A rendering of the plaza entry of the Clippers’ proposed 18,500-seat arena in Inglewood. (Image courtesy of the L.A. Clippers)

An aerial view rendering of the Clippers’ proposed 18,500-seat arena in Inglewood. The oval design has a unique exterior of diamond-shaped metal panels inspired by the concept of a basketball swishing through a net. (Image courtesy of the L.A. Clippers)

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A rendering looking south at the Clippers’ proposed 18,500-seat arena in Inglewood. (Image courtesy of the L.A. Clippers)

A rendering of the proposed 18,500-seat arena for the Clippers in Inglewood.(Image courtesy of the L.A. Clippers)



LOS ANGELES — The Clippers on Thursday unveiled the first look at their proposed Inglewood arena, an 18,500-seat, $1 billion-dollar project to be paid for by owner Steve Ballmer that the team is confident will begin construction on time in 2021 and open three years later, when their Staples Center lease is up.

At a “Playbook” fan event staged at the Wiltern on Thursday evening, Ballmer spoke of the mutual benefits of the plan, adding another shot of joy to an already gleeful week for Clippers devotees.

“We’ve been at this for a number of years,” Ballmer said to a group of Inglewood supporters before the event was beginning Thursday, a day after his team introduced its new superstar tandem of Kawhi Leonard and Paul George.

“We had the pleasure of meeting the mayor (James T. Butts) a couple years ago. I think we really appreciated the opportunity and value of putting our arena in Inglewood. We saw a community and a leader who really wanted, in all the best ways, to do business. In a way that was good for the Inglewood community, but would still allow for us as an enterprise to come in and do business and also be a good community citizen. That’s very, very important to us.”

At a public practice prior to the start of last season, Ballmer promised those in attendance they’d fall in love with the 2018-19 Clippers – and he was right, judging from the frequency that fans would express their appreciations for Coach Doc Rivers’ group of dogged overachievers.

In an interview at that same practice, Ballmer talked about the arena he was promising to build in Inglewood and the multi-pronged motivation behind it.

“There’s a lot of reasons,” Ballmer said that evening. “From a basketball perspective, it will help us be more competitive. We’ll play on better nights. We can design the arena to be a little bit more favorable for basketball energy. It’s a good financial opportunity also.”

Ballmer – who stepped down as Microsoft’s CEO in 2014 shortly before he bought the Clippers for $2 billion following the league’s ouster of Donald Sterling – plans to privately finance the project.

The Inglewood Basketball & Entertainment Complex would house all of the Clippers’ operations, from corporate headquarters to the team’s training facility, according to renderings released Thursday evening.

The team currently practices in Playa Vista, has its business office in downtown Los Angeles and plays its games in Staples Center, the venue it has shared with the rival Lakers and NHL’s Kings since it opened in fall of 1999.

Renderings indicate the finished site – which is being developed by Wilson Meany – will include parks and educational facilities, restaurants and businesses and an indoor court available to the community. Outside, a giant LED screen would create a viewing area similar to what Toronto has created with its “Jurassic Park” outside Scotiabank Arena.

The 900,000-square-foot arena has an exterior that will include solar panels and is designed to symbolize the diamond shapes in a basketball net.

Fans will enter the basketball arena’s main concourse with the Clippers’ court 30 feet below ground level. The design calls for upper and lower bowls with the exception of an undivided section of seats behind one of the baskets, where Ballmer wants stands that go from the bottom to the top without any suites or tiers to simulate a college basketball home court-like advantage and feel.

One of the facility’s most striking features, intended to highlight the temperate climate of Southern California, is the integration of indoor/outdoor “sky gardens.” These landscaped areas for food and beverage will be accessible from every concourse level.

In 2017, the Clippers and Inglewood officially entered into a three-year exclusive negotiating agreement to build an arena, a practice facility and team headquarters on a mostly vacant 22-acre plot located at the southeast corner of Century Boulevard and Prairie Avenue.

The Clippers aim to join a wave of development transforming Inglewood into a destination for sports and entertainment, coming on the heels of the $4 billion NFL stadium that will house the Rams and Chargers beginning in 2020. The proposed complex would sit across the street from the football stadium.

The Clippers’ project is set to benefit from Assembly Bill 987, put forward last year by assemblywoman Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Los Angeles). After some modifications, the bill passed in a landslide late last August, guaranteeing the streamlining of the California Environmental Quality Act review process for the proposed arena.

The environmental review of the land has yet to be completed, but Ballmer expressed confidence that construction will begin by the middle of 2021, as scheduled, in order to open doors on the arena by 2024.

“We have a long way to go and we’re getting direction from the mayor on what makes sense in terms of community investment in Inglewood,” Ballmer said Thursday. “We’re excited to have a chance to do an EIR; we know there’s things to sort through – traffic and other issues. Rest assured, they’re all very important to us. But we are beyond, beyond excited about the idea of building this arena in Inglewood.”

Still, the arena proposal has been met with resistance from some residents and others, including Madison Square Garden Co., the New York-based sports and entertainment giant that owns both the nearby Forum and the New York Knicks.

Last year, MSG sued Inglewood and Mayor Butts, alleging he tricked the company into giving up land so that could be used as part of the arena project, which will also host concerts in competition with the Forum.

Butts denies that accusation and Murphy’s Bowl LLC, the Clippers-controlled company behind the arena project, counter-sued MSG a few months later.

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Kawhi Leonard, Paul George lead Clippers’ collapse under playoff pressure This April, Superior Court Judge Mary H. Strobel ruled in favor of the Uplift Inglewood Coalition, allowing the group’s lawsuit against the project to proceed. The city insists that FAA rules prevent the land from being used for residential purposes, but the activist group alleges that the arena plans violate the California Surplus Land Act, which requires cities to give priority to affordable housing development when selling public land.

And this May, District Attorney Jackie Lacey’s Public Integrity Unit concluded that an Inglewood meeting agenda item description, which included only vague information about the project violated the Ralph M. Brown Act. But, in a letter to the city, Lacey wrote that “because the complaint was received after the time limits to remedy the violation, no action will be taken at this time.”

Butts, who was seated near the front at Wednesday’s introductory news conference for Leonard and George, has maintained that the Clippers’ arena – like the NFL stadium – will be good for his city.

“This proposed Clippers’ basketball arena, corporate headquarters and practice facility, and the open space that will go with it is going to add to the mix of economic enhancements and cultural enhancements to the city of Inglewood,” Butts said in an interview last year.

He said the project – which he estimated will result in millions of dollars of otherwise nonexistent property taxes for both the city and the state – would generate in the neighborhood of 3,000-4,000 construction jobs, with a 35 percent local hire goal.

“These projects, as long as you negotiate so that local people and businesses benefit, they end up being an economic bonanza in improving the quality of life … it’s exciting, it’s what you’re supposed to be all about when you’re governing.”