Page 2 January 14, 2016 Hawthorne Happenings News for the ‘City of Good Neighbors’ From City Clerk Norb Huber Guns are Good, Guns are Bad Jim Chadwick is a 91 year old retired Leuzinger High School coach that lives in Hawthorne. Last week he was sleeping in his bedroom when he heard an intruder wonder into his home. His wife was asleep in another bedroom. He remembered his gun that he had not used in 40 years. He gets out of bed, loads the gun, and goes down the hallway to check to see what is going on. A stranger is laying down on a bed . Not wanting to injure the intruder he shoots one bullet into the wall. You can imagine the intruder was scared to move. The police show up to intervene. It’s a good ending to what could have been a bad one. Guns and gun control have been in the news lately. Guns can be used for good, guns can be used for bad. To me, outlawing guns is not the solution. Mental illness and terrorism will not disappear if we take guns away. Come To a Historical Society Meeting this Year The Hawthorne Historical Society meets once a month on the last Monday at 6:30 p.m. at the Hawthorne Museum. We would love to have you join us for our meetings. Our meetings are open to the public. We start with refreshments and a time to meet and greet one another, followed by a program that features a guest speaker. Our speakers are usually long-time Hawthorne residents who share their personal stories. Our next meeting will be held on Monday, January 25th. We have a special speaker lined up for that meeting. I’m sure that many of you will want to be there for his presentation. See ya on the 25th. Sunshine Superman to Air - CNN Carl Boenish grew up in Hawthorne and attended Hawthorne High School. He is credited with inventing BASE jumping. He married Jean and their love for each other and their passion for testing the limits of man vs gravity have been documented with a movie entitled, Sunshine Superman. The movie will make its global television premiere on CNN this Sunday, January 17 at 6 p.m. and shown again at 9 p.m. Inglewood gets an NFL Team and Stadium Our neighbor to the North is getting a football team and a new stadium. This bit of news can only mean good things for Hawthorne. The crowds that attend games will bring visitors to our city. Hotels and cafes will benefit. People will travel through Hawthorne to get to the venue. We look to develop many more places to host our visitors. Hanging on in Hawthorne You know that I’m not afraid to write anything to keep your attention. So, call me silly. Call me stupid. Call me an old drunk. I don’t care what all ten of you think. I just like to have fun and dream of being a good author or poet some day. So, have fun reading: The holidays are past, though we wish they could last. All that is left is to take down the lights; but now I’m afraid of heights. The spirit of the holidays brings out the good in us all. Hope we can finally see the resurrection of our mall. Rockets go up and come back safely, SpaceX is in the news a lot lately. Inglewood will have a stadium and a team, Hawthorne will benefit it does seem. The Blue Bird lotto lines grow, for all those who want to win all that dough. I’m just hanging on in Hawthorne, waiting for the return of the sun, so I can have another cold one. Hang on and have fun, my advice is all done. • NFL Closer to a South Bay Return By Rob McCarthy There is plenty of name recognition and civic pride that comes with being a city with a team in the National Football League. Only 32 cities in the nation can say they made the cut. Los Angeles hasn’t been among them in 20 years. Three NFL teams have applied to relocate to Los Angeles, and the league’s owners could decide as early as next week which, if any of them, can switch cities. The St. Louis Rams, the San Diego Chargers and the Oakland Raiders have applied to pick and up and move their headquarters, coaches and players. The South Bay figures again to be on the receiving end if the Rams, Chargers or Raiders return. The catch is there is not a NFL-caliber stadium waiting for them. For anyone who isn’t following the years long waiting game the NFL has played with pro football fans here, here’s what you need to know to get up to speed: • Inglewood and Carson have competing stadium proposals. The Chargers and the Raiders reportedly have agreed to play at the Carson stadium, should the NFL approve a two-team move. • The Rams owner, Stan Kroenke, owns a site next to the demolished Hollywood Park in Inglewood land and plans to build a sports and entertainment complex without taxpayer money. That is according to D’Artagnan Scorza, spokesman for the group that spearheaded the petition effort, Citizens for Revitalizing the City of Champions. The City Council already approved the project. The developers are asking for an “infrastructure reimbursement” from Inglewood to pay for the construction of roads and sewers if the sports and retail complex generates more than $25 million in annual tax monies for the host city. They have submitted a petition signed by 22,000 Inglewood residents in favor of putting the project on the ballot for a citywide vote. • The Carson City Council also has approved construction of a stadium, just off the 405 freeway. The Chargers and the Raiders, who play in the same division of the AFC, would share the stadium, under the approved arrangement. The price tag for the Carson project is projected at $1.65 billion. Financing of the stadium would be similar to what the San Francisco 49ers did to build its new home, Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara. A local stadium authority, a governmental agency created by Carson last year, would hold the deed to the stadium, which it would build and operate using $400 million from the NFL, according to the Orange County Register. The rest of the construction would be financed and guaranteed by the Raiders and the Chargers. The sale of stadium naming rights and personal seat licenses would be used to pay down the construction loans, the paper reported. NFL.com writer Albert Breer laid out a timetable for the return of the Rams to Los Angeles, writing in a January 2015 column that “the idea that the Rams could be playing at the Rose Bowl, L.A. Coliseum or Dodger Stadium in 2016 and 2017 and in Kroenke’s new Southern California football palace by 2018 is not at all far-fetched. In fact, it’s trending toward becoming a likelihood.” Kroenke is believed to have the inside track to has his application approved to move the Rams back to Los Angeles. The Rams left Cleveland in 1946 after winning an NFL championship and came to Los Angeles. The team left the L.A. Coliseum in 1980 and played in Anaheim Stadium until 1994. That year, the team’s owners headed east for St. Louis, which had been searching to replace its beloved team, the Cardinals, who bolted for Arizona. Which South Bay city, if any, lands the Rams, Chargers or Raiders, the financial upsides to committing taxpayer money to build a pro football stadium carry risks. Stanford University sports economist Roger Noll has written and lectured about public financing of sports stadiums and he has advice for the voters of Inglewood and Carson, and their leaders. “NFL stadiums do not generate significant local economic growth, and the incremental tax revenue is not sufficient to cover any significant financial contribution by the city,” Noll told the Stanford News in an interview in June 2015. A football stadium by itself gets limited use - two preseason games, eight regular season games, not counting any playoff games - in a single season. The rest of the time, the facility sits empty unless the stadium authority books it for concerts, college football, soccer or hockey games. Carson already has a soccer stadium and the L.A. Galaxy. “By comparison, other billion dollar facilities - like a major shopping center or large manufacturing plant - will employ many more people and generate substantially more revenue and taxes,” he told Stanford Press. A better option for cities wanting to attract a pro sports team is a basketball or hockey arena because those arenas are used more often, the Stanford economist believes. Kroenke’s Inglewood stadium includes retail and entertainment on a grand scale. The Carson stadium also includes a 350-room hotel on site, an 850,000 square feet of commercial, retail and entertainment space. After reviewing the two stadium financing proposals, the Stanford sports economist said that one-fifth of the building cost is being covered indirectly by the city. Neither Inglewood nor Carson has to put in money upfront. The public financing comes in the form of the land, the infrastructure and tax forgiveness. It’s a similar deal that Santa Clara and its residents cut with the 49ers for Levi’s Stadium. “These items account for about 20 percent of the cost,” Noll said. “In addition, the stadium authority, which is owned by local government, takes on debt that is used to finance stadium construction.” Both the Rams and the Raiders left Southern California for more lucrative deals elsewhere, which points to the fickle temperament of NFL team owners nowadays. Public attitudes are changing toward the NFL and the owners who demand new football stadiums from their host cities, or else. “The stadium debates in Oakland, San Diego and St. Louis reflect hesitancy in these cities to sign on to expensive new deals to keep those teams,” he said. NFL owners would still raise new football stadiums and facilities without public monies but on a less-grand scale, Noll thinks. The owners, many of them billionaires, would sell stadium naming rights and sell luxury boxes to pay back construction costs - which is the game plan in Inglewood and Carson. • As of press time, the NFL owners voted to bring the Rams to Inglewood and offered the Chargers an option to join them within the year. Follow Us on Twitter @heraldpub
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