Roski

Are you ready for L.A. Live, San Gabriel Valley edition? The downtown entertainment complex may get a cousin of sorts 23 miles to the east if billionaire developer Edward Roski Jr. has his way. So far, coverage of Roski's proposal to build a 75,000-seat, $800-million stadium in City of Industry has focused on its potential to bring professional football back to the Los Angeles area after an absence of 15 years. But Roski's plan doesn't just call for a stadium. It sees the football facility as the centerpiece of a 592-acre mixed-use complex including shops, restaurants, offices and an extensive network of surface parking lots.

Reporting from Houston — The NFL stadium derby in Southern California is likely to get more interesting and competitive. Real estate magnate Ed Roski, whose bid for a stadium in City of Industry has for months been lost in the shadows of a rival proposal next to Staples Center, has changed his offer to teams eyeing a relocation. Roski has dropped his demand for a no-cash minority share of a franchise and instead is offering to hand over the 600 acres he controls to any team that relocates there.

Ed Roski Jr., the L.A. County billionaire who got state legislators to exempt his proposed NFL stadium from environmental laws, has showered the lawmakers with tens of thousands of dollars in campaign cash. The money is part of $505,000 that Roski put into California political campaigns during the second half of 2009, including $300,000 toward a proposed ballot measure that would change term limits for future legislators. The contributions are significantly higher than in the previous six months, when Roski doled out $49,000.

The big headlines and media noise swirling around the proposed downtown stadium have given new life to the nearly forgotten concept that the NFL might have a team in Los Angeles again. One thing is certain. Tim Leiweke and his Anschutz Entertainment Group have won the battle of perception. The only way Leiweke could have made a bigger splash would have been to don a Paul Revere hat and ride through the streets of Los Angeles, yelling: "The NFL is coming! The NFL is coming!" The implication of his proposed site, next to Staples Center, is that it would make L.A. Live even livelier.

Afew miles outside of Los Angeles, in a business-tax-free haven of strip malls and strip clubs called the city of Industry -- under 800 residents and fewer than 100 voters -- ground is ready to be broken for an $800-million football stadium. The team to play there is yet to be determined. But the hope is that a wayward owner longing for luxury boxes will want to call it home. The deal was celebrated by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as both environmentally friendly and fiscally responsible.

Re "Roski Presses Deal to Run Coliseum," Feb. 9: The NFL may need Los Angeles, but Los Angeles does not need the NFL. The absence of professional football from the country's second-biggest market may have lowered TV ratings a bit, but our city and county have not been harmed one whit. We will be harmed if we continue to tolerate elected officials meeting in secret with private entrepreneurs under pressure from artificial deadlines. If Ed Roski and Eli Broad are so eager to make a deal with the NFL, let them.

In Southern California, property development is a full-contact sport, and nobody plays the game with quite the brio of Industry-based Majestic Realty Co. Its chairman and CEO, Ed Roski Jr., is an ex-Marine who turned the successful commercial real estate brokerage that his father founded into one of the nation's biggest industrial property developers, making himself a billionaire in the process. Along with Denver billionaire Phil Anschutz, Roski developed Staples Center and the successful L.A. Live project that adjoins it. He retains a minority interest in both the Lakers and the Kings.

The pieces appear to be falling into place for an NFL stadium in the city of Industry, but does that mean a team is on its way? Los Angeles developer Ed Roski Jr. cleared a significant legal hurdle this week when the city of Walnut agreed to drop a lawsuit intended to block the plan. Here are some answers to the most pertinent questions about where the league is on the issue of returning to the nation's second-largest market: Does this mean an NFL team is coming to Los Angeles?

He likes to trace his political activism to his days as a high school volunteer for conservative icon Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign. She talks proudly of being a Goldwater Girl. He insists there's plenty of money in Sacramento; it's just allocated incorrectly. She says state government tries to do too much. When their campaigns are not busy trading attacks -- and there have been plenty of those -- Orange County Supervisor Chris Norby, 59, and longtime GOP activist Linda Ackerman, 65, are pushing to outdo each other in conservative credentials.

Lest you think I am merely another pretty-boy sportswriter, I offer up this serious proposal: a new NFL stadium, at the corner of 2nd and Spring streets in downtown Los Angeles. Sure, there's a major newspaper there now ? this one ? but don't mind that. This is the perfect location, right across the street from the LAPD and catty-corner from City Hall. It represents a holy trinity: media, cops, crooks. When some city inspector is busted for taking a bribe, we'll get that story to you yesterday.

Once the dust settles on the NFL's new labor agreement, will the league finally start pushing dirt in Los Angeles? That's what backers of the competing L.A. stadium proposals are hoping, that team owners will turn their attention to the nation's second-largest market now that their first-largest nightmare — a bitter fight with the players — is over. "For us, the timing is perfect because it's coming at the same time we're finishing what no one thought we could do, which is a deal with the city," said AEG's Tim Leiweke, who hopes to know by the end of the month whether the L.A. City Council will issue roughly $300 million in bonds and approve the just-completed memorandum of understanding for a stadium deal.

The battle of NFL proposals has taken another interesting turn. AEG, pushing for a downtown stadium, announced Wednesday that it has selected Populous as the architectural firm to design the relocated West Hall of the Convention Center, which sits on the proposed site of Farmers Field. A senior principal at Populous is Staples Center architect Dan Meis, who designed Ed Roski's proposed City of Industry stadium. Populous, a global firm with offices worldwide, including a Los Angeles office, now will turn its attention solely to the downtown site.

State Sen. Bob Huff, who is working aggressively to save California's redevelopment agencies, says Gov. Jerry Brown's plan to abolish them is legally dubious, would cost jobs and would eliminate one of the state's few tools for spurring economic development. What the Diamond Bar Republican doesn't include in his pitch is that his wife is a paid consultant for a large developer eager to keep the program intact. The developer, Ed Roski Jr., owner of Majestic Realty, has industrial and commercial properties across Southern California, many of them in redevelopment zones that have been spruced up with tax dollars.

Lest you think I am merely another pretty-boy sportswriter, I offer up this serious proposal: a new NFL stadium, at the corner of 2nd and Spring streets in downtown Los Angeles. Sure, there's a major newspaper there now ? this one ? but don't mind that. This is the perfect location, right across the street from the LAPD and catty-corner from City Hall. It represents a holy trinity: media, cops, crooks. When some city inspector is busted for taking a bribe, we'll get that story to you yesterday.

Ed Roski Jr., the L.A. County billionaire who got state legislators to exempt his proposed NFL stadium from environmental laws, has showered the lawmakers with tens of thousands of dollars in campaign cash. The money is part of $505,000 that Roski put into California political campaigns during the second half of 2009, including $300,000 toward a proposed ballot measure that would change term limits for future legislators. The contributions are significantly higher than in the previous six months, when Roski doled out $49,000.

He likes to trace his political activism to his days as a high school volunteer for conservative icon Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign. She talks proudly of being a Goldwater Girl. He insists there's plenty of money in Sacramento; it's just allocated incorrectly. She says state government tries to do too much. When their campaigns are not busy trading attacks -- and there have been plenty of those -- Orange County Supervisor Chris Norby, 59, and longtime GOP activist Linda Ackerman, 65, are pushing to outdo each other in conservative credentials.

SACRAMENTO - Twenty-two years after California became one of the first states to limit legislators' terms in office, voters are about to decide whether the rules should be changed. In 1990, voters limited lawmakers to three two-year terms in the Assembly and two four-year stints in the Senate, for a total of 14 years in the Legislature. Proposition 28, on the June 5 ballot, would limit lawmakers to 12 years in the Legislature but allow all of those to be served in one house. Proponents contend that existing law doesn't give people enough time in one office to fully master complex issues and the lawmaking process.

I had dinner with Georgia Frontiere , where the Rams' owner chose to tell me about each of her seven husbands — four too many for me to make a newspaper deadline and still explain to the people of Los Angeles how she had just won approval to move her team to St. Louis. I hopped into a waiting limo in Oakland, expecting to find Al Davis , but got a pair of Raiderettes instead. So I never did get around to meeting with Davis to discuss the possibility of the Raiders returning to L.A. Former super-agent Michael Ovitz sent a martini to my hotel room and had Tom Cruise and Jerry West call to talk football and the prospect of bringing the NFL back to town.

Are you ready for L.A. Live, San Gabriel Valley edition? The downtown entertainment complex may get a cousin of sorts 23 miles to the east if billionaire developer Edward Roski Jr. has his way. So far, coverage of Roski's proposal to build a 75,000-seat, $800-million stadium in City of Industry has focused on its potential to bring professional football back to the Los Angeles area after an absence of 15 years. But Roski's plan doesn't just call for a stadium. It sees the football facility as the centerpiece of a 592-acre mixed-use complex including shops, restaurants, offices and an extensive network of surface parking lots.

Afew miles outside of Los Angeles, in a business-tax-free haven of strip malls and strip clubs called the city of Industry -- under 800 residents and fewer than 100 voters -- ground is ready to be broken for an $800-million football stadium. The team to play there is yet to be determined. But the hope is that a wayward owner longing for luxury boxes will want to call it home. The deal was celebrated by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as both environmentally friendly and fiscally responsible.