The battle for L.A. football: coliseum backers concede they're at war with rival proposals.

For months, it's been an open secret around town: The show of solidarity for bringing back pro football to a rebuilt Coliseum has been just that - a show.

Hoping for a fumble, backers of rival stadium plans have continued to keep communication lines open with the National Football League.

Coliseum proponents conceded last week that they are indeed locked in competition in their efforts to host an NFL team, against owners or developers in Hollywood Park, Anaheim, South Park and Dodger Stadium.

Sources close to the football talks indicate that the Dodger Stadium site is viewed as the greatest threat because of its central location, the organization's reservoir of goodwill and the resources of Rupert Murdoch, who is buying the team from long-time owner Peter O'Malley.

The Dodgers say they haven't pursued a football plan since September 1996, when local officials led by Mayor Richard Riordan and Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas asked O'Malley to put aside plans for a new stadium in favor of the Coliseum.

But after 15 months of intense lobbying for the Coliseum - and even with the commitment by developers Ed Roski Jr. and Philip Anschutz to invest between $500 million and $600 million to rebuild the stadium and pay for a football franchise to be based there - the Coliseum group acknowledges that the NFL owners have been slow to embrace their plan.

The long delays in pushing the Coliseum plan forward have fueled increased interest in the Dodgers site at Chavez Ravine by some of the same local officials who had earlier endorsed the Coliseum proposal.

Councilwoman Laura Chick is representative of the subtle but significant shift.

"I am intrigued with the possibility of a Dodger Stadium location," Chick said in a statement. Although the councilwoman believes the Coliseum is "the best home for NFL football," Chick said she opposes the "substantial taxpayer investment" envisioned by Coliseum proponents.

"At some point, the 'New Coliseum' must compete with other stadium proposals - both before the NFL ownership and here locally - and prevail on its merits," she said.

Councilman Richard Alatorre, also a Coliseum supporter, nonetheless expressed an impatience with the process. "We have to get an indication from the NFL about their position (about the Coliseum) or move on. There has got to be closure on this within the next several months," he said.

The Business Journal surveyed all 15 L.A. City Council members last week. Only six of the 15 - Ridley-Thomas, Rita Walters, Nate Holden, Rudy Svorinich, Jackie Goldberg and Mike Hernandez - now support the Coliseum exclusively.

Councilwoman Ruth Galanter would not respond to the survey and Councilman Mike Feuer would not answer directly. The seven remaining council members said the Coliseum was their first choice, but that they are now open to other options.

"Right now I'm for the Coliseum, but that could change if there was a firm proposal" from a rival group, said Council President John Ferraro. "We have nothing else before us."

No exclusivity on deal

The Coliseum developers say they have assumed all along that the Dodgers were in the game - despite O'Malley's pledge in 1996 that he would steer clear.

"The NFL never, ever thought there was an exclusivity to the Coliseum," said John Semcken, executive vice president of New Coliseum Partners, the investment group led by Roski and Anschutz to reconstruct the stadium. "They've continued to talk to Hollywood Park. They've continued to talk to Mr. O'Malley. They've been talking to people in Anaheim, in Irvine - the whole time."

Ridley-Thomas said the NFL has quietly encouraged competition for the coveted football venue.

"Because they do not understand the L.A. market ... they want to see if there is another proposal that's viable," he said. "They want to do what amounts to a bid process."

Still, Ridley-Thomas says that the Coliseum plan is far ahead of the others in terms of planning and financing - and that despite a slow start, his group is starting to make progress in convincing the NFL owners. "No one has done as much work in terms of figuring out the puzzle as we have," he said.

NFL spokesman Greg Aiello confirmed that the league has never been in exclusive negotiations with backers of the Coliseum, although it has focused on it as the first choice of L.A. officials.

"There was never a contractual obligation of exclusivity for the Coliseum," Aiello said. "We have just done what we have been asked to do, which is focus on the Coliseum."

Asked if there have been discussions over the past year between the NFL and proponents of other plans, Aiello said, "We have conversations with people ali the time. If someone wants to put significance on that, so be it."

Aiello said what the NFL ultimately wants to do is re-establish its presence in Los Angeles.

"The overall goal is to get a stadium in L.A.," he said. "If it doesn't happen at the Coliseum, then we'd like to do it somewhere else."

A key player in this unfolding drama is certain to be the Fox Group, a subsidiary of Murdoch's News Corp., which is about to complete its purchase of the Dodgers from the O'Malley family.

Many suspect that the efforts to galvanize support of a Coliseum plan have been thwarted, at least in part, by the possibility that Murdoch would be interested in building a football venue next to Dodger Stadium - as well as in taking an ownership position in a new football franchise.

Sources indicate that Fox is interested in the football option. But Fox officials say they are focused only on getting approval from Major League Baseball officials for their $310 million purchase of the Dodgers - as well as on design work for a major renovation of Dodger Stadium.

"We're just waiting for the vote to take place," said Vince Wladika, senior vice president of media relations for Fox Sports. "We don't get involved in any decision-making process until such time as a vote takes place."

At the same time, Wladika said Fox has "all sorts of ideas. You don't go into something like this without having plans and ideas. (But it would be) out of line to do that prior to a vote that results in our approval of owning a team."

Dodger plan

Speculation concerning Murdoch has been further fueled by a $1.5 million feasibility study for a football stadium that O'Malley had commissioned before he even put the baseball team up for sale.

That study, now complete, calls for a 70,000-seat stadium to be built on the south side of Dodger Stadium - overlooking the downtown skyline - with only 150 feet separating the two parks.

Situated between the two stadiums would be a pedestrian promenade lined with restaurants, shops and perhaps a sports museum. Unlike the CityWalk complex in Universal City, the promenade would mostly operate on game days.

The price tag for the stadium, according to sources, would be about $300 million - with $15 million to $20 million of that going toward traffic-mitigation work, such as expanding intersections and widening streets. These sources indicate that the stadium could be constructed without public funds.

Peter Chernin, president and chief operating officer of News Corp., expressed an interest in football in an article in this month's issue of Los Angeles magazine.

"Should the Coliseum not work, we would love to have discussions about an NFL team next to Dodger Stadium," he said. "The work the O'Malleys did was spectacular. It's a great place to put a football stadium. It would overlook this incredible view of downtown."

Wladika said last week there had been no discussions with the NFL about a football stadium, although "a long time ago, Murdoch said: 'If the NFL requested we get involved in securing a team for Los Angeles, we would do that.'"

But the Coliseum group is highly skeptical about the practicality of the Dodger venue.

"The (Dodgers') feasibility study, in all fairness, was not inclusive of all the components that needed to be answered," said Ridley-Thomas. "You can't just go and build another stadium without substantial action on the part of the local jurisdictions - namely the Planning Commission, and ultimately the council."

During a meeting last week with the Business Journal, Ridley-Thomas, Roski and other members of the Coliseum group emphasized the traffic and zoning problems that would make the Dodger plan prohibitive.

"You could never get through the development process at Chavez Ravine," said Roski, who with Anschutz is about to begin development of the new Staples Center downtown sports arena.

"It has nothing to do with politics," Roski said. "The properly is zoned agricultural and you would have to change the general plan, you would have to change the zone, you would have to go through the (environmental impact report) process. You could not do it. I'm talking as a person making a living at development."

The Dodgers feasibility study was put aside in September 1996 when O'Malley agreed to drop plans to build his stadium and instead support the Coliseum plan.

Backers of the South Park and Hollywood Park plans also agreed to sideline their proposals at that time, but never fully abandoned their efforts to get a stadium project.

Why O'Malley decided to pull the plug last year has been a source of considerable debate among the participants. O'Malley at the time cited the show of support for the Coliseum by city officials, but political insiders speculate that it came down to his unwillingness to engage in what would have been a protracted fight with Ridley-Thomas.

"It was a no-win situation," said a source close to the Dodgers. "He didn't want to be pegged as the man who brought down the Coliseum."

Ridley-Thomas factor

Whatever the motivation, that was before Murdoch's bid for the Dodgers. Ever since his name surfaced as the team's new owner last spring, the suspicion has been that he would make a play for football as well.

In fact, a recent New Yorker magazine article about the Dodgers sale has O'Malley saying that once Fox is on board, the city will come back to him.

But it might not be as easy as that - and the reason centers, in part, on Ridley-Thomas.

The eighth district councilman, whose district includes the Coliseum, has dominated L.A.'s NFL saga. He was the one who convinced Riordan to side with the Coliseum project. At that point, Riordan needed Ridley-Thomas' endorsement of the sports arena, which had been losing momentum on the City Council.

In addition, political experts say that the mayor's support of the venerable Coliseum - located in a heavily African American community - made good political sense.

Ridley-Thomas got more than just Riordan. He won the support of an impressive roster of political figures, ranging from liberal Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg to conservative county Supervisor Michael Antonovich.

He also was influential in getting Roski and Anschutz, owners of the Kings hockey team, to invest in the stadium and a proposed franchise. The day after they announced their proposal to fund the project, Coliseum supporters announced that they had quickly gathered $10,000 in deposits for luxury suites.

Such political and financial muscle was considered formidable, but it has had only limited effectiveness in convincing NFL team owners to favor the Coliseum plan.

"There are some owners who frankly do not know the facts, who are thousands of miles away, who say the Rams were at the Coliseum, the Raiders were at the Coliseum ergo, there must be something wrong with the Coliseum," said Alan Rothenberg, the president of the U.S. Soccer Federation, who recently became a minority partner in the new Coliseum project.

One issue sure to come up is public financing for a new stadium.

The Roski-Anschutz group is in the midst of working out a full financing plan, but they acknowledge that some public funding will be required. Right now, the working figure is $60 million, but the number might change in the coming weeks.

"It is difficult to envision the NFL returning to the L.A. market without some level of public participation, no matter where it's coming from," said Ridley-Thomas, citing the complex economics of stadium financing.

The councilman said, however, that public financing for the Coliseum would not necessarily involve taxes, but could be arranged through various federal, state and local tax credits, as well as other incentives.

What role public financing would play in a Dodger football proposal is unclear. But whatever the financing, Fox is certain to need city and state support in making the necessary mitigation arrangements for the new facility.

One concern, according to sources close to the Dodgers, is that the City Council's Coliseum supporters - most notably Ridley-Thomas - might take obstructionist positions that will either add millions of dollars to the stadium's cost or delay its construction.

It was only three months ago that Councilman Joel Wachs threatened a public initiative drive on the arena plan unless Roski and Anschutz agreed to guarantee repayment of $58 million in municipal bonds used to finance the project.

Ridley-Thomas denies he would block any other plan, so long as it's preferable to the Coliseum. But he also has made it clear that the Coliseum plan, at present, is the one to beat.

"We're competing credibly and forcefully and I don't know how it is that we could be criticized for that," he said.

What's next

At this point, it's unclear who will be taking the next step - and what that step might be. The NFL is considering plans to award two expansion franchises sometime next year, perhaps as early as March. Cleveland remains in a strong position for one of those franchises.

As to the other? For all the discussion about Los Angeles, Houston has quietly emerged as a contender and some are privately concerned that given the impasse over a local stadium site, L.A. might lose its opportunity for football by 1999.

"The NFL is not about to give L.A. another team before it is very comfortable with the feasibility of the stadium proposal," said a source close to the process.

But several sources emphasized that the NFL position is muddled, and the organization isn't even certain whether it will award any new franchises next year. That opens up the possibility of team relocation - or even no action at all.

Some participants believe that Mayor Richard Riordan could play a crucial role in breaking the logjam, though his comments in recent weeks could be interpreted different ways.

Earlier this month, Riordan aides told the Business Journal that the mayor was open to considering alternatives to the Coliseum site, which he has strongly supported since September 1996. Sources say these alternatives would include a football venue adjacent to Dodger Stadium.

When the story was published on Dec. 8, Riordan denied that be was losing faith in the Coliseum and was quick to contact Ridley-Thomas to reiterate his support.

But Riordan said at a news conference that while he considers the Coliseum plan to be "head and shoulders above the others ... we're going to work with whatever the NFL does."

Staff reporters Daniel Taub and Wade Daniels contributed to this story.