News of the Arroyo
Title: | Terror of Colorado Boulevard |
Subtitle: | |
Date: | 2003-10-31 |
Summary: | October 31, 2003 - Pasadena puts its NFL hopes on Moag, man who 'gets things done' |
Author: | Billy Witz, Staff Writer |
Publication: | Pasadena Star News |
Content: | BALTIMORE -- It is not becoming of an old-moneyed, staunchly proper town such as Pasadena to be in the business of throwing itself at someone the way it is doing to the NFL. Soliciting, no matter the context, is a dirty word. As a result, Pasadena\'s unfamiliar courtship of the NFL -- all in the hopes of maintaining the Rose Bowl\'s place as a crown jewel with a proposed $500 million renovation -- has led it in an unlikely direction. That is, all the way across the country, to an office in a red-brick former detergent factory on the edge of a working-class neighborhood on this city\'s inner harbor. Here, charged with putting together a deal that would put an NFL team in the Rose Bowl, sits John Moag -- an energetic, 49-year-old, cigar-chomping, gravel-throated investment banker whose language can be as salty as the sea water outside his window. If Moag is un-Pasadena-like, he can hardly be blamed. He\'d never set foot there until he took on this project nearly a year-and-a-half ago. This implausible partnership is a result of the stakes involved in bringing pro football to Los Angeles for the first time since the Rams and Raiders left after the 1994 season. For the Rose Bowl, getting this deal done could be worth many millions, turning it from an aging facility that is struggling to pay its own upkeep into a state-of-the-art stadium that would be a magnet for Super Bowls and whose future as a showcase for the city would be set for the next 50 years. For Moag, it could mean a $5 million payday -- his cut if the NFL comes to Pasadena. Otherwise he\'s paid only expenses. When Moag is questioned about whether the NFL ultimately will decide that reconstructing the Coliseum or building a new stadium in Carson is cheaper or less complicated than satisfying preservationists\' concerns about the design or residents\' worries about traffic, he reminds a visitor of his fee schedule. \"Remember, I got into this on the basis that I don\'t get paid unless the deal gets done, so it\'s incumbent on me to spend a lot of time figuring out how we could do this,\" Moag said. \"I was not interested in getting into a scenario that could blow up into political hysterics. This is absolutely viable.\" If it took Moag awhile to figure whether he wanted in on the project, it didn\'t take him long to get the lay of the land -- one with a different political and economic topography. \"When I first went to Pasadena I said, \'You know, we really need to get an economic impact study,\' \" Moag said. \"That\'s one of the basic things that most stadium projects start with -- how many jobs does it create, how many people will come into the stadium, how much money are we going to spend outside the stadium. \"Everyone kind of looked at me like I was nuts. Everyone said we don\'t care. That\'s unique to California. It\'s such an attractive location that people are not hell-bent to recruit business or worry about those things. They\'re saying, so what? We\'re not looking for jobs. Tell me about what it means to my neighborhood, what it means to traffic.\" When Pasadena chose to pursue an NFL franchise, it sent a delegation to New York two years ago to meet with top league officials, including executive vice president Roger Goodell. The Pasadena contingent, which had no experience working with the NFL, asked Goodell -- who declined to be interviewed -- for recommendations of somebody who could lead it through the process of putting together a stadium deal. Rose Bowl officials narrowed the list to two: Moag, who helped bring the Ravens to Baltimore, and Dave Seldin, who helped Jacksonville win an expansion franchise. \"We were in the awkward position of having no money to pay anybody and (having) many, many people who wanted to work with us,\" said Bill Thomson, a former Pasadena mayor and vice president of the Rose Bowl Organizing Co. \"But they all wanted considerable amounts of money. \"John was willing to take his chances on our ultimate success. That, together with his contacts, experience and personality led us to believe he was a very good fit for what we needed.\" The diamond on Moag\'s resume is his role as head of the Maryland Stadium Authority, which lured then-Browns owner Art Modell to Baltimore in 1995 with the promise of a new stadium. By brokering the deal, which returned a team to the football-mad city for the first time since the Colts left for Indianapolis in the middle of the night 12 years earlier, Moag became the local boy done good. Few words; no frills Of the sports memorabilia decorating his office, the most prominently displayed is a framed Ravens jersey with his name and the No. 1 that hangs above his desk. \"There\'s not a person in this city who doesn\'t remember where they were when the Colts left town,\" Moag said. \"I remember what my wife was wearing. \"When we got a team back, I had my Andy Warhol moment. There were a few weeks where I didn\'t have to buy a drink. Do I still get high-fives in the men\'s room at Ravens Stadium? Yeah. \"But it\'s more than personal satisfaction. When I\'m with my dad and kids on any given Sunday watching (the Ravens) play, I know I had something to do with it.\" Moag, an attorney who began his career in the mid-1970s as a congressional aide on Capitol Hill, was a lobbyist for the influential Washington law firm Patton Boggs when he was appointed head of the Maryland Stadium Authority in 1995. He left the law firm in 1998 for Legg Mason, an investment banking firm that has delved into the sports industry, and less than two years ago opened his own firm, Moag and Co. The 11 employees share an open office space whose unfinished ceiling is a maze of wiring and aluminum air ducts, lending an air of informality reinforced by his youthful employees\' casual attire and the several bicycles that are stacked against cubicles or the brick walls. \"As a business, it makes much more sense as a boutique,\" said Moag, who has a boat docked outside the offices. \"It\'s very intimate, highly personal and relationship based. We know what\'s going on, we know the players and we stick to that. We don\'t know anything about the movie industry or the TV industry.\" Moag and Co.\'s business is that of putting together sports deals, be it helping to find investors for an Arena League franchise in Philadelphia, stadium financing for the San Diego Padres\' new park or bringing in a buyer for the Ravens. For the Rose Bowl, he\'s brought in the architecture firm, HOK Sport + Venue + Event, which designed Oriole Park at Camden Yards. He\'s also helped line up several other consultants and been the point man in discussions with the NFL. \"John\'s a man of action, a man of few words, and he gets things done,\" said Ravens\' owner Art Modell, who will turn the team over after this season. \"More than anything else, he\'s got street smarts. He\'s not just dealing in abstract theories. He knows what\'s required, what a city has to do, what the Rose Bowl has to do. Each one has to pull its weight and he\'s a catalyst. \"The Pasadena people can\'t have a better person coming to their aid.\" Moag\'s relationship with Baltimore\'s other major player isn\'t so cordial. Orioles owner Peter Angelos tried to have Moag removed as head of the Maryland Stadium Authority after a rift over the Orioles\' lease terms and Angelos\' diminished role in returning football to Baltimore. Angelos declined interview requests. \"My relationship with Peter is a lot different than Art,\" Moag said. \"It was colored by the Orioles being the only game in town.\" Moag\'s reputation as an NFL insider and his willingness to work on contingency had many believing -- especially those pushing the Rose Bowl -- that Pasadena was the NFL\'s preferred site. Then the league announced in May it was committing up to $10 million to study the feasibility of the Carson site. Moag, who was informed of this at an early-morning meeting with NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue just before the announcement last May in Philadelphia, was furious. Moag said he was \"blindsided,\" and Pasadena officials threatened to walk away from the process. But Moag and Goodell continued to talk and move toward finalizing their plans. The city is in the process of producing an environmental impact report, which is expected to be completed next summer. \"It\'s just a very, very difficult process,\" Moag said. \"The one thing stadiums have in common despite how successful they are once they open their doors is that they are always controversial. \"It\'s hard to find the foes after the building opens because these new and refurbished stadiums have become icons. But going through the process is often very, very frustrating.\" That\'s one area, at least, on which Moag and those in Pasadena now stand on common ground. No matter how many miles apart. Billy Witz, (818) 713-3621 billy.witz@dailynews.com |
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