The effort to build a new football stadium and potentially keep the Rams from moving back to Los Angeles faces a key vote Friday when St. Louis aldermen decide whether to spend $150 million on the project.
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The San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders have teamed up on a one-stadium plan in Carson and the St. Louis Rams are on board with a competing proposal in Inglewood. The NFL usually pours $200 million into a new stadium. And if that happens, there’s always the possibility that deep-pocketed Rams owner Stan Kroenke (he’s the second-richest National Football League owner behind Paul Allen in Seattle) then makes an even more lucrative offer to get his team back to LA.
The St. Louis Rams are one of three franchises being considered for relocation to the Los Angeles area.
With the stadium far from top tier, state and local officials, led by St. Louis stadium task force chairmen David Peacock and Robert Blitz, have scrambled for most of the year to put together a financing package to build a soaring new outdoor facility on the city’s north riverfront. On Friday, Roger Goodell wrote the proposal “is fundamentally inconsistent with the NFL’s program of stadium financing”. The additional $100 million became a point of contention last week when league executive Eric Grubman went on “The Bernie Miklasz Show” on 101 ESPN Radio in St. Louis and said that St. Louis’ plan would not be attractive to the Rams.
CSN’s Sports Business Insider, Rick Horrow, says an L.A. solution has never been closer – but with other owners lining up and picking sides, it’s still a shaky start.
St. Louis Comptroller Darlene Green is opposed to the deal saying it will fall short of generating the revenue needed to pay off stadium debt.
“Today’s action by the Board of Aldermen completes the City’s part on this project”. The stoppage will allow leaders in the Los Angeles County city to consider development that’s compatible with a stadium project.
“Building a new stadium promises to create new jobs and boost minority participation in its construction, all of which I support”, Green said in a statement. St. Louis County, which helped finance the Edward Jones Dome, bowed out of the process.
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At this point the Board wants to refrain from being forced to make any dyer changes due to the fact that the deadline is literally two weeks away and any imminent changes would take an enormous amount of time to plan out and implement.
