By law, the city Ccuncil must vote on the proposal by Sept. 5. If the vote is delayed again, the development team would essentially lose its preliminary approvals and would have to start the process anew—-or could scrap the project altogether.

The development group is known as LA Arena Land Co. and includes Anschutz Entertainment Group, headed by Denver billionaire Philip Anschutz, and media mogul Rupert Murdoch's Fox Entertainment Group. Anschutz helped to build Downtown's wildly successful Staples Center sports and entertainment facility, which has been credited with helping turn the CBD around since opening about two years ago. Murdoch, owner of several TV networks and newspapers around the world, also owns the Los Angeles Dodgers.

As originally planned, the group's project would surround Staples Center. To be called the LA Sports and Entertainment District, it would be anchored by a 45-story hotel at Olympic Boulevard and Georgia St., a 7,000-sf theater for award shows and other live performances, and a large but undetermined amount of retail space.

The original proposal also calls for a 250,000-sf expansion of the nearby LA Convention Center, plus two apartment towers with a combined 800 units. A third hotel could be added later.

The city council's powerful Land Use and Management Committee was scheduled to vote on the proposal two days ago. But the committee's meeting was cancelled at the last minute, after some local newspaper reporters complained that city officials had violated the state's open-meeting law by failing to post an agenda for the meeting on public bulletin boards at least 24 hours in advance.

GlobeSt.com and most other journalists agree with the city's contention that a notice of the meeting was published within the legally required limits on the Internet. But a handful of print reporters--some of whom are accustomed to simply walking a short distance to a bulletin board that displays the times and dates of upcoming meetings—complained that a printed advisory was never posted. Those complaints forced the postponement of the committee's meeting, in turn setting the stage for next week's potentially dramatic city council vote.