Los Angeles city officials on Tuesday officially gave up on the NFL bringing a football team to downtown and instead moved ahead to remodel the Convention Center without a stadium.
For the past four years, L.A. city officials had pushed a plan put forward by Anschutz Entertainment Group to build a stadium in the Convention Center parking lot. As part of the project, AEG would have torn down the west hall of the outmoded Convention Center and build a new wing.
But the National Football League never reached an agreement with AEG and negotiations broke off two years ago.
Fed up with waiting for the NFL to make a move, city officials quietly began working up an alternative, known as “Plan B” to revamp the Convention Center, which is seen as inadequate for large-scale conventions.
On Tuesday, with Mayor Eric Garcetti’s backing, an L.A. City Council committee voted to spend $600,000 in bond money to pay for predesign work for three applicants for the Convention Center remodel.
According to a city report presented Tuesday, the preliminary concept calls for adding 300,000 square feet of new exhibit space, 75,000 square feet of meeting space, a 60,000 square-foot ballroom and various façade upgrades. There will also be space set aside for a 1,000 room hotel to complement the J.W. Marriott/Ritz Carlton hotel complex next to the L.A. Live complex.
“I support moving forward on Plan B,” Garcetti said in a statement. “It’s time to modernize our Convention Center so our city attracts the nation’s largest conventions and the economic benefits they provide.”