Baseball fans going to a game at Dodger Stadium this playing season might hear an invitation to stop and see a display that’s been set up on a patch of the sports venue’s massive parking lot.
It’s a gondola car. The size of a small delivery truck, the cube-shaped cab, similar to ones used at big ski resorts, has wrap-around windows with seats and standing room. This kind of gondola, suspended high in the air and electrically powered, may one day regularly carry passengers a little more than a mile between LA’s Union Station and the stadium, traveling above congested streets and the 110 freeway.
People who stop at the Dodger Stadium display are also told the seven-minute gondola rides will be free if passengers have bought tickets for a Dodgers game.
Dodgers fan Ricardo Sifuentes, who says the stadium is like his second home, is happy to sign a pro-gondola petition offered by staff at the display.
“I’m all about wowing the fans,” says Sifuentes. “To me this is a wowing experience. You get to see the city and go to the game at the same time, for me that’s ‘wow.’ And then I don’t have to pay for parking? It only makes sense right?”
But not everyone is so enthusiastic. There’s an increasingly rancorous conflict over the gondola proposal, with each side trying to woo public opinion.
People attending Dodgers games are shown the gondola car on display in the stadium’s parking lot. They’re told by guides that the gondola system would create a fast, efficient and pleasurable way to get to baseball games. Photo by Saul Gonzalez.
Gondola proponents pitch the project as an efficient and zero-emission solution to a decades-old LA traffic headache: the thousands of people and cars trying to get in and out of the stadium on game days or during concerts.
“We can move 10,000 people per hour. In the two hours before a game, we can carry about a quarter of attendance at a Dodger game on this system,” says David Grannis, the executive director of Zero Emissions Transit, the nonprofit that’s fighting to get the gondola approved and built.
But critics question the central premise of the project: that instead of driving to the stadium, thousands of people would travel by commuter rail to Union Station and then take the gondola to the game.
Opponents say that by the time night games are finished at the stadium, there are no commuter trains running to suburban communities departing Union Station. They argue that baseball fans will instead continue to drive to games, but park in surrounding neighborhoods before catching the gondola to the ballpark in order to avoid paying up to $30 to park at the stadium on game days.
“And that just displaces those CO2 and bad emissions into neighborhoods that are already overly impacted by bad air quality,” says Sara Reyes, a spokesperson for The California Endowment, which is leading and underwriting efforts to fight the gondola project.
Reyes also notes there’s already a mass transit option between Union Station and the Stadium: Metro buses that shuttle people to and from games.
In their campaign to stop the gondola, critics like The California Endowment are also focusing attention on one controversial man’s role in the project: Frank McCourt.
McCourt is the former billionaire owner of the Dodgers, loathed by many fans for driving the team into bankruptcy through mismanagement. McCourt let go of the Dodgers in 2012, but the billionaire isn’t gone. He’s still a co-owner of the parking lots that surround Dodger Stadium.
Critics say what the gondola is really about is McCourt’s real estate dreams, finding ways to create commercial, residential and retail development around Dodger Stadium. The gondola, they say, is primarily important as an amenity and public draw. McCourt has championed the gondola project for years, including bankrolling its journey through the complex permitting and environmental approval process.
“The bigger issue here is that when a billionaire developer can come in and backdoor a private pet project through the system, there’s a problem,” says Reyes.
David Grannis' pro-gondola group is part of a non-profit spun off from Frank McCourt's business empire, but Grannis denies taking marching orders from the developer and former Dodgers owner when it comes to advocating for the gondola.
Asked whether Grannis regularly sends McCourt updates or looks to him for guidance, Grannis says flatly, “I do not.”
David Grannis, of Zero Emissions Transit, stands near the spot where a gondola station would be built in the parking lot at Dodger Stadium. He estimates the gondola would eliminate 3,000 cars from the crush of stadium traffic during games and concerts. Photo by Saul Gonzalez.
When it comes to the gondola, some people are willing to overlook Frank McCourt and his checkered history in Los Angeles, in the hope that the gondola proposal that he supports will benefit communities it would pass over.
Wilson Gee, a civic and business leader in Chinatown, where a gondola station stop is proposed, hopes it would bring people into the neighborhood before and after games where they’d spend their money.
“We’re hoping that maybe we get that action in Chinatown where the restaurants will be full again,” says Gee. “And they’ll come back to Chinatown and do some shopping and create a lot of jobs for the community.”
Debate over the gondola has split opinions in Chinatown, where a gondola station stop would be built. Some residents fear the gondola would turbocharge gentrification and change the character of the community, but longtime Chinatown civic leader Wilson Gee says it would benefit neighborhood investment and bring more people into Chinatown to eat and shop. Photo by Saul Gonzalez.
But there are plenty of questions dangling around the gondola project. Here are some:
How would the gondola be profitable if free rides are offered to thousands of people attending Dodgers games?
Will people board the system in big numbers during the many weeks and months when there are no games or special events at Dodger stadium?
And what will be the final construction cost of the gondola and who pays for it?
David Grannis says building it could cost between $300 million and $500 million. He also acknowledges the project’s construction and operation might not necessarily all be privately financed.
“We proposed it as privately funded,” says Grannis. “We're still on that track, but we don't know what the final cost is going to be and whether that's still going to be feasible.”
If it is approved and fully funded, gondola supporters want the system up and running by 2028, in time for the Summer Olympic Games in LA.