Remember back when AEG was all ready to pick a fight with St. Louis Rams owner Stan Kroenke over who would get to build an NFL stadium in L.A., accusing Kroenke’s plan of aiding terrorists and being a menace to low-flying planes? You know, way back last week? Well, scrap all that, because now that everyone just laughed at its reports, AEG says it’s giving up on building a stadium entirely:
The sports and entertainment conglomerate is no longer in discussions with the NFL or any teams about the project, company officials said Monday.
“I think it’s fair to say we have turned our attention to proceeding with an alternative development,” AEG Vice Chairman Ted Fikre said.
That “alternative development” would be expanding the L.A. Convention Center and building a new hotel near AEG’s L.A. Live entertainment complex. I’ll let Heywood Sanders comment on whether that’s a good idea or not, but for stadium purposes, AEG has officially given up on its plan after finding nobody with an NFL team willing to give them a share of ownership in exchange for providing the stadium. Which means we now must say goodbye to one of the most cracktastic pieces of vaportecture ever:
Farewell, giant translucent shoulder pads. The world of pretend stadiums won’t be the same without you.
“….go cry about it, why don’t you? My dear we’re slow dancing in a burning room.”
-John Mayer
Hallelujah! This was one of the stupidest stadium ideas around and probably the most expensive as well. Tearing down the convention center alone would’ve costed $300 million.
AEG needs to stick with arenas. They are good with downtown development and arenas that house NBA and NHL teams but they clearly don’t understand the culture of the NFL if they think that Farmer’s Field was going to work. Nowhere to park and have tailgating parties plus LA traffic would make a 60,000 seat downtown stadium a living nightmare. The NFL has downtown stadiums in places like Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit and Cincinnati where they can handle the traffic. LA wouldn’t work.
Not familiar with the local geography, but could this work for the LAFC MLS team? I know they prefer to build stadiums downtown when they can.
I guess Phil Anschutz was just too damn greedy a prospective landlord, even by NFL standards
AEG owns the LA Galaxy so I doubt they would want to develop land for their new rival. The talk about a new soccer stadium has been for Exposition Park where the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena is STILL STANDING.
The Angels have sent up trial balloons about playing in Downtown L.A. but not recently. But if Arte Moreno and Phil Anschutz want to go at it, I’ll begin to enjoy popcorn and sit back and watch.
Like I said, Tom Ridge is a smooth player. Who knew?!
You know, maybe if those translucent shoulder pads could have been holographic 3D translucent shoulder pads, everything coulda just worked out….