Public comment window for Farmers Field environmental impact sliding closed

AEG

In this rendering released by AEG, the proposed football stadium to house a NFL team in Los Angeles, California is seen. It was announced February 1, 2011 that AEG has sold the naming rights for the proposed stadium to Farmers Insurance Group for $650,000, calling the stadium "Farmers Field."

The window’s closing for Angelenos to share their views about the environmental impact of the stadium project proposed for downtown L.A. A final public meeting takes place at the convention center Wednesday afternoon.

When the environmental impact report for Farmers Field landed at the beginning of April, it did so with a thud. It’s 10,000 pages long, with more than a quarter of it devoted to transportation impacts alone.

Stadium backer AEG estimates that 72,000 people will swarm the downtown area on game days. The company expects 15 percent of those fans to take mass transit, and another 3 percent to come via bicycle.

AEG has promised to attract fewer cars to Farmers Field than any other stadium in the NFL, though some environmental groups worry about how exactly the company plans to do that.

Traffic’s not the only issue. Lighting, noise and the carbon footprint are laid out in the report.

The meeting at the Convention Center will attract community, health and environmental groups, many of whom say they’re working down to the wire to complete comment letters full of compliments, criticisms and suggestions for how the project should be built. A few groups have asked for more time, but so far the city says Monday’s the deadline for public input.