The Rams' stadium situation in St. Louis has finally reached the point we all knew it was headed toward long ago. Doing so pretty quietly last week, the CVC officially rejected the Rams' $700 million Dome upgrade plan. CVC representatives said it would not be prudent to go through with the Rams' plan. Quite simply, the city doesn't have the money.
Rejecting the plan, though, since it won in the arbitration of the lease negotiations earlier this year, means that the Rams' lease to play in the Edward Jones Dome will end after the 2014 season. In free agency terms, 2014 will be the Rams' walk year. After that, Stan Kroenke will be free to move the team.
A feasible hope in St. Louis is that the Rams will stay in the Dome a little while on a year-to-year basis while a new stadium is built. St. Louis has about the best political big hitter it can get, Missouri governor Jay Nixon, at the wheel of the new stadium effort. Nixon's involvement is welcome, and likely critical to getting anything done. A good political lead blocker will be needed to get a new stadium constructed, and as such, Nixon is somewhere between Jake Long and Orlando Pace. St. Louis has time on its side. L.A. stadium plans are considered essentially dead by the NFL at last word. The next-strongest competition is NFL commissioner Roger Goodell’s vague idea of someday having a team five or six time zones away in London. Nixon is the ideal point man to get stadium plans moving quickly before real competition can organize. He’s already got the best consultants who deal with stadium issues working for St. Louis. Nixon gives needed impetus to the stadium issue, and he should prove able to manage any local political rivalries that could bog down the process and give other cities a foot in the door.
Nixon’s the right man for the job, but the job can’t just be to turn on the tax firehose and shower the Rams with money. Times are much different than they were when St. Louis lured the Rams here with a free stadium, or even five years ago when the Colts put down $100 million on $720 million Lucas Oil Stadium. The fiasco with the Marlins in Miami seems to have at least slowed pro sports’ stadium gravy train. 49ers ownership is footing the whole bill for their new stadium; the Giants and Jets split the cost of theirs. Fellow billionaire Jerry Jones has put down an estimated $800 million on his. Vikings ownership is paying for half of theirs. The taxpayers won’t get off scot-free to keep the Rams; there will be infrastructure to build, red tape to clear, probably tax incentives and loan guarantees to be arranged. But the bulk of the bill ultimately has to be Kroenke’s. If Stan Kroenke is ever portrayed as anything, it’s as a practical businessman, and I’m hopeful he’ll be a realist as stadium talks progress. In the current economic environment, I can’t believe the man who owns the stadiums his other teams play in, Denver’s Pepsi Center and the Emirates Stadium in London, will expect a free ride for the Rams.
I hate to draw the line using my own favorite team, but America in general needs to end this infernal dance of building billion-dollar tax-funded stadiums for billionaire sports owners who are just going to threaten to move the next time they don’t get something else they want anyway. If sports franchises won’t commit enough to the cities in their very names to pay for the stadiums they play in, those cities are better off without them anyway. Taxpayers have much more important needs to address. That may sound jaded, but don’t get me wrong. Like a lot of St. Louisans, I’ve been a rabid Rams fan for close to 20 years now. I love football and I want the Rams to stay. St. Louis has proven worthy of having and keeping an NFL franchise beyond any shadow of a doubt. I’m weary of the new stadium dance, though, and besides, the tax bank is pretty much broken.
It’s only been reported that Nixon and Kroenke are going to hold discussions; no actual meeting between the two on the stadium issue has been reported. When they do meet, I think it’ll be fair to expect talks to be realistic and productive. This can be done. We'll soon find out how genuine the Rams are when they say they want to stay in St. Louis another 40 years.
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