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Mayor Curt Pringle and local business leaders hosted NFL Commissioner Tagliabue and key NFL owners to further discuss opportunities for the NFL in Anaheim.

Friday, June 16, 2006

NFL guards its playbook as execs pay visit to O.C.

By Sarah Tully and Michael Lev

The Orange County Register

SANTA ANA – The NFL and Orange County business community had their second date Thursday. The lingering question is whether their budding relationship will result in a marriage.

A small group of National Football League executives visited Thursday with top tier business leaders - a follow-up to NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue's speech in April to the Orange County Business Council. Another meeting is expected to be set up soon.

Even as the NFL drums up corporate support in Orange County and Los Angeles, the NFL has yet to set a time frame for picking one or both sites for a stadium.

"We are looking at an investment of multiple hundreds of millions of dollars and a partnership that hopefully will extend over most of the next century. The emphasis is to do it right and do it thoroughly and not set deadlines that turn out to be meaningless," Tagliabue said.

The local meeting, set up by Anaheim Mayor Curt Pringle, came the day after NFL executives dined with Los Angeles business leaders.

While Tagliabue declined to say publicly which site he favors, some expressed a preference for building a stadium from scratch, as the league could do in Anaheim. In L.A., the NFL would remodel the Coliseum.

"I think they were clearly interested in playing in a new NFL stadium vs. a refurbished stadium," said Larry Higby, CEO of Apria Healthcare.

'Very Clean site'

Denver Broncos owner Pat Bowlen, who visited Orange County a decade ago, said he could see the area's transformation during the trip.

"We obviously have a very clean site here in (Anaheim). We have a very difficult site in Los Angeles. Yet Los Angeles is Los Angeles," said Bowlen, a member of the league's 11-owner L.A. Working Group.

"It's always easier to build a new stadium on a clear site. Clearly, right now, we've got two very viable opportunities, and we should act on it as soon as we can."

Tagliabue said it is "wearying" to keep answering questions about when a decision will be made, but some business leaders said they appreciate the league's thoroughness.

"We were not making assumptions about Orange County. We were rolling up our sleeves and really trying to understand in-depth what was going on. And that's what we're going to continue to do," Tagliabue said.

At the same time, Tagliabue realizes that Anaheim is starting to consider other ideas for the 53-acre plot next to Angel Stadium since the NFL failed to choose the site by last month. Still, the league is spending up to $10 million to study both sites. Each stadium project could cost about $800 million, which would come from private funds.

Filet and chicken

The Orange County meeting was more low-key than the one in Los Angeles. There, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's dinner took place at his residence, the Getty House, featuring food by celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck. Pringle's luncheon took place at the First American Corp. business park in Santa Ana. First American catered the lunch with salad, filet mignon or chicken and sherbet with fresh berries.

The discussion centered on Orange County's advantages and the demographic shifts, but failed to get into specifics, such as suite buyers.

"I think it was positive reinforcement that Orange County is a very serious candidate for an NFL franchise and facility," said Paul Folino, chairman and CEO of computer-network storage company Emulex.

Before the business meeting, Lennar Corp. officials presented their plans to build high-rise condos and shops near the proposed NFL stadium site, as well as efforts in other cities to incorporate urban living with sports facilities, including San Francisco.

"We obviously told them how big of believers we are in Anaheim," said Emile Haddad, Lennar's California region president, who attended the business meeting as well.

Bowlen said he was encouraged by both meetings.

"We need to have a team in what I call the Los Angeles basin. We ought to as a league act on that and get going on getting a team here," Bowlen said. "The meetings we had the business community leaders that showed up, I couldn't have been more impressed."