Some may call it pre-planning, others may call it putting the cart ahead of the horse. Either way you describe it, the city of Los Angeles has approved plans for a new football stadium; now all that remains is moving a team to the City of Angels. While that small detail remains to be sorted out, city officials and committees were feverishly making edits and adjustments to the proposed stadium deal, reportedly worth $1.5 Billion in construction costs. The proposed stadium would also be connected to the existing L.A. Convention Center, in the heart of downtown Los Angeles.
The centerpiece of the agreement reached by AEG and the Play Fair Coalition is a $15 million Housing Trust Fund that will create affordable housing units in Pico-Union, South Los Angeles and Downtown Los Angeles. “With this important milestone, for the first time in almost two decades, the City of Los Angeles is finally poised to see the return of the NFL,” AEG president and CEO Tim Leiweke said. “With this settlement in place, the project can move forward to spur job creation and offer an even more robust package of measures benefitting the community.”
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NFL Commissioner, Roger Goodell, released a memo to all 32 teams in the league, noting that applications for relocation to Los Angeles would be taken between January 1 and February 15, 2013. It should be noted that in order to apply for relocation, all attempts must be made to remain in the teams’ current cities. Ground will not break on the new Los Angeles stadium until a team commits to moving there full time. It is reportedly going to be a four-year process to build the new stadium and have it integrated with the Convention Center.