The motives behind Frank McCourt’s Dodger Stadium gondola plan

If you’re looking for a place to catch the Dodgers game, there’s a pizza place not too far from Dodger Stadium called LaSorted’s. If you know, you know. If you don’t know, this probably is not your place.

The walls are almost entirely covered in Dodgers memorabilia: yearbooks, programs, newspapers, magazine covers, advertisements, record albums, even a thermometer reading “1988 World Champions,” with portraits of Vin Scully, Don Drysdale and Ross Porter.

The menu includes a pizza called Mookie, with three cheeses, garlic, mushrooms, and mushroom cream.

“The original pizza was called Spooky, just because it was Halloween colors,” owner Tommy Brockert said. “And then we signed Mookie [Betts]. It just rhymed.”

We’d like to welcome our World Series guests from Toronto, one of the world’s great cities. In Toronto, fans get to the game the way God intended: on mass transit that drops you off right at the ballpark, because the communal experience of professional sports should include the ride there.

In Los Angeles, where we built a light rail line that stopped two miles from the airport, we have a train station two miles from Dodger Stadium. For many fans, if you want to take mass transit to the game, you have to get to the train station first.

For now, you take a shuttle bus from Union Station. That shuttle — and a sister shuttle from the South Bay — served a record 400,000 riders this season, according to Metro. That’s one rider for every 10 tickets the Dodgers sold.

Frank McCourt, the former Dodgers owner, believes he can do better. In 2018, McCourt first pitched a gondola from Union Station to Dodger Stadium, eventually promising free rides for fans.

As the project has wound its way through various bureaucracies, some Chinatown residents have protested that the gondola would fly too low over residences, risk damaging a beloved park, and add traffic to an already congested neighborhood.

Brockert’s pizza place is in Chinatown. He opened it last October, on the day the Dodgers eliminated the San Diego Padres in the National League Division Series and three years after he opened the original LaSorted’s in Silver Lake. He signed a 10-year lease.

“I’m going to be here whether the gondola is here or not,” he said.

Brockert does not necessarily share the concerns of those Chinatown neighbors. He believes a gondola would be cool, and it would be a welcome bonus if it generated additional foot traffic in Chinatown — and customers for him.

“I just don’t trust the person behind it,” Brockert said.

How could McCourt earn his trust?

“If we knew,” Brockert said.

Tommy Brockert, the owner, stands in LaSorted’s, a Dodgers-themed pizza restaurant in Chinatown.

McCourt sold the Dodgers out of bankruptcy court in 2012, but he retained half-ownership of the parking lots that surround the stadium.

“Just getting the gondola up there? Is that it?” Brockert said. “If you really just think about the business side of it, why would a person who owns the parking lot and makes money off people parking in the lot want to get people there for free?

“If you own the parking lot, wouldn’t you also build something in the parking lot?”

Brockert is not necessarily opposed to development of the Dodger Stadium parking lot. The city needs housing. A contemporary stadium site includes restaurants, bars and shops around the ballpark. Brockert might even look into opening a LaSorted’s there.

“The gondola is not just about Dodger Stadium,” Ed Reyes, the stadium-area councilman when McCourt owned the Dodgers, told a recent rally of gondola opponents. “It’s about creating a whole new set of shopping centers and destinations we probably won’t be able to afford.”

A rendering of the proposed gondola that would transport fans from Union Station to Dodger Stadium.

(LA Aerial Rapid Transit)

In a June commentary in the Los Angeles Daily News, Joshua Schank — who helped shepherd the gondola through the Metro bureaucracy — said the gondola project would “open up new areas for critical housing development.”

McCourt and his surrogates have said the only proposal on the board now is the gondola itself, and any subsequent plan to develop the Dodger Stadium parking lots would be subject to a brand-new approval process, which would involve significant zoning changes and planning hearings. The Dodgers’ current owners also can veto any development there.

Reyes was in office when McCourt proposed building restaurants, shops, team offices, a team museum, parking structures and parkland around the stadium during his ownership, but a May appeals court ruling dismissed as “speculative” the premise that large-scale development would necessarily follow construction of the gondola now because McCourt proposed it in 2008.

Over its years of considering the gondola, one Metro document framed the issue this way: “Could an aerial tram to Dodger Stadium alleviate traffic congestion, clean the air, and spark joy?”

Project supporters would say yes, yes, and of course. Project opponents would say no, probably not, and hell no.

Brockert doesn’t really have time for all the politics. He has another pizza to make, maybe even for Betts.

He participated in an event in support of Betts’ foundation, and he took the opportunity to tell him about the Mookie pizza, and all of its toppings. He said he told Betts he would change the toppings if Betts so desired.

He did.

“Sun-dried tomatoes, chicken, onions and spinach,” Brockert said. “So I’m working on it.

“Any other players, if they have a favorite pizza, I’ll put it on the menu too.”