Letter to the Editor

We all love the Rose Bowl. I graduated from PHS there, cheered the American Women’s Soccer victory, and took my grandson to the stadium tour last year. And ran and biked the loop and hiked the side trails and enjoyed the golf club lunches. When I went away to college, people thought, wrongly, that I must be a young white-suiter. And I remember the days when football was to build character, not primarily to celebrate extreme strength and commercial success.

So I wonder if more and better seats and a better club atmosphere and more expensive seats and events and traffic are what we want for our future identity and welcome to the larger world. And at what cost. We are still paying a significant debt for decades to come for the last “solution” to declining UCLA football revenues and convention-site marketing. And it is hard to imagine competing with the So Fi stadium or the Coliseum and Exposition Park, our regional identifiers.

Maybe it is workable, and fundraisers are optimistic. But on what projections of feasibility or future maintenance costs, neighborhood disruptions, and probably more City debt? And on what “citizen input,” or marketing, for resident support? I look forward to more discussion before we jump into new commitments.

John Fauvre