NFL'S CARSON PLANS WOULD BE A TIGHT FIT.

Byline: Billy Witz Staff Writer

The National Football League's plans for a stadium in Carson - should the new Los Angeles franchise locate there - designate other projects for the former landfill site, and those projects would not leave enough space for a planned shopping mall and easy in-and-out access, the developer of the 157-acre site said Monday.

Steve Hopkins, president of Hopkins Real Estate Group, said in an interview that the league wants to cram so much ancillary development onto its part of the site, that it would leave inadequate parking and traffic flow for the proposed retail mall he wants to build on the remaining property.

``The stadium design they've put together doesn't work,'' said Hopkins, who received the site plan earlier this month. ``The parking is way short of what would work for a retailer, and we have to have proper ingress and egress (of traffic). If anything's going to happen, the whole plan has to work for both the NFL and the retailers.''

Problems of the Carson site and questions about whether the Rose Bowl reconstruction would get approval of local authorities appear to boost prospects for the Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles and efforts of Anaheim to attract the NFL to its sports complex.

Hopkins, citing a confidentiality agreement with the league, would not discuss specifics of the site plan, which calls for a 68,000-seat football stadium, a hotel, a five-story parking garage and 900,000 square feet of retail development that would include sports-themed restaurants.

An NFL spokesman confirmed that the league had delivered plans to Hopkins, but declined further comment.

But Carson officials remained optimistic problems could be solved.

``Right now, they're looking at where the lines of demarcation are,''' Carson economic development manager Ron Winkler said. ``Ultimately, the site plan would have to integrate the stadium and Hopkins' development.''

Despite his differences with the NFL, Hopkins said that, after recently completing cleanup and construction cost estimates, he was more optimistic than he was last spring that a stadium could be built on the former toxic dump site.

There is, however, one caveat: Carson doesn't have to stick to the NFL's timetable.

It calls for several deadlines that began in August and run through May 2005, when NFL owners expect to make a decision on where they will build a stadium in Los Angeles: Carson, Anaheim, the Rose Bowl or the Coliseum.

Meeting deadlines for such items as a completed environmental impact report (a 9- to 12-month process that has not yet started) and term sheet is complicated, since Hopkins and his financial partner, Lennar Corp., won't close escrow on the property until March.

``The wild card here is timing,'' Hopkins said. ``It's kind of the chicken and the egg. The NFL wants us to start right away, but we're not going to start right away because we don't own the property.''

Carson officials received cost proposals last week from firms that would compile an EIR on the site, and that would require an estimated $30 million cleanup and extensive preparation for construction. They expect to choose from two finalists soon, perhaps this week.

One benefit of the Carson and Anaheim sites is that stadium could be built from scratch, so that the NFL would not be bound by the footprint of an existing stadium, as in the case of the Rose Bowl or the Coliseum. Not only would that be easier, but it would probably be cheaper.

However, in Carson, constructing a stadium on a landfill adds expense because the entire building must be above ground. Usually, the lower third is excavated.

``One of our consultants told us it was going to cost substantially more, because you can't drop the field,'' Hopkins said. ``But those are all things that the NFL is going to think about, just like at the other places.''

The city will continue its plans to go forward with a two-track EIR, one that includes a site plan for a stadium and Hopkins' retail, the other that would just include the mall.

Hopkins is paying for the EIR, which is estimated to cost between $500,000 and $700,000. However, the league is being asked to pay for the portion of the EIR that assesses the stadium, which the city is calculating. Hopkins believes the NFL miscalculated by calling for just 15,000 parking spaces on its part of the parcel, a result of incorrect assumptions about Southern Californians.

``It's like the movie 'Swingers,' '' Hopkins said. ``You might have 68,000 people come to a game in 68,000 cars.''