Rams owner Kroenke rips St. Louis market as he seeks LA move

The NFL announced today that three teams-the Oakland Raiders, St. Louis Rams, and San Diego Chargers-have applied to relocate their teams to L.A. Why?

Let’s focus in on that Rams relocation application, which has been garnering lots of headlines, albeit not many with quite as memorable an image as Deadspin’s. A $1.7 billion stadium proposal for Carson has been billed as a joint Raiders-Chargers facility.

Meanwhile the St. Louis Stadium Task Force is firing back.

“Everybody’s hope is that we have a vote next week in Houston and end this thing”, Mara, a member of the Committee on Los Angeles Opportunities, said Wednesday morning at league headquarters.

On Monday, all three teams filed paperwork with the National Football League, declaring their intent to move.

There is a growing sentiment among all three committees that a St. Louis taskforce’s proposal for a $1 billion riverfront stadium to keep the Rams in place is not viable. “The relocation would be effective for the 2016 NFL League Year”.

NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said in a statement, “Each team submitted the appropriate documentation in support of its application as required by the NFL Policy and Procedures for Proposed Franchise Relocations”.

Professional football in Los Angeles is one step closer to becoming reality again – or really, three steps closer.

Kroenke sees St. Louis as a two-sport city that has no room or growth for football and offers a stadium plan that wouldn’t appeal to any NFL team, let alone his.

The Rams are the right team to fill the stadium, the document says, with the “longest and strongest” connection to L.A. fans. By contrast, the Chargers posted a videotaped interview with owner Dean Spanos, who said the push to leave San Diego was “probably the single most hard decision that I have ever made…in business”.

A year ago, Rams owner Stan Kroenke unveiled plans for a $1.86-billion stadium in Inglewood, which would serve as the centerpiece of a 298-acre entertainment, retail and housing development at the site of the former Hollywood Park racetrack. Instead, it is generally considered among the worst, the Rams said, and 12 years of lease negotiations to rectify that were unsuccessful.

At this point, neither Oakland or San Diego are offering any public funds to build a stadium, although that could change in San Diego if the public approves stadium funds in a June vote. Despite these efforts, there is still no certain, actionable solution to the stadium problem.

The St. Louis Regional Chamber also issued a statement saying it is disappointed with the statement is application, and also said the St. Louis area is one of the largest economies in the US.

“I don’t think people should take it personally in that should it get down to these types of discussions, it should be a call to action”, Lozano said.