NFL Stadium

Earlier today, AEG announced the completion of the first draft of environmental documents for Farmers Field, the proposed football stadium for Downtown Los Angeles.  The document, available on City Planning's website, is a mammoth 10,000 pages and the ceremonial handing over of the documents to the city at today's event involved 13 overflowing three ring binders.

Last night, dozens of Westsiders and union members packed into the Mar Vista Recreation Center to watch the Bill and Tim Show.  Hosted by Councilman Bill Rosendahl, a former talk show host, and featuring special guest AEG CEO Tim Leiweke, the two hammed it up with the help of a team of able sidekicks and more often than not brought applause from the audience as they sold Westsiders on an improved convention center and new football stadium.

By this point, its becoming clear that for City Officials, the transportation planning for the AEG stadium is a secondary issue for the politicians who will approve a deal with AEG, possibly within the next 45 days.  While the Council is debating and discussing a lot of complicated issues, it's taking its eyes off the ball when it comes to transportation planning.

While the rest of the local media was busy going ga-ga over the press conference announcing that, if constructed, the Downtown NFL Stadium would be named after Farmers Bank, Patrick McGreevey and Jessica Harrison at the Los Angeles Times revealed that the developer's for the Downtown Stadium are lobbying for the same exemption from state environmental lawsuits that rival developer Ed Roski earned for his proposed Stadium in the City of Industry.

The Sporting News provides one of the first real looks at what plans entertainment giant AEG has planned for their proposed NFL Football Stadium that would be located in Downtown Los Angeles.  There's some good news for those concerned that the new Stadium would be accompanied with a gigantic sea of parking, as most NFL Stadiums do.  According to the Sporting News:

Former City Councilman Jack Weiss has not been what one would call progressive on most transportation issues.  While he backed the Mayor on transit issues, he also was his largest backer for the massively unpopular Pico-Olympic Plan which would have sped up rush hour automobile traffic at the expense of parking for businesses, bicycle and pedestrian traffic.  Weiss sounded a progressive tone on his candidate's survey for Streetsblog, but also backed an LADOT plan to remove traffic calming in Holmby-Westwood.