Taxpayers’ Role in Downtown Arena

Re “Soap Opera in Downtown L.A.,” editorial, Sept. 17:

You conclude that the lesson to be learned by other prospective developers in Los Angeles from the arena episode is “it ain’t worth the trouble.” You’ve completely missed the point. The only reason the arena deal has become an issue at all is because the developers want the “Bank of the Taxpayer” to give them concessions and lend them money for the project. I’ve participated in some small developments in Los Angeles in the past. Not only were we not given any financial assistance, but the city actually required us to give up part of our property for street widening.

No, the actual lesson to be learned from this fiasco is “pay your own way like the rest of us.”

GARY S. OSHEROFF

Los Angeles

On Sept. 17 two items caught my attention, “Software Expo Wooed Back to L.A.” and your editorial.

It’s my guess that those who are booking Convention Center space for the future are counting on the proposed development of the surrounding area (sports and entertainment complex and a Convention Center hotel). This devel- opment is a strong selling point for our entire city and its economic development, not just for sports fans.

Those creating roadblocks to the development of this area are completely lacking in vision and in the long run will doom the viability of the Convention Center itself.

P.S. I’m canceling my membership in the Sierra Club.

CAROL MISHELL

Los Angeles

No one seems to have noticed, but the proposed downtown sports arena provides astonishing insight into the very real power of L.A.’s old-line, white male establishment. We have the white, Irish mayor and his white, male Council of Business Advisors (i.e. corporate chieftains), pushing for the arena deal as if it were life and death. We have the strange spectacle of L.A.’s Catholic cardinal, another white Irish guy, writing an op-ed (Sept. 12) in support of the arena and downtown real estate development, instead of bringing attention to perhaps more humanitarian concerns. And we have The Times itself calling for the arena in its sports pages, editorials and even in the column of the paper’s leading “skeptic.”

In other words, despite overwhelming independent evidence that public support of sports arenas is one of the poorest investments a city can make for economic redevelopment, we have the white, male downtown money men, the Catholic Church and the dominant media force all bleating that building this arena is in the public interest. Someone’s getting rich.

PATRICK SINCLAIR

Los Angeles