Bells, whistles - touchdown.

DEVELOPERS TURN TO RETAIL-ENTERTAINMENT PROJECTS TO SELL STADIUMS

A dazzling new stadium, a gargantuan TV audience and a franchise fee topping half a billion bucks. Sorry, that's just not enough anymore if you want a pro football team.

Now, in order to attract attention and generate revenues, you need stores and sports museums and trendy restaurants - hundreds of millions of dollars worth.

The two competing groups trying to bring football back to L.A. have cooked up plans to develop elaborate entertainment/retail projects adjacent to their respective stadiums.

One proposal, led by former Hollywood agent Michael Ovitz, would have a shopping mall surrounding a 77,000-seat stadium in Carson.

The other plan, led by real estate developer Ed Roski Jr., would have an entertainment complex featuring a theater for the Grammy Awards and a music museum, complete with aerial tramways.

And they're not alone.

"We are working on 15 major stadiums and arenas, and I can't think of one that isn't examining (an accompanying retail/entertainment component)," said Bob White, vice president of HOK Sport, a Kansas City-based architectural firm specializing in sports projects. "It is being explored by everyone in the country."

There is, however, one big question: Does it make sense to connect a shopping mall and a football stadium?

While the new-stadium pipeline is jam-packed with such projects, not a single one has been built yet. And many experts warn that they are, at best, high-stakes gambles.

The one furthest along, San Francisco's $525 million football stadium/outlet mall project, is being supported by a $100 million city bond offering - and it has run into financing troubles.

"The theory is that the retail and the entertainment will support the overall investment, and it has yet to be proven," said David Malmuth, senior vice president of development for San Diego-based TrizecHahn Centers Management Inc.

Central to the premise of these entertainment/retail adjuncts is that sports fans will want to go shopping, or have a sit-down restaurant meal, or watch a movie, or go to a museum before or after the game.

But analysts say that a retail project connected to a stadium must be viable on its own - especially given that football teams only play a dozen or so home games each year.

"There is no inherent draw in having a football stadium there, other than on game days," said Richard Giss, a partner in Deloitte & Touche LLP's trade retail services group. "No one says, 'Hey, I'd sure like to shop where they have a football stadium.'"

Malmuth agreed: "When you are going to a sporting event, you are spending a lot of time and money on that event. (The retail component) has to work as an independent entity."

One of the driving forces for linking retail centers to stadium projects is taxpayers' growing resistance, in L.A. and nationwide, to using public funds for stadium construction. Many taxpayers view such undertakings as government handouts to millionaire team owners.

To skirt that view, and portray stadium projects as big generators rather than users of tax revenue, developers have latched onto retail projects. These projects can then be marketed as catalysts for urban renewal.

"Adding the retail component to any of these stadiums is about the only way the politicians in the local communities can define these stadiums as revitalization," said David M. Carter, an L.A.-based sports management consultant. "In this day and age, you can't just build a football stadium with taxpayer money. It makes a lot more sense to marry the retail complex and the stadium together."

Proven or not, Los Angeles and Carson appear ready to race headlong with their respective development partners - though the non-stadium components being pitched by the two groups vary significantly.

The Ovitz plan calls for the city of Carson to provide about $180 million in funding to build the mall and football stadium - about $30 million of which already has been earmarked for redevelopment and infrastructure improvements. The other $150 million would come from city-issued bonds.

Because of the city's Baa-1 bond rating one notch below the grade required by many investment funds and institutional investors the debt service on the 30-year bonds would come to about $11 million a year.

But it's questionable whether The Hacienda - as Ovitz's mall and stadium has been dubbed - could produce enough revenues to cover that debt service, especially given the large number of shopping malls already in the area.

Carson officials estimate that The Hacienda's 1.2 million-square-foot mall would generate between $2 million and $4 million in annual sales tax revenues. The Del Amo Fashion Center in nearby Torrance, with 3 million square feet of retail space, generated $4.2 million in sales tax revenues in fiscal 1997-98, according to the Torrance city finance department.

"I don't understand how the numbers could work out to support a ($150 million) bond, even if there was a market for the retail," said Tom Jirovsky, senior vice president with downtown L.A.-based Kosmont & Associates, which specializes in retail development analysis. "San Francisco is the first concept, and it has not happened yet. From a purely financial view, as the city, you never make enough money."

Carson officials insist that the project would cover the debt - and may even produce extra money. Jerry Groomes, Carson's city manager, said the debt service would not be covered merely by sales tax revenues from the mall. A variety of other sources also would be used, including new property taxes, payments from retailers in the mall, surcharges on stadium tickets and parking, and taxes from concessions and gifts.

Challenging that assessment was Jackie Fernandez, also from Deloitte's retail group.

"I think it really depends on the location," she said. "If you look at retail statistics, we are somewhat over-stored in Southern California. Especially in that area, there is the Del Amo Fashion Center, the Carson mall and the Long Beach mail. I think that area is over-saturated."

Roski's plan to bring a new NFL team to a rebuilt Coliseum also promises more than just football, and it has raised similar doubts about its financial viability. Assessing that viability is tough, however, because the plan is short on details.

Roski's group, sensing NFL owners were more impressed with Ovitz's plans, hired North Hollywood-based Landmark Entertainment Group less than two months before the Oct. 27 NFL pitch meeting. Landmark's marching orders: Design an eye-popping entertainment center adjacent to the Coliseum, and quick.

As of late last week, the entertainment center was still being described by Coliseum proponents in vague terms, and representatives of the investor team conceded that funding for the entertainment component had not yet been finalized. Nor has its anticipated revenue stream been computed.

The customer base for the project is expected to be drawn from those visiting the new California Science Center and other Exposition Park attractions. But some analysts wondered if those visiting the museums - many of them school children and lower-income families from surrounding neighborhoods - would bring in enough revenue to make the project financially feasible.

"Again, everything works off the demographics of who's coming there, and who's likely to come there," said Giss. "I wouldn't expect you'd have the same kind of retail outlets around the Coliseum as you'd have around a new venue."

John Semcken, executive vice president of New Coliseum Partners, said the center is still in the concept stage. It calls for more than 280,000 square feet of retail, restaurants and entertainment offerings.

Proponents of the plan say the entertainment center - which would be built on the current site of the aging Sports Arena - would be financed separately from the Coliseum.

"That has nothing to do, basically, with the (stadium) project," Roski said. But he added that he considers the entertainment center important for demonstrating the excitement that could be created at the Coliseum site. "What we were showing to the league (with the entertainment center) is the potential at Exposition Park."