CEQA: New Player in Sports Stadium Wars

Ever since the Dodgers left Brooklyn for Los Angeles, cities have competed to keep or attract professional sports teams. Recent activity in the cities of Sacramento, Inglewood and Carson prove that a new state-of-the-art stadium is the most influential factor in convincing a team to stay or luring a team to move. The cities’ playbooks also reveal that an unexpected prominent player is the California Environmental Quality Act. CEQA compliance and litigation can be used to undermine the planning, financing and construction of new stadiums. Therefore, the elimination or streamlining of the CEQA process has become an important method for demonstrating a city’s ability to deliver a new stadium.

Please click here to read a March 5, 2015 article authored by Amrit Kulkarni and Tim Cremin explaining two primary approaches available to cities and project developers for addressing potential CEQA impediments — the initiative process and special legislation. For more information about CEQA, please contact Amrit Kulkarni at (213) 626-2906 or akulkarni@meyersnave.com or Tim Cremin at (510) 808.2000 or tcremin@meyersnave.com.