CVC opens with a good offer

The details are out now of the CVC's proposal to upgrade the Edward Jones Dome to "first-tier" status per the terms of the current lease with the St. Louis Rams. The highlights:

* A 96' by 26' scoreboard suspended over midfield. I assume it would be high-definition, but that is not specified. The goal is to give fans "clear views of replays, scores and statistics without interfering with game play." Hopefully also without interfering with the view of the actual game.

* A three-story structure across the street from the Ed that would be connected to it by a bridge over Broadway. It would have a rooftop beer garden, a large lobby and a new entrance for club and luxury suite owners. Doubt I'd ever use it.

* Large windows that would bring in more natural light.

* Replace 1,800 existing seats and four suites with 1,500 new club seats. Um, we're leaving my seats alone, right?

* Retractable - no, not the roof - barricades to block traffic on Broadway to make the area safer for pedestrians and a less-inviting terrorist target. Apparently crowds gathering outside the Ed have been an ongoing concern of NFL Homeland Security or something. More importantly, I hope they mean the cool kind of barricades that come up from under the street, like in Washington, D.C.

* "Aesthetic improvements" to entrances, stairwells and corridors.

* Update the cheerleaders' and officials' locker rooms. Well, one of those I would have to see for myself. But I do not support a new cheerleaders' locker room until they resume their professional duty to wear Halloween costumes for the home game nearest October 31st, and I DO NOT mean London.

* Replace the current smoking area with a plaza more like a tailgating area, but without cars. Mmm-kay.

Projected cost of improvements is $124 million. The city is expecting the Rams, i.e., Stan Kroenke, to pay 52% of that, because that's the average contribution teams have made to recent stadium construction and renovations. But since politicians are involved, the CVC's pretty shady about where its share, just under $60 million, is going to come from. St. Louis city and county both say they would put any new funding up for public vote. I do not see a vote going well in the city, where plenty of people are still mad that the Cardinals have never come through with promised developments downtown that were supposed to accompany the raising of Busch Stadium III in 2006. To simplify it: the more you hear the phrase "Ballpark Village", the more friction the Dome proposal will get, even though it's only promising a ballpark beer garden.

I give the CVC credit for what it has proposed. The "top-tier" clause suggests the Ed has to compete with the new billion-dollar palaces in Dallas and New Jersey, but that just isn't realistic. Ticking off what I think are the top-tier NFL facilities, half of them have retractable roofs. The Dome was never designed for that and can't have one due to lack of drainage. St. Louis should realistically be expected to keep pace with the other indoor-only stadiums: the Superdome, the Georgia Dome and the Metrodome. To me, that's more than a full-faith effort to keep the Rams in an up-to-date facility, for what the Ed is.

The Ed's got the Metrodome whipped. Its roof has never collapsed and it's not a dump its host team has been trying to get out of for years and years.

The Georgia Dome finished a renovation in 2009 which brought in new high-def scoreboards, a new sound system and new seats. They also updated their premium suites and re-painted the outside of the stadium.

The Superdome finished a five-year renovation this past summer. New windows were installed to improve lighting, the building was re-sided, the suites and point-of-sale systems were upgraded, new turf was installed, and the lower bowl was renovated to add 3,500 seats as well as more concession stands and new club lounges.

The CVC's proposal tracks the Georgia Dome's and Superdome's recent improvements pretty well, as far as the scoreboard and the new windows and "aesthetic improvements". The big scoreboard also would bring the Ed closer to par with the Dallas, New York and New England stadiums. The windows would bring it also bring it closer to par with Arizona, Detroit and Indianapolis. There's a definite and honest effort here to match the features of the league's top-tier facilities, as long as we can look past the political issues with financing for the time being.

What extra might the Rams ask for?

* I don't know if the new scoreboard would include a new sound system, which the Ed has needed since, well, since it went up. That sound system has always sucked ass.

* It would hardly be a shock if the Rams requested upgrades to the luxury boxes.

* The Rams should ask for new seats that reflect the team colors. Atlanta seemed to do this fairly cheaply. Hell, replacing the seats would probably fund itself if you sold the old seats back to rubes like me who would be dumb enough to buy our old ones as collector's items. The convention center people need to get off their multi-use high horse and replace the stupid red seats with blue and gold ones.

Stan Kroenke no doubt is going to sit tight on the CVC proposal until March 1st, then reject it, then sit tight again until making his counteroffer on May 1st. We're going to have to wait until then to see or hear any indication of how serious the Rams are about trying to make things work in St. Louis, so until then, let's get back to concentrating on free agency and the draft, which are also good ways to improve events in the Ed.

-$-