California Senate Approves Bill Speeding Up LA NFL Stadium Process

The Los Angeles City Council unanimously approved a $1.2 billion proposal by AEG to build a stadium in downtown L.A. The vote was 12-0.

The AEG plan includes not only the construction of a 76,000-seat stadium, which would be named Farmers Field, but also a refurbished convention center at a cost of $391 million. The proposed stadium would generate thousands of jobs and tax revenue for the city, councilwoman Jan Perry said.

The bill would allow for any lawsuits over the stadium’s environmental impact to go directly to the California Court of Appeal, skipping Superior Court. The appeals court would be required to deliver a ruling within 175 days.

Governor Brown framed the issue as a matter of economic development. The project is estimated to some 12,000 construction jobs and another 11,000 permanent jobs. Expediting the development, according to the Governor’s rationale, would provide some measure of relief to the state’s unemployment rate, which tops the national average.

The California State Senate passed a bill Friday that would expedite legal challenges to the potential NFL stadium in Los Angeles. Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), the backers of the stadium project, was concerned about a variety of possible legal challenges to their plans. While they still face various legal hurdles in the environmental review process, Senate Bill 292 will speed up the appeals process.

The bill still needs to be signed or vetoed by Governor Jerry Brown, although Brown is expected to sign it. Once signed into law, the bill provides that all legal challenges to the stadium’s environmental impact report will be heard by the California Court of Appeals and skip over the Superior Court. A decision would be issued by the Court of Appeals within 175 days of any filing. While there will still be some legal wranglings, this process speeds it up considerably.

There is more than likely to be a new football stadium in the Los Angeles area whether it comes from the folks trying to push a stadium in the City of Industry or the AEG group who had a financing plan approved to build a new downtown stadium.

Things will change in the coming months (and years) but, for now, it appears Oakland and San Diego are the favorites to occupy whatever stadium is built in L.A.

Getting football back to Los Angeles took another big step on Tuesday when the Los Angeles City Council approved a financing deal to get a new stadium downtown. Per multiple reports, the city council voted 12-0 in favor of the downtown stadium so, at least among those 12 city council members, there’s support for this.

It’s not the last step to getting football back in Los Angeles. You need...a team. Indeed, there is no clear plan on how the NFL would bring football back, and which team would be the one moving there. There are some candidates that are more likely than others but we’re not really sure where each team stands on that list, though.

AEG has been hard at work selling their plan for a downtown Los Angeles stadium, and on Tuesday it appears the massive public relations campaign will pay-off. While we’re still a ways off from the NFL making a return to LA, the city council will reportedly vote on a financing plan at a Tuesday meeting. If approved, the plan would be another step in the right direction towards building a downtown stadium and, perhaps, bringing an NFL team back to the city.

LA Times reporter Sam Farmer tweeted his expectation for the proceedings.

The city of Los Angeles took a non-binding but sizable step forward on Monday as city officials revealed a financing plan that would bring in the long discussed $1 billion Farmers Stadium and add a new wing to the city’s adjacent Convention Center.

The Convention Center aspect of the plan would require the city issuing $195 million in bonds and is considered central to the new stadium deal. These bonds would be paid back by new revenue from the project including AEG lease income, parking taxes, property taxes and a construction tax. The city would issue an additional $80 million in bonds that would be the responsibility of AEG.

A meeting of a committee of the Los Angeles City Council on Thursday left the city hopeful that plans for a downtown NFL stadium could move forward.

AEG, which controls a number of sports venues, including L.A.‘s STAPLES Center, is asking for the city to agree to a “memorandum of understanding” before the end of July. The two sides aren’t ready to strike an official deal, but a memorandum would allow the project to continue to develop until they do. It doesn’t appear that AEG will have trouble getting the city council committee to agree to such a memorandum:

AEG, the company that hopes to develop a 72,000-seat stadium in downtown Los Angeles with the goal of luring an NFL team back to the second largest market in the nation, has reduced the amount of public money they will be seeking. Tim Leiweke, AEG’s president and CEO, told a townhall meeting on Monday that his company would ask the city to issue than $300 million in bonds, a reduction of more than $50 million. The plan is to build the stadium near Staples Center where the convention center currently sits. The total pricetag on the stadium is estimated at more than $1 billion.

No NFL team has called the Los Angeles area home since the Rams and Raiders both left after the 1994 season. The Rams played in what has now become Angel Stadium of Anaheim. The Raiders played in the cavernous L.A. Coliseum. Neither were particularly well suited for the modern NFL and lacked amenities that are commonplace now, such as luxury boxes.

Lead by president Tim Leiweke, AEG continues moving on with plans to bring an NFL team to Los Angeles. Leiweke confirmed Philip Anschutz would be willing to purchase the majority interest in a team to bring them to Los Angeles, which hasn’t had a football team for 16 years.

Perhaps the most intriguing team in that group is the Vikings, who are trying to get a new stadium of their own in Minnesota.