Monday September 06, 1999

By Andrew Bridges
Staff Writer

PASADENA -- The City Council will roll up its sleeves later this month and tackle an issue that has vexed the city for years: how best to use and to make money from the Rose Bowl.

Tugged in one direction by Arroyo Seco neighbors who complain about traffic and noise associated with the concerts, games and occasional dirt bike extravaganzas at the Rose Bowl, and in another by the pressing need to pay off $47 million in debt associated with recent improvements at the venerable stadium, the debate will be anything but easy.

Compounding the issue is the Arroyo Seco itself, with separate battles already brewing over the reconfiguration of Hahamongna Watershed Park and whether the Kidspace museum will move into Brookside Park.

The City Council has asked Rose Bowl General Manager Darryl Dunn to prepare a white paper on plans for the stadium's use. The report should be complete by mid-month; a five-year business plan will likely be finished in October.

"They've decided it's time to do a re-examination of the Rose Bowl and that's great and I agree with it," Dunn said. "We want to generate revenue and be a positive part of the city."

While Dunn said the Rose Bowl is on track to meeting its debts, which must be paid off by 2016, just who will occupy the stadium into the next century remains murky at times. UCLA and the Tournament of Roses, the stadium's two best-known tenants, are not likely to decamp anytime soon. Nor is the monthly flea market.

The Los Angeles Galaxy, however, has toyed with the idea of building a soccer-specific stadium elsewhere in the region at a time when the Rose Bowl boasts of being the world's premiere soccer venue. With the Women's World Cup final in July, the Rose Bowl has now hosted the most important games in soccer history, including the 1994 World Cup final and 1984 Gold Medal match.

Members of the Rose Bowl Operating Co. now talk of luring more international games to town -- perhaps beginning in late September, with a U.S. women's team match against Brazil. But even Galaxy games are sometimes sparsely attended: a recent match earned the city a paltry $3,000.

In the world of football as it is played in the United States, Rose Bowl officials also talk eagerly of landing a NFL expansion team -- and maybe the USC Trojans as well -- on a temporary basis while a permanent stadium is built or refurbished elsewhere.

To protect itself against the proverbial rainy day, the RBOC which tries to run the civic stadium as much like a business as the city will allow it has sought to build up its reserves. The City Council has frowned upon that practice.

"Every time we start to put to that we've been swooped and it's been gone," said RBOC Chairman Daniel Castro during a recent meeting of the panel's finance committee.

Although the Arroyo Seco Ordinance limits the number of major events held at the Rose Bowl each year to 12, with an exception for Galaxy games, that number often gets played with when the potential for hosting a profit-generating event crops up.

Mayor Bill Bogaard said any meaningful discussion of the Rose Bowl's future must include a refining of what will and will not go on in the stadium. The City Council recently voted 6-2 to approve a motocross championship at the Rose Bowl on Nov. 20 an event neighbors bitterly opposed.

"The fact is, in general in recent years, there has been a feeling on the part of many people that our use of the Rose Bowl has been guided by a series of variances and exceptions to announced policies and that is not a good way to run a railroad," Bogaard said. "We ought to give clear direction on what's permissible, so staff doesn't waste its time, the public isn't surprised and we as the council, as owners of the enterprise, give the type of direction to allow it to do what it has to do."

Councilman Steve Madison, who represents much of the area surrounding the Rose Bowl, said setting out such parameters will calm neighborhood fears.

"My constituents are going to feel a lot more comfortable, because there will be limits," Madison said.

Among the issues expected to be broached this month are other ways of generating a profit, including selling off the right to rename the stadium to a private corporation. What the deal is worth depends on what the Rose Bowl would be willing to cede, said Todd Waks of ProServ/SFX Sports and Entertainment, the stadium's marketing agency. But Dunn said such a deal could be bring around $1 million a year.

The stadium is also seeking to market souvenirs bearing its now trademarked name. However, the RBOC has tangled with Consor, the company it retained to help develop the trademark.

"At this point it has not been determined what our future relationship will be," Dunn said.