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MLS likes new stadium plans here : News
ST. LOUIS • The commissioner of Major League Soccer called St. Louis a “great soccer market” on Tuesday, boosting hopes that a proposed open-air football stadium downtown could — eventually — draw a soccer team as well.
At the same time, Commissioner Don Garber said growing MLS was a “long-term project” and cautioned that any expansion into St. Louis wouldn’t happen before 2020 and would also need an ownership group to step forward.
Garber flew into town from Los Angeles to meet with local business leaders and public officials, including Gov. Jay Nixon and Mayor Francis Slay. He talked at length with Dave Peacock, who co-leads Nixon’s stadium task force, and the HOK architects designing the stadium. He stressed it was merely a fact-finding visit, “an opportunity to learn more about what’s happening in St. Louis.”
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“This is a city that just loves the sport, and has so many people committed to it,” Garber told the Post-Dispatch early
Tuesday afternoon. “We really hope to be able to work with them.”
But it won’t be for a while. The league, which currently has 20 teams, set a goal of 24 teams by 2020 and will reach that by 2018 with the addition of teams in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Minneapolis and a David Beckham-led team likely in Miami. In the next six months, the league will determine its future expansion plans, and Garber expects the league to go beyond 24, though he couldn’t say how far or how soon. He noted during a question-and-answer session with fans at Ballpark Village that while the league didn’t plan to expand again until after 2020, things sometimes happened faster than expected in MLS.
Garber also said it was far too early to talk about the financial commitment a team would make and how any lease might be structured. While MLS has pushed for teams to play in soccer-specific stadiums (particularly downtown stadiums), he said he liked what he saw in HOK’s stadium renderings, in which a curtain would come down from the stadium’s roof to cover the upper deck and reduce the stadium capacity to about 38,000.
“The optimum environment for us is to play in a soccer-specific stadium,” Garber said. “That will always be our goal, but it’s not always achievable in every market. It’s certainly much more attractive when a football stadium is built with MLS in mind, and that’s the plan that these folks have done.”
Nixon’s task force has dangled the MLS in front of area soccer fans since January,
when it announced plans — including drawings of a soccer field in the new facility — to build the $985 million stadium.
The task force is now cementing its financing plan for that stadium, after facing several legal and funding hurdles. Last week,
Peacock presented some adjusted figures: About $250 million in bonds from the city and state, plus $150 million in tax credits and other tax programs, $130 million in seat licenses and $450 million from team ownership, including an NFL loan.
On Tuesday, Garber killed any hopes that an MLS team could help with construction funding.
Groups in Sacramento, San Antonio and Las Vegas have also expressed interest in joining MLS.
“We’re out meeting with cities across the country to see what opportunities might exist,” Garber said. “And St. Louis is certainly one of those cities. It’s not something that will happen before 2020 at the earliest.”
Garber said the league has neither identified an owners group in St. Louis, nor is it seeking one.
Still, he gushed about his visit here.
“To be very clear, this is an opportunity for us to learn more about what’s happening here in St. Louis as it relates to their great stadium project,” Garber said. “And meeting with the political folks and city leaders who have done, I think, such a terrific job in rallying people together behind a great urban redevelopment concept.”
Garber called his meeting with Nixon “terrific,” and the stadium’s multi-use potential “very attractive for us.”
“We know the stadium is being built with soccer in mind,” he continued. “And if it wasn’t for that, we wouldn’t be here at all.”
MLS and U.S. Soccer officials have noted ticket sales at international professional matches staged here over the past few years. A record crowd showed at Busch Stadium last month to watch the U.S. women’s team defeat New Zealand. “They killed it,” Garber said. “It was great.”
Every U.S. World Cup team has had a St. Louisan on the roster, he said. The mayor met his wife at a soccer match. The brand-new St. Louis Football Club draws 5,000.
“Every time I come here, I get more and more excited about this city,” Garber said. “This is a soccer market.”
If St. Louis could put together an ownership group, then certainly, he said, the riverfront facility “would be a viable stadium option, there’s no doubt about that.”
“But life is a long time,” he said. “We in the MLS need to be sure we always get things right. There is no rush.”
Garber closed his day in St. Louis by meeting with fans at Ballpark Village. About 250 fans attended the late afternoon session, many wearing soccer jerseys or scarves. The mention of Peacock’s name brought a big ovation from the fans on hand, as did a mention of stadium plans.
“It’s more positives than we’ve heard in a long time,” said Nate Hussey, a member of the Louligans, the St. Louis soccer fan group.
