AEG CEO Tim Leiweke calmly brings out the big guns in an LA Times article today, telling the paper his company's fully prepared to yank the whole Downtown NFL stadium if the LA City Council doesn't lock in a preliminary deal by July 31. Even though he says "I don't think we're meeting with resistance," he seems pretty annoyed by the Council: "These 15 folks sometimes don't know how to get out of their own way. Can they kill this deal? Yes, they are very capable of killing this deal." LA has hired new planners to handle the Farmers Field development (which would also move the Convention Center's West Hall) and Mayor Villaraigosa and the area's City Councilmember Jan Perry are enthusiastically on board, but in February Councilmember Paul Krekorian "worried the city is going to 'extraordinary lengths' to approve [the NFL stadium] on an accelerated time line," according to another Times article. AEG has pulled out of a Downtown NFL stadium before--it dropped a plan in 2002 because it didn't like the 'tude it was getting from the Coliseum Commission. If AEG can make a deal with the city now, which Leiweke says will be way harder than actually luring an NFL team here, he says they want to be ready for the 2016 season, a year later than originally hoped for. The Memorandum of Understanding Leiweke wants would require a simple majority vote.
· AEG wants L.A.'s go-ahead on NFL stadium by July 31 [LAT]
· Highlight Reel from Today's AEG NFL Pitch to City [Curbed LA]
Filed under:
Loading comments...