Jeff Marks, the founder and chief executive of Innovative Partnerships Group, brokers naming rights and sponsorship deals between companies and teams, leagues and venues. “In this case,” Grannis said, “you have a venue that happens to be the best attended in Major League Baseball, and therefore the iconic nature of this cabin flying to Dodger Stadium and taking you there is going to attract a lot of sponsors, a lot of people who want naming rights or sponsorship. The current one-way adult fare on the London gondola is $7.50. In 2012, the airline Emirates agreed to pay about $60 million for a 10-year sponsorship of a London gondola - then called the Emirates Air Line - that carried riders above the River Thames and cost $96 million. The hundreds of millions would come from private financing, Grannis said, and largely from sponsorships and the purchase of naming rights. Parfrey said taxpayers would not be asked to subsidize the gondola. The gondola won’t make money, at least not under the current plan of free rides for fans with a Dodgers ticket and neighborhood residents with a Metro pass. It is up to Climate Resolve to figure out how to pay for construction, as well as for annual operating costs Grannis estimated at between $5 million and $10 million. The McCourt entity that originated the gondola concept, LA Aerial Rapid Transit, has agreed to fund the approval process, including environmental studies and permit applications, project spokesman Nathan Click said. The cost of building the gondola was estimated at $300 million in 2020 and is expected to rise by the time a financing plan is finalized, said David Grannis of Point C Partners, a transportation and land use consultancy working with Climate Resolve. Models and renderings can excite fans, but they also can obscure a critical question about any big project: Looks cool, but who is going to pay for this? The display of a model cabin takes a page from the playbook for pitching a new stadium or arena. You can even find a helpful decal, showing you where to stand to take a picture with the gondola cabin in the foreground and the stadium in the background. You can step inside the 24-seat cabin, then imagine a ride that would allow you to skip traffic to the ballpark and instead, as the signage reads: “GET THERE BY AIR.” Near Lot G at Dodger Stadium, along the long slog from the outer reaches of the parking lots to a stadium entrance behind left field, a colorful model of a gondola cabin awaits you. With baseball’s new hurry-up rules, you could miss half the game if you get stuck in Dodger Stadium’s oft-snarled traffic and get to your seat an hour after the first pitch. “It changes the way people approach public transit. “From my perspective,” said Climate Resolve founder and executive director Jonathan Parfrey, “to have a gondola transporting people from Union Station to Dodger Stadium, and to have that exciting, beautiful conveyance identified as a climate action? Climate Resolve, a nonprofit based in that building, agreed to take the reins from McCourt in leading the project. The Dodger Stadium gondola represents such an idea, according to its proponents. Any one of them, building managers say, could emerge as “the next big idea to fight climate change.” The interior comes alive with vibrancy and urgency, and with work on dozens of concepts. “Welcome,” that banner read, “to the Cleantech Future of Power and Water.” Three colorful banners greeted visitors, one with the hue of a bright blue sky. In 2018, he pitched a gondola that would transport fans from Union Station to Dodger Stadium. He did not, however, sell the parking lots that surround the stadium. And, yes, the one who laughed all the way to the bank, selling the Dodgers for a billion-dollar profit in 2012. Yes, the one who dragged the storied team into bankruptcy amid Major League Baseball allegations he had “looted” $189 million from team revenues for personal use. Yes, that guy, the one who traded two Boston parking lots and what one of his attorneys said was “not a penny” of his own cash for ownership of the Dodgers. The billboard features this name, in bright white letters: Frank McCourt. You’re one block from turning onto Vin Scully Avenue and into Dodger Stadium when you notice a black billboard, looming ominously above an auto repair shop called Fernando’s Tires. You’re rolling west along Sunset Boulevard, visions of Mookie Betts and Clayton Kershaw and Julio Urías happily dancing through your mind.
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