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Posted Oct 8, 2015, 3:34 AM
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Join Date: Sep 2005
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The NFL, Jones said, after more than 20 frustrating years of missed opportunities and false hopes and promises, finally had Los Angeles in the crosshairs.
“These opportunities for stadiums, the coming together of, in this case, billions, a coming together of location, a coming together of all the right things when it hits the crosshairs you nail it because they can take years to ever get in the crosshairs if ever,” Jones said. “We’ve got ’em in the crosshairs. We’ve got one in the crosshairs. We need to act on it.”
And in a series of conversations Tuesday, NFL owners gave the clearest indication to date that the league will indeed act on its opportunity in the Los Angeles market in the near future.
NFL owners said they expect the league to formally announce by January it is returning to Los Angeles for the 2016 season. The owners must decide whether to approve the San Diego Chargers’ and Oakland Raiders plans for a $1.75-billion stadium in Carson, Rams owner Stan Kroenke’s proposed $1.86-billion stadium at Hollywood Park or, perhaps, the Chargers and Rams sharing the Inglewood venue.
“There’s serious money being spent, serious commitment is being made in L.A. right at the time,” said Jones, who in the past has been seen as Kroenke’s leading ally among NFL owners. “And I know enough with my background and business experience when that kind of money is going out, something happens. And that money is indicative of something happening in the near term.”
Pittsburg owner Art Rooney II, one of the owners who make up the influential NFL Committee on Los Angeles Opportunities, echoed several owners in agreeing with Jones.
“I think we have a good chance of getting something done by January, yes,” said Rooney, who is joined on the Los Angeles committee by New England owner Robert Kraft, Clark Hunt of Kansas City, Jerry Richardson of Carolina, Bob McNair of Houston and the New York Giants’ John Mara.
“I think that there's a high likelihood, greater percentage chance that there will be NFL in L.A. next year,” said Indianapolis owner Jim Irsay, who hinted the league Los Angeles question might be answered by Chargers owner Dean Spanos and Kroenke hammering out a deal.
“This thing should hopefully come to a conclusion early in 2016 in January in that range,” Irsay continued. “As owners, we have to look what's best for the National Football League and what makes the most sense and exactly who moves and where they move.”
And that’s the tricky part for a league which has to balance its relocation guidelines and addressing stadium issues in St. Louis, San Diego and Oakland while ensuring that the league’s return to the nation’s second largest market after a 21-year absence is successful.
“I think it’s our No. 1, from my perspective, this is just me, our No. 1 opportunity or our No. 1 focus should be on doing a project in L.A. that wows them,” said Jones, wearing a diamond Cowboys star on the lapel of his navy blue suit. “I certainly know we have in place a project or projects that will do what I’m talking about and create a presence for us in L.A. and create an experience for those millions of great fans and the thousands that will come to the stadium, we have that with our hands around it right now.
“We don’t have to create that. It’s there and going.”
Both the importance the league has placed on the Los Angeles issue and the sense the process is nearing its conclusion are evident in the amount of time the owners and NFL senior staff are spending on the situation during two days of meetings that are expected to wrap up early Wednesday evening.
“We’ve got several meeting sessions that the full ownership will be looking at aspects of L.A.,” Jones said. “So that is pretty serious meetings. I’ve never been to a meeting where we have so many sessions on L.A. At least half my time on L.A.”
The Los Angeles committee met Tuesday afternoon and Spanos, Kroenke and Raiders owner Mark Davis will meet individually with the full ownership Wednesday afternoon in what Rooney described as “candid” conversations.
While Spanos has more votes among the league’s owners than Kroenke and certainly more than the nine needed to block a Rams move to Inglewood, the Chargers owner currently does not have the votes of three-quarters of the league’s 32 owners needed to relocate, league sources said.
Spanos does have the majority of support of the Los Angeles committee.
Rooney said the committee will make a recommendation on the Los Angeles situation to the owners but declined to say Tuesday what that recommendation would be.
“If I thought there was one, I couldn’t say right now,” he said. “I can’t really talk about that.”
While some within the NFL have suggested the Los Angeles issue will ultimately be settled behind closed doors, Rooney said there will be an actual vote of the owners on the matter, most likely after the regular season.
“When we get down to it, there’s gotta be a vote and we don’t know what the vote is until there is a vote,” Rooney said. “I’m not going to try and handicap it. I do at this point, I do think there will be a vote, yeah.”
In recent weeks there has been a sense of urgency within the Los Angeles committee to bring the process to a close because of the amount of money the two groups are spending on the Inglewood and Carson projects.
“Millions of dollars are involved and being expended by the week,” said Jones, who is familiar with details of the Hollywood Park project. “As a group, L.A. is having millions of dollars spent literally by the week.”
“I think it’s a factor, sure,” Rooney said. “We recognize that. That’s one reason why we want to come to a conclusion.”
Rooney and the Giants’ Mara have also been pushing for the league to enforce its relocation guidelines, which could create an obstacle for Kroenke if a task force appointed by Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon can present a viable stadium plan in St. Louis.
The task force has proposed a $998-million riverfront stadium north of downtown. Under the St. Louis task force’s proposal, $201 million of the stadium's financing would come from city and state bonds with another $160 million coming from the sale of seat licenses.
Nixon wants to fund the new stadium by extending bonds on the debt for the Edward Jones Dome, the Rams’ current home. Extending the bonds could provide as much as $350 million for the new stadium.
The task force plan also calls for the Rams to provide $250 million. The project would also receive a $200 million loan from a NFL fund and another $187 million in tax incentives. National Car Rental has agreed to pay $185 million over 20 years for the naming rights of a new St. Louis stadium, according to reports Tuesday night.
Already the task force has cleared two significant hurdles – one financial, the other legal. The Missouri Development Finance Board in August approved $15 million in tax credits for the project this year, and St. Louis Circuit Court Judge Thomas Frawley ruled that public funds can be used to finance the stadium project without voter approval.
“I think our relocation guidelines always put an emphasis on allowing the home markets to keep their franchise,” Rooney said. “So that’s part of this process and that’s why it’s taking some time. So we just have to go through the process.”
Hunt, however, echoing other owners, emphasized that the stadium plan is only one of several issues the league will consider in determining if a current market remains viable.
“Does it carry weight that someone wants to leave a market even though it’s viable, that there’s a great public/private partnership on the table?” Irsay said. “I think that again you have to listen to what has occurred in terms of the negotiations, and where the process is at, but to my knowledge I don’t think there’s been anything concrete that has been really put on the table saying this is a done deal, that sort of thing, in any of those markets.”
While Irsay said there has been “a lot of discussion” behind the scenes among owners, he said, “I don’t think the discussion has happened that we’ve figured out how to sort this thing out yet.”
That discussion, Irsay suggested, could take place if Spanos and Kroenke sat down to see if they could work out a partnership in Inglewood.
“I think it’s going to lead to that point where you might huddle people and say, ‘Hey, let’s take a break and let these two owners get together and talk about this or that because we do want to try and have a fairness and deals go through that make sense and have people compromise, etc.’ and just have it a real workable situation,” Irsay said.
During a 2013 dinner, Spanos and Kroenke discussed various Los Angeles-area sites, including a 250-plus acre plot at Hollywood Park owned by an investment group Kroenke would eventually join and a 60-acre section between the race track and the Forum then owned by Walmart, which Kroenke purchased a few months later.
Spanos was not interested in the Inglewood sites and made no real effort to purchase either of them. When asked Tuesday about sitting down again with Kroenke, Spanos said, “Carson is where our focus is. Carson is where we think the best site is.”
Later Tuesday, Davis was asked if he would be willing to sit down with Kroenke and Spanos to see if the three of them could produce some kind of deal that would be beneficial to all three franchises.
“I’m open to anything,” Davis said.
As Jones spoke Tuesday night over the honking horns of Manhattan gridlock, there was a sense of urgency in his voice and body language.
“A no vote gets nothing done,” he said. “We’ve done nothing for 20 years. So we’ve got an opportunity here. We’ve got great, great potential people that will expand the NFL and expand a great market. I don’t want to miss that train.”
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http://www.ocregister.com/articles/n...allas-say.html
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