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Governor pulls St. Louis County out of new football stadium financing : News
Updated at 3:40 p.m. with comments from a council member and a labor leader.
CLAYTON • St. Louis County taxpayers will not be asked to support a new football stadium on the downtown riverfront — at least for now. That strips the plan of $6 million a year and raises questions about the viability of a financing scheme for the $985 million arena.
A senior aide to Gov. Jay Nixon called the office of St. Louis County Executive Steve Stenger a little more than a week ago. The aide told a Stenger policy advisor that “St. Louis County’s participation would not be necessary in the stadium deal,” Stenger told the Post-Dispatch on Tuesday.
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Stenger has long said he would not support county tax dollars being used for a new National Football League stadium without a public vote. He said Nixon’s office did not talk about how the stadium proposal would make up the difference.
Brian May, the Nixon aide who called county policy advisor Jeff Wagener, referred questions to Nixon’s office, which did not immediately provide answers.
The news caught some off guard.
Mike O’Mara, a St. Louis County council member, labor leader and Stenger political ally, said he agrees with the county executive’s position on giving the electorate a vote on the stadium issue. But he said the council has not been consulted.
“We’ve had no conversations regarding it. Nothing has come across our desk — yet,” O’Mara said.
Jeff Aboussie, an officer at the St. Louis Building and Trades Council, said labor hadn’t been informed either. “It could derail the deal and that would present a huge problem for us,” he said.
Aboussie called the proposal “without a doubt the largest construction project” in the region.
“This is too huge for us,” he said.
But Jim Shrewsbury, the Nixon-appointed chairman of the Edward Jones Dome Authority, said the move by Nixon’s office is all part of the plan to persuade NFL owners to keep the St. Louis Rams in town.
An owners committee has been meeting for weeks about moving a team to Los Angeles, after a 20-year absence from the market. Stan Kroenke, owner of the Rams, is a front runner among three teams bidding to leave. He announced in January that he is building a glamorous, $1.86 billion stadium on the old Hollywood Park Race Track in Inglewood, Calif.
Owners of the San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders, who have long tried to get new stadiums in their hometowns, have also announced plans to build a two-team arena outside of Los Angeles. NFL owners could pick the winning stadium as soon as this May.
But, during the NFL’s annual owners meeting last week in Phoenix, several key owners insisted they would protect local markets from losing teams — if, that is, those markets can present their own stadium proposals with concrete financing plans.
And that’s the problem so far in St. Louis. Opponents of tax-payer funded stadiums have argued vehemently that a decade-old law requires separate public votes in St. Louis city and county before any tax dollars are used to build new stadiums.
Right now, the state, city and county each help pay off nearly $300 million in bond debt used to build the Jones Dome 20 years ago. The state pays $12 million a year, the city and county $6 million each.
In January, Nixon’s two-man team presented plans for a $985 million open-air stadium on the Mississippi riverfront, just north of downtown. The taskforce said it was counting on about $450 million from the NFL and team ownership, plus tax credits, seat licenses, and as much as $350 million up front from an “extension” of the existing bonds.
Shrewsbury said that the uncertainty of a public election is, right now, worse than losing $6 million a year from the county. “One of the issues that needs to be resolved is the financing,” he said. “The quicker that’s done the better chance we have of prevailing in this matter. And if there’s some doubt as to whether or not the county can participate, it’s better to move without them.”
“At the end of the day, if we get a favorable decision, we can always revisit the issue,” he continued. “If we don’t get a favorable decision, it’s all moot.”
Besides, Shewsbury said, he thinks the NFL and Kroenke — or whoever might own a team in St. Louis — could well be persuaded to put more money into a stadium plan. “I think they’re wanting to see our commitment before they make a commitment,” he said.
In the meantime, he expected to see a rising cost in the portion covered by the city and state.
“They’re going to have to do something,” he said, “to make up that loss.”
Stenger said the county would continue paying its $6 million a year through 2021, when Jones Dome bonds are scheduled to be retired.
He added that he’s not against supporting a new stadium down the road.
“I want to see the Rams stay here,” he said. “I want to have an NFL team.
“But we would have to evaluate any proposal on its merits, number one, and, number two, we would want to see that go to a public vote.”
Never mind...
