When a lawsuit filed by the city of Walnut regarding the proposed football stadium to be built in the city of Industry was successfully mediated last month, Ed Roski and his Majestic Realty Co. no longer needed the California Legislature to change environmental laws in order to render the lawsuit moot.
But there was another lawsuit a claim filed by a group that couldn’t be worked out. So, according to Patrick McGreevy of the Los Angeles Times, California lawmakers have passed an exemption to the environmental laws that essentially kills the lawsuit with the stroke of a pen.
“It’s a sad day for California,” said Howard Wang, vice president of Citizens for Community Preservation, which had filed the claim. “It
opens up the door for other developers who are well-off enough to hire
lobbyists to go to Sacramento and get exemptions from the environmental
laws.”
Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, who preferred negotiated settlements to adjusted laws, has a different take.
“These are extraordinary times,” Steinberg told McGreevy. He called the stadium “an opportunity to create thousands of construction jobs,
thousands of permanent jobs.”
Escondido Senator Mark Wyland tried to tweak the tweaking of the law to require that any team that plays in the stadium must come from a state other than California, in the hopes of removing the San Diego Chargers from the mix of franchises that might be lured to Roski’s new digs. That measure, however, failed.
The bill now has only one last obstacle — it needs to be signed into law by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. A spokesman said that Schwarzenegger “supports the construction of a stadium in Los Angeles to create jobs and bring the NFL back to L.A.”
So it looks like this thing will happen. If they can get a team to play there. Possible candidates include the Bills, Jaguars, Raiders, Chargers, Vikings, Rams, and 49ers.