I will park at Union Station from now on and ride in. I am a die hard Dodger fan and will begin going to games again but I refuse to give one more cent to Frank McCrap by parking in his lot !!!
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Frank McCourt's Dodger Parking Lot
Is it OK if Frank still co-owns the vast acres encircling Dodger Stadium?
Frank McCourt
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Dodger Stadium
1000 Elysian Park Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90012
Category: Community Venues
Region: Chinatown/ Elysian Park
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To some people, getting Frank McCourt out of Dodgertown is like trying to pull a tick off a dog. Even if you sever the body, it still keeps a grip just under the hide.
Major League Baseball forced McCourt to sell the Dodgers, but he's got a hold on a piece of potential gold in Chavez Ravine — the series of vast parking lots that surround the home of the Dodgers. It was part of the deal with MLB: If he sold the team, he could keep the 21 terraced lots occupying 130 acres — the equivalent of about 100 football fields — and big enough to park 16,000 cars.
Under the deal with Magic Johnson, Stan Kasten, Peter Guber and Chicago-based Guggenheim Partners — who together are now calling themselves Guggenheim Baseball Management — McCourt has won a huge concession: a permanent and somewhat surprising role in shaping the future of Dodger Stadium and of Echo Park in general.
The unexpected announcement confused the Los Angeles Times, whose editors ran an incorrect headline atop the front page stating that McCourt had won a "small land stake" in the deal. In fact, McCourt will be a key player, with a prominent role in the future of the stadium complex.
Though many wanted him gone for good, under the sales terms, McCourt will be co-owner of the surrounding lands. In essence, he purchased the Dodger acreage from himself along with his new partner, a still-unnamed affiliate of Guggenheim.
McCourt has dreamed of a major development that could substantially alter the deliberately scruffy, artsy Echo Park vibe. Locals fear that the tin-ear McCourt will champion something along the lines of The Grove in the Fairfax District, an upscale mall that’s anethema to Eastsiders — many of whom make a sport of dumping on cookie-cutter chain stores and Muzak drifting from outdoor speakers shaped like boulders.
The deal announced Tuesday evening, preempting by one day the scheduled final auction among three remaining bidders, solidifies earlier speculation that McCourt would try to develop the parking lots that comprise about half of the 250 acres of land outside the stadium itself.
The mere idea of McCourt's continuing presence in Chavez Ravine sets some people off. Keith Sackler, a Westside businessman who grew up in Santa Monica, has attended hundreds of Dodger games. As long as McCourt is around, Sackler says, he refuses to buy another ticket or snack on a single Dodger dog.
"McCourt has got to be gone 100 percent — gone from the Dodgers, gone from the city — before I'll go back," Sackler says. "I didn’t like the guy from the moment he blew into town. He used the Dodgers as a piggy bank. I'm concerned about what kind of voice McCourt will have if he retains the lot. A new owner can't deal with that. No way a new owner can reinvigorate the team if McCourt's still around.”
Planaria Price lives in Angelino Heights, close to Dodger Stadium. The idea that McCourt could retain a stake in the Dodger Stadium land makes her queasy. "He's already damaged the Dodgers' image," Price says. "That he might ... have dealings with the new owners is horrifying."
Her husband, big Dodgers fan Murray Burns, who last year received the Los Angeles Conservancy's Preservation Award for restoring to grandeur dozens of decrepit Victorian mansions in Angelino Heights, was more blunt. "He's just fucking everything up. Seems McCourt doesn't only want to destroy the Dodgers but also our neighborhood, because of his plans to keep the parking lot and build on it. Everybody got excited when he said he was going to sell — and now this."
Yet wealthy businessman Joey Herrick, who didn't make the final cut of bidders, says he's comfortable with the idea of McCourt co-owning the donut around the Dodger Stadium donut hole — as long as the plan doesn’t include tearing down Dodger Stadium, building condos at Chavez Ravine and creating a stadium elsewhere.
Dodger Stadium "is baseball hallowed ground," Herrick says. "We don't want to tear down the stadium and move it somewhere else and have Chavez Ravine built into condos and housing. A couple of the groups that approached us [who didn't make the cut] said that's where they were going. And we told them, 'You've got the wrong guys.'"
Herrick, a Van Nuys native and president of Natural Balance Pet Foods Inc., drafted investors, including former Dodger players Orel Hershiser and Steve Garvey. "I thought $1.2 billion was a lot of money," he says, "but it wasn’t enough to get in the game." He predicted a $2 billion pricetag several days before the record-high purchase price was announced.
Herrick feels that if McCourt is allowed to keep the parking lots, things could work out OK.
He advises the new owner to make sure the leasing contracts with McCourt have every "t" crossed, but he's not a McCourt critic. He says fans were deluged with unsavory details from McCourt’s divorce. While the McCourts ended up in bankruptcy, Herrick credits them with renovating Dodger Stadium’s concessions stands and field level and installing new seats. (Herrick says the stadium, marking its 50th anniversary this year, still needs $100 million in upgrades.)
"At least when McCourt came in, he got us to the playoffs," Herrick says. "Frank McCourt does deserve some cred."
The fact that McCourt has ended up as co-owner of the choice land surrounding Dodger Stadium is remarkable, given that the record $2 billion being paid by Guggenheim Baseball Management will not only pay off McCourt’s huge debts but will make the currently bankrupt developer one of L.A.'s richest people. It appears he'll end up with about $500 million free and clear. As well-known Los Angeles developer Steven Soboroff tweeted: "Mega Millions jackpot grows to $476 million. Shocked Frank didn’t win that too yesterday. He had a great day ;)."
The deal creates a strange parallel to the way in which McCourt first catapulted to wealth in 1997 — thanks to a 24-acre parking lot he owned in Boston. He struck it rich when Massachusetts agreed to pay him $57.5 million after he accused the state of compensating him too little when it borrowed his land for use during construction of the Big Dig and other projects. As L.A. Weekly reported in "Dodger Dog" in 2010, the payout — the costliest eminent-domain settlement ever in the United States — was especially staggering because McCourt got most of his land back from Massachusetts, plus new parcels awarded during a land swap.
Jose Sigala, president of the Greater Echo Park Elysian Neighborhood Council, whose community includes the Dodger complex, is watching all of this — and worrying.
His group had scheduled a town hall meeting April 4 with whoever was left standing among the bidders.
Sigala and the Echo Park neighbors don’t know if Magic Johnson, Stan Kasten, the Guggenheim folks or Frank McCourt will show up to their meeting. But community members are voicing two big concerns: What kind of new Dodgers owner will neighboring Echo Park, Elysian Park and Chinatown have to deal with? And what kind of troubles could flow from allowing McCourt to be co-owner of nearly half the land?
"I want to know who I can call if there are problems like public drinking, traffic, safety — and I want to know that they'll be addressed," Sigala says.
He has a more direct message for McCourt: "He must understand this sale is the start of something new. If McCourt keeps the parking lot, it doesn’t give us a clean break. It's what I want and what the fans want."
18 comments
If McCourt isn't enough to make one's gorge rise, there's Steve Garvey lurking in the background of this parking lot deal. (Remember Garvey? His face used to look like one belonging to a person--and he's also the one who preferred the Padres--who needs the Dodgers when you have $6 mil from the Pods to spend on plastic surgery?.) Looks like there was no way to find two other people who disregard the Dodgers legacy and/or history more than they. Might as well kick Echo Park's 'vibe' to the curb--and one playoff bid isn't going to restore it. Bah!
Every where there is a discussion of parking and parking services.The rates of parking has been increased a lot in last few years.
I think the McCourt supporters commenting here (and I give them credit for trying to make their case, much like the proverbial child who finds sh*t in his Christmas stocking and assumes he's getting a pony) have been smoking something not good for them, or drinking the Kourt-Aid. An appearance in the playoffs and incomplete stadium renovations are not even a smidgen of a down payment on making this once-beloved franchise return to its glory years. McCourt's tone-deaf response to a major violent incident at the park last year was the last straw for many of us; he and his crones' unerring laser-like ability to ruin everything associated with Dodger Blue may actually be irreversible, and no amount of cash will help. Muckraking journalism and bad actors in a divorce melodrama are only the products of the bad karma that couple brought to this town, not the result of it. McCourt's entitled to keep a major piece of the action because of, in one commentor's words, "his hard work"? Yes, being a highly-educated con man may be hard work, but it's also amoral. No thank you.
McCourt extracted this deal from the Nixonian Bud Selig who shit in his pants from the very thought of taking the stand under oath. He was boxed in by McCourt's able legal team and it shows the spine that Selig has. Regarding the fans falling victim to yellow journalism on McCourt, it was an avalanche of publicity coming from able attorney David Bois that the fans were reacting to. LA Times fanned the flames as the good yellow journalism rag that it is. McCourt renovated 1/2 the stadium, fixed the parking after the first year, got us to the play-offs, brought us Manny and kept the payroll around 100 million. The people who complain about McCourt do not know the game and do not understand what he did. He was supported verbally by Vin Scully, (look it up), Lou Johnson, Maury Wills and Don Newcombe. 20 black ministers of Methodist and Baptist churches and an umbrella of latin civic groups also supported him with letters to the commissioner. In addition, I might add, he did not run the business into the ground. The proof my friends is in the purchase price. The so-called plunge in attendance was more yellow journalism. Dodgers were 64,000 fans short of 3 Million. And finally, was he arrested with hookers (like some owners), was he drunk, did he beat anyone up (new sheriff in town), did he say racially insensitive things, did he call his wife any names in retaliation, did he lower the Dodger payroll to the level of the 2010 Texas Rangers - $55 million? or the Diamondbacks - $60 million? Why not? If he was such a penny pinching weasle why didn't he put a Pirates on the field for $35 million? Its all BS started in a nasty divorce. He had a white face of a middle age businessman who allowed the media to paint him as the devil. The schmuck should have beefed up his PR. But he said he refused to attack the mother of his kids. For that he must die apparently.
You rock, TrueBlue! You're saying something hundreds of us are thinking but we get drowned out by all the haters.
Hate to rain on the Hate McCourt Parade, but most of you posters sound like sour spoiled grapes. McCourt's a businessman who became successful through his own hard work. He's entitled to keep a piece of his lifelong dream. And anybody who's ever been to Dodger Stadium knows that it's a dump. Condos and a few good restaurants and shops would improve the view.
This coming from some one who doesn't know the true tragic history of Chavez Ravine. Land that was taken away from hard working lower class citizens to build a sports stadium. The possibility of tearing that stadium down to build condos for rich money stuffed..., individuals, for lack of a more appropriate description, is revolting. True Blue you are not. Your conscience is a dump. McCourt is a dump. You both need to be flushed.
In a better world, the city would just eminent domain the site and eventually return it to the citizens via Elysian Park expansion. That way the city can work out building a new stadium either downtown or by USC, where there's already connections to mass transit, and the traffic impact would be less intense. Oh and Frank McCourt can eat a bag of d*cks!
I fear that after we do the math, the only way the $2B price tag makes sense is if you tear down Dodger Stadium build condos and then get the City to build a new stadium somewhere else, but who's had time to do the math.
If they had gotten rid of McCourt, then I'd say $3B would be OK.
The NEW OWNERS will pay over $2,000,0000,000 for the DODGER FRANCHISE; B-U-T McCROOK still owns the LOT?????????? As they say on the streets: "You got TOOK!"
Pathetic. McCourt: we Dodger fans want a complete divorce, clean of any ties. Take your money and hit the road!
The real story on the McCourt Parking lot deal...if all passes the BK trustee he still controls "the Lots and land" w a flush of 500K too...only in America...!
Simple answer- its time for ALL Fans to BOYCOTT parking at the stadium & take the FREE buses from Union Station in downtown L.A.- maybe then, Magic & crew will feel the pinch a little and figure a way at that point to rid themselves of McCrook!
Get the word out- let the parking boycott begin-- and if this is not effective enough, fans should then boycott attending the games in person until the message is LOUD & CLEAR!!!!!
I see Dodger Stadium parking lot transformed: They will call it McCourtland. People will come from near and far to ride roller coasters beyond the outfield and perhaps over the outfield on some kind of cantilevered terror ride called The Frank. The lot will be a combination Disneyland/Mall of America where 365 days a year people will try to get on and off already-clogged highways to buy McCourtland T-shirts and McCourtDogs. How pathethic.
Unbelievable you can run a baseball franchise into the ground and still make mega-millions
It's absolutely stunning and not right. File it in the "life isn't fair" folder. What kills me is that McCourt still gets the parking lot. Can't he just take his $2 billion and go away! Uh - so infuriating that a jerk like that literally makes out like a bandit.
It's concessions like this - McCourt keeping the parking lot - that make you almost wish the team was not sold and he would have gone completely bankrupt. The fact that he's getting a few hundred million in profit AND the parking lot is just terrible.http://mankabros.com/blogs/onm...
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