Dodger Stadium gondola project suffered another setback

The Second Appellate District orders that approval of the project be set aside until a Supplemental Environmental Report is drafted and approved.

When we last left off, L.A. Metro approved the proposed Dodger Stadium gondola project about a year ago, There was no news on the project as the lawsuit about the project worked its way through the appellate courts in a lawsuit filed by the Los Angeles Parks Alliance and The California Endowment (the petitioners).

Earlier in May 2025, the petitioners prevailed in their appeal, as the California Court of Appeals held that L.A. Metro set aside its approval of the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) and draft a supplemental EIR to address the deficiencies the court found in the appeal.

While Gondola project spokesman Nathan Click expressed optimism that the gondola would still be online in time for the 2028 Olympic Games, the likely additional one year of administrative work required, coupled with the best-case 25-month construction timetable cited in the EIR, render the prospect of the controversial project being online in time for the Games a dubious proposition at best.

Much like the gondola, really.

This project and the impending lockout in 2026 are really the same story, but from different angles. Today, we analyze the court’s holding.

In case anyone forgot, getting to and from Dodger Stadium is a logistical nightmare if you go by car. The gondola is supposed to alleviate traffic by taking an unrealistic number of passengers from Union Station to Dodger Stadium in about seven minutes. Supposedly, the most optimistic estimates have about 10 percent of the nightly attendance per game at the supposed cost of $500 million in public and private dollars.

The project was just an ill-advised boondoggle before the wildfires and a dubious compromise. After the wildfires, with rebuilding still in its nascent stages, the gondola Project is an offensive assault on the rationality of the people of Los Angeles.

After spending significant time reviewing and analyzing the court’s holding, I do agree with its ultimate conclusion. However, I vehemently disagree with two aspects of the decision.

The best way to describe it in terms of a baseball website is to imagine that someone gave you directions on how to get to Dodger Stadium as an out-of-towner, which got you to the stadium eventually after a detour to Pasadena.

Any Angeleno worth their salt knows there is no reason to go to Pasadena to get to Dodger Stadium, unless one started in Pasadena. Usually, I would be loath to criticize a court that I could potentially appear in publicly, but the prospect is so remote, and the court’s reasoning is so off that I am left with little choice but to comment.

A front door is not an expansion

We covered the covenants, conditions, and restrictions of the land outside Dodger Stadium just over two years ago. In my view, the petitioners correctly argued that the EIR was deficient because, by law, it is supposed to describe the entire scope of the project rather than just a portion of it.

While I agree with the court’s assessment that no one has outlined a definitive plan for the parking lots, apart from a seemingly abandoned plan published almost twenty years ago. The design firm Johnson Fain came up with LA Dodgers Stadium Next 50 that outlined a plan for shopping, hotels, a front door to the ballpark, etc. The hyperlink currently works, so while I understand what the court was holding, it feels just a bit myopic considering the economic trends in baseball.

Most teams are in the process of augmenting their fluctuating cash flow from issues with regional sports networks by essentially becoming commercial landlords. If you want an example, just look at Atlanta, St. Louis, or almost every team that has threatened to move or tried to shake down municipalities for public money for upgraded facilities.

The Dodgers do not have this problem as they currently have the largest television deal for 25 years, valued at $8.35 billion. While every team but the Blue Jays and Braves keeps their respective books closed to the public, Twitter user BrooksGate published some approximations of how each major league earns its money last year. While we could and probably should view these figures with more than a grain of salt, I argue it’s illustrative to show that most MLB teams are wholly dependent on receiving local television revenue.

The court is on more solid ground when discussing the intangibility of the proposed development of the Dodger Stadium parking lots. Where the Court loses me in its reasoning on this point is on page 43 of the decision:

Contrary to the petitioners’ contention, [the evidence showed by the respondents] shows that development projects at Dodger Stadium have moved forward not as a consequence of the Project, but independently of it…the evidence here shows [that] the [Gondola Project] neither depends on future stadium development, nor is it a necessary precursor to future development.

In a footnote immediately following this passage, the Court note that the gondola project’s utility extends well beyond unlocking space in the Dodger Stadium parking lots for future development.

As we have previously covered here at True Blue LA, this assertion is ludicrous. First, the stadium and the lots are on separate parcels of land with separate owners. Second, the centerfield plaza and other renovations to the Stadium both do not unlock development and are not the same as say a hotel or other commercial enterprises that are now the custom of other owners in MLB.

The Dodgers have built a front door, which is not the same as a hotel or any other commercial enterprise.

Third, Dodger Stadium gets the majority of its use 81 days a year. Barring the playoffs, which is another ten days in a good year, the Freeway Series, which is another two days, that’s a far cry from being a yearlong cultural hub.

Ignoring the UCLA survey

Typically in administrative law, which is in flux for the first time in over 40 years thanks to the current machinations of the U.S. Supreme Court, the underlying thought is that courts are not scientists, they are not subject matter experts.

What courts do understand is the law and procedure. General rule of thumb is that the court leaves administrative agencies to their own thing, but that if someone points out something with the science or the subject matter, the agency cannot just ignore it. Granted, we are generalizing and simplifying a lot of concepts in administrative law right now.

With this in mind, during the public comment portion of the EIR, there was a traffic study done at UCLA by Dr. Brian Yueshuai He and Dr. Jiaqi Ma in the UCLA Mobility Lab at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, which basically pointed out that the gondola would cannibalize Dodger Stadium Express, and ultimately not do what proponents of the project claim it would do.

What is frustrating is that this study, in my view, was effectively ignored by LA Metro during the EIR. What is infuriating is that the Court let the agency slide by holding that the LA Metro did not err when discounting alternatives to the gondola, including Dodger Stadium Express.

The gondola project is currently forecasted to cost around half a billion dollars, but the court goes out of its way to ignore that fact in agreeing with Metro’s conclusion that additional costs would be required

This line of reasoning is not NIMBYism as gondolas have been used elsewhere in the world to aid with congestion, but watch the video below and see if you can notice the clear distinction between Mexico City and Los Angeles (especially near Dodger Stadium).

The mountains. There are passable roads to and from the stadium. It’s not NIMBYism to point out that a project is a bad idea because it is a solution being paraded for the wrong problem. The Dodgers lead baseball in attendance, both home and road. It’s just terribly inconvenient for almost 50,000 fans to come to and leave every home game.

The unanswered question

When it comes to the gondola project, there has been a question that everyone has been dancing around since the project was announced. Everyone has been asking “should we build a gondola?” rather than asking “should the Dodgers develop the parking lots of Dodger Stadium?”

MLB teams are not becoming commercial landlords for the sake of altruism; they are trying to get money all year round and stabilize a significant flow of income is not dependent on the whims of the cable viewing public. The Dodgers have an undeniable financial advantage right now through their strength of attendance and their massive television deal.

One can be on here today, and gondola tomorrow. Just ask Chris Taylor and Austin Barnes.

The sooner we as fans, the citizens of Los Angeles start asking that uncomfortable and honest question of “how should the parking lots be developed,” considering that the Dodgers are unique in having all of this real estate being used for parking, the question of development feels more of a “when” than an “if.”

If that observation is indeed true, the team owes an obligation to the city of Los Angeles to be a responsible neighbor and actually be honest in what any development would look like.

As it stands, the gondola is a half-billion dollar toy in service to a problem that exists in the eyes of avarice. If the Court of Appeals and LA Metro truly believe that additional buses cannot solve this problem with less time and money, there’s a slightly used ballpark in Chavez Ravine, I’d love to sell them.