FORTH AND GOALS COLISEUM BOARD PLANS NEXT STEP.

Byline: BILLY WITZ Staff Writer

Having had a week to gnash their teeth over the NFL's continued waffling on whether to return to Los Angeles, the Coliseum Commission meets today to begin plotting the future of the 83-year-old stadium.

They'll do so, apparently, without steam coming from their ears.

After believing they were on the cusp of a deal with the league in May, many on the nine-member commission have ranted over the past month when it became clear that no decision on a stadium in LosAngeles or Anaheim would be forthcoming during lastweek's league meeting in New Orleans.

Now, anger seems to have given way to resignation.

``We can't wait forever on the speculation that a deal is going to be made,'' said County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, a member of the commission. ``The Coliseum has to evaluate its options. I don't see any reason to cut off communication with the NFL, but by the same token if the NFL wants to get serious, they know the phone number.''

The Coliseum Commission will be begin addressing both its short-term and long-term needs. But while negotiations continue on lease agreements with the state and USC for next year, nobody seems in a hurry.

``I hope we do (have an agreement), but I don't know,'' said Evelyn Matteucci, general counsel for the State and Consumer Services Agency, which must approve a lease between the state and the Coliseum Commission.

As for the long term, Coliseum officials anticipate continuing conversation with NFL staff, just not as frequently or intensely as they have for the past 10 months. They also don't anticipate talks with USC, which Coliseum general manager Pat Lynch termed ``very preliminary,'' evolving quickly into a master lease agreement.

Since Coliseum commissioners said a month ago that they would consider turning to USC for a long-term deal in the hopes the university would fund capital improvements, USC vice president Todd Dickey said the school had no interest in building something that might be rendered superfluous if the stadium were overhauled for the NFL.

Thus far, no influential members of USC's Board of Trustees, such as Stanley Gold or Ed Roski, have come forward to express the school's interest in anything beyond the typical 3- to 5-year lease.

``The options are the NFL, which is everybody's first choice, and USC,'' said Coliseum Commissioner David Israel. ``But I don't know if 'SC would want to do anything more than playing in the Coliseum paying rent on 3- to 5-year leases.''

The biggest frustration for Coliseum officials has been all the boulders they feel they moved to consummate a deal.

Assemblyman Mark Ridley-Thomas (D-Los Angeles) passed into law, with the help of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a bill that would provide approximately $25 million in redevelopment funds to infrastructure improvements around the Coliseum. Also, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Councilman Bernard Parks expedited the permitting process for building entitlements last spring.

``I thought we had a deal, frankly, and it's amazing all of a sudden the league gets cold feet given all the negotiations, the number of concessions,'' Ridley-Thomas said. ``It's tough to have a partnership with an entity like that. They don't take seriously enough what's involved in it from our end, how much capital is spent in pursuit of this effort.''

Others were irked that the NFL said the renovation could soon approach $1 billion because that number included 250,000 square feet of development for items such as practice fields and team offices. They believe the cost of overhauling the stadium is less than $800 million.

NFL owners were not always pleased with local officials either. Carolina owner Jerry Richardson was miffed when Schwarzenegger suggested that California, which currently has three teams, needed five.

Richardson told him he's lucky the state has one team.

Nor were several owners and league staffers amused when they attended a dinner at Villaraigosa's house in June, and among those on the mayor's 25-person guest list of supposedly high-powered business and political leaders was Rodney Peete, the TV personality and former NFL quarterback.

``Proponents of both venues have grown weary of being strung along,'' said Ridley-Thomas, a member of the commission when it started to pursue a deal with the NFL in 1995. ``But life goes on. There's a range of things to be considered, and we will not pursue just one option.''

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