April 14, 2011

AEG's Leiweke to stadium critics: Be "cheerleaders," not "professors"

It seems the pressure of having people actually looking at the specifics of his downtown L.A. stadium proposal is getting to AEG president Tim Leiweke. After previously sticking with the soft sell of insisting that no public money would be involved (despite the project requiring $350 million in public money that might or might not be recouped), on Tuesday Leiweke lashed out at critics of the stadium plan during his keynote speech at the Stadia Design and Technology Expo, saying among other things:

• Elected officials should be "a cheerleader for the private sector" in development deals.
• Economists who say that stadiums just siphon money from one part of the economy to another are "professors in classrooms that have never built anything in their lives."
• If the government doesn't want to build stadiums, and private developers are faced with "someone who not only attacks you but puts fear in the hearts of the citizens that the project is going to cost them money," then the private sector might just take their ball and go home and you'd have no new stadiums at all.

The best part of Leiweke's "cheerleader" quote is that it appears to be a (conscious or otherwise) to this Los Angeles Times editorial, which specifically called on local electeds not to be mere cheerleaders for a stadium, but to do due diligence. I suppose there are stranger ways to respond to negative press coverage than by extending a raised middle finger to your city's largest media outlet, but the examples are few and far between.

As for Leiweke's prospective cheerleader recruits, they responded about as you'd expect: Los Angeles City Councilman Bill Rosendahl, a stadium critic who is on the council committee investigating the plan, told the Times: "I'm not a cheerleader, I'm a player. The city is a quarterback or a tight end, it's one of the major roles in the team. And I hope Tim Leiweke is on our team." And not, presumably, this kind of teammate.