Los Angeles Raiders? What Relocation to LA Could Look Like for the Raiders.
Grand Crossing
Majestic Realty’s “Los Angeles Football Stadium at Grand Crossing” project involves an NFL stadium and the obligatory mixed-use development of dining, entertainment, retail, hotels and condominiums located in the suburban City of Industry. Aside from Farmers Field, in fact perhaps even moreso than Farmers Field, this plan is the most developed plan among all the potential stadium sites: Majestic first announced their plans in 2008, hoping to attract an NFL team. Majestic, another large development company that was involved heavily in the original construction of the Staples Center, wants to get back in the sports arena business, despite not having a ton of experience managing sports venues or teams.
Like Farmers Field, the stadium plan is ambitious and beautiful: it calls for 75,000 seats, including 12,500 club seats and 176 suites. It would be a prototypical site with a large parking lot surrounding the stadium, with “plenty of room to tailgate.” The project’s website touts the wonderful sightlines and ability for fans to be “close to the action” as well as the stadium’s LEED certification and EIR that project it as the “greenest” sporting venue in the US. It would be the centerpiece of a planned 600 acre project, located in an area surrounded by commercial and industrial development without the spectre of NIMBY-ish neighbors holding up construction or otherwise creating issues.
Live Feed
FanSided
Grand Crossing is, despite claims to the contrary by it’s backers, also far from everything. City of Industry, located in the southern San Gabriel Valley, is technically within 30 miles of 15. 5 million people, to be sure, but it also can only be reached one way: the Pomona Freeway, CA-60. Claims of being “15 minutes from Disneyland and 20 minutes from Downtown LA” seem silly, since Los Angeles traffic rarely allows one to travel at the posted speed limit for any length of time. Grand Crossing is also located in the aptly-named City of Industry, so named because it is a center of industry and commerce, not so much a place where people live, shop, eat and seek out entertainment. The city’s population as of the 2010 Census was only 219 people. In fact, the name “Grand Crossing” is being used in order to avoid the awkward name “Los Angeles Football Stadium at City of Industry,” and if the plan is complete, they would literally change the name of the area, per the US Post Office, to Grand Crossing, CA. Now, if this stadium deal were approved, it would undoubtedly change the complexion of the City of Industry and the area surrounding it, but it may be a lot harder to convince fans living in places like Van Nuys or Inglewood or Oxnard to make a 2-hour trek to City of Industry in horrific traffic than it would be to convince them to spend 30-45 minutes on a Metro train.
It’s also unclear how much of a take Majestic Reality will want, or if they’ll also want a piece of the NFL franchise that moves to their spot, much like AEG. City of Industry, which gets a ton of money in commercial/industrial taxes but spends nearly nothing on resident services, has the deep pockets to put up a big chunk of this money themselves, which sweetens the pot for the NFL and, probably, for Mark Davis, but the remote nature of the site does weaken the value of it quite a bit, and for fans it may be the worst case scenario.