AEG on a downtown L.A. ballpark: “under no circumstances are we interested in building a baseball stadium”

Last week there was a report that AEG -- the company who owns the Staples Center and is trying to build an NFL stadium in downtown L.A. -- was contacted by Major League Baseball regarding the possibility of building a downtown ballpark for the Dodgers. The idea: even if Frank McCourt loses the Dodgers, he’d still have the ballpark, so why not try to get the Dodgers and their new owners into a better situation?

Those talks were denied in pretty sharp terms by AEG today, reports ESPN Los Angeles. And not only was the existence of any talks denied, but the very tenability of a downtown ballpark was dismissed out of hand by AEG’s President Tim Leiweke:

“Under no circumstances are we interested in building a baseball stadium. If you logically just think through playing baseball games in April, May and June when we have Lakers, Clippers and Kings playoff games that are scheduled on a week’s notice. Look at the conflict that would be created during that time. If you logically think through baseball playoff games which are scheduled on a week’s notice and we have Kings, Lakers and Clippers beginning their season, it doesn’t work.”

I wrote last week that the idea doesn’t make any sense for the Dodgers for a number of reasons. It now seems that the sentiment is unanimous.