Environmentalists win fight to keep NFL team out of Pasadena

In the end, the arguments of preservationists, parkland advocates, environmentalists and worried neighbors carried the day. A 4-4 vote from the Pasadena City Council killed the plan to base a National Football League team at the Rose Bowl, and the city began searching for an alternate plan for preserving the 82-year-old stadium with needed repairs and upgrades at a reasonable cost.

If an NFL team had come to the Rose Bowl, this field and its users might have been displaced in favor of parking lots. photo by Don Bremner

Gone are the major threats to Pasadena's Arroyo Seco and nearby neighborhoods - that NFL parking would crowd out public recreation in the Central Arroyo on 13 additional days each year; that 38,000 vehicles carrying football fans would mean serious traffic congestion on game days; that crowd noise would disturb neighbors; that the historic stadium would lose its distinctive character and perhaps its designation as a national landmark.

The decisive turn came at a City Council meeting June 6 when Councilman Steve Madison announced that he could not support the NFL proposal, saying, 'This decision isn't even close.' Madison thus joined Mayor Bill Bogaard and two other previous opponents of the NFL deal on the eight-member Council, leaving a 4-4 tie that effectively scuttled the plan.

The outlook now is for a much more modest approach to keeping the Rose Bowl viable. 'The goal is preservation, not enhancement,' Councilman Madison said.

Over the next few months, Pasadena city staff and the Rose Bowl Operating Company are to develop a 'Plan B' in consultation with UCLA, which has a 20-year contract to play its home football games at the Rose Bowl, and with the Tournament of Roses, organizer of the annual Rose Bowl Game. This proposal could range from simply maintaining the stadium while making only already agreed upgrades, to an ambitious multimillion-dollar renovation. The hope is to build a consensus for a feasible and affordable plan.

The atmosphere for Rose Bowl planning now will be much different since the demise of the NFL deal. Fears that Pasadena's major park, the Arroyo Seco, as well as the Rose Bowl's historic character and neighborhood quality of life would be sacrificed to commercial football have subsided. These concerns fueled vigorous opposition to the NFL proposal by preservation, neighborhood and environmental organizations, including the Sierra Club, as well as many individuals.

But while much of the emotion has dissipated, major issues remain to be solved.

What will be needed to keep the aging Rose Bowl viable for decades into the future and acceptable to UCLA and the Tournament of Roses? What's affordable? The city already uses revenues from neighboring Brookside Golf Course to make up Rose Bowl operating losses of more than $1.5 million a year. If more revenue can't be found, would the public be willing to finance improvements?

If an NFL team had come to the Rose Bowl, parked cars would have blocked recreation in much of Central Arroyo. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of joggers, walkers, bikers, roller-bladers, golfers, soccer and softball players, swimmers, picnickers, families, kids, dogs and others enjoying recreation on weekends would have been displaced. Doing this to make way for a commercial business like professional football would have been a serious infringement of the public's right to use public parkland, even if it was part of a deal with economic benefits for the City.

An eventual Plan B will have to preserve these essential qualities of the Arroyo Seco and its surroundings, even if it costs more.

Adapted from the July/August issue of the Pasadena Group newsletter Arroyo View.