angeles councilmembers who were present.
At the heart of the discussion was the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum,
a historic monument built in the 1920s and located on prime public
land. The National Football League (NFL) has long wanted to bring
a team to Los Angeles and make the Coliseum its home. Although the
NFL is also considering three other sites — the Rose Bowl
in Pasadena and potential stadiums in Carson and Anaheim —
the Coliseum is reportedly its favorite choice.
Los Angeles has not had an NFL team since 1994, and there has been
much debate about allowing the NFL to revive pro football here.
It would boost local development and generate tens of millions of
dollars in business during Super Bowl games, proponents say. If
its bid succeeds, the NFL could renovate or build a new stadium
within the Coliseum’s historic walls. The estimated outlay:
$500 million, including the cost of infrastructure around the complex,
part of which would be funded by public subsidies — and therein
lies the rub.
“This is a publicly held asset, and, therefore, any public
resources aimed at it are not considered a subsidy but an investment,”
said Assemblymember Mark Ridley-Thomas (D-Los Angeles), who represents
the area where the Coliseum is located. “There are a lot of
public benefits of great significance that have to be factored into
the equation.”
Critics strongly disagreed. “If we subsidize an NFL team,
we’re subsidizing a consortium of 30 billionaires,”
countered Eric Pawlowsky, a graduate student of public policy. “The
issue is, what’s the deal that L.A. gets?”
Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky argued against subsidizing
an NFL franchise in the city. “There’s a school of thought
in the academic community that there’s only a certain amount
of money within a community to spend,” he said. “If
you are spending the money on a stadium, where are you not spending
it? There’s a lot of analysis to go into this.”
Rebecca Ratzkin, a graduate student in urban planning, said that
studies indicate that the area around the coliseum would develop
regardless of an NFL investment in the stadium. Besides, she added,
a new stadium wouldn’t benefit most Angelenos, who wouldn’t
be able to afford the luxury boxes the NFL wants to build. The boxes
are a huge source of revenue for the NFL, and many fear their construction
would be at the expense of preserving the Coliseum.
Dukakis offered the example of Fenway Park in his native Boston,
calling it “a little band box of a (baseball) stadium”
that was built in 1912 and is “packed every game.” According
to one poll, he added, 50% of the spectators go to Fenway because
it’s a historic stadium. “You’ve got a gem here,”
Dukakis said of the Coliseum. “Don’t be afraid to challenge
the NFL’s conventional wisdom. Take a good, hard look at what
they’re telling you.”
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