Previous Story
National Football League could pay $300M toward St. Louis stadium
Posted On Dec 19 2015
Comment: Off
Rams owner Stan Kroenke is engrossed in a battle over a potential move to Los Angeles with a competing plan from a collaboration between the Chargers and Raiders. 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. The NFL would provide $300 million under the terms of the plan, which is $100 million more than the league is willing to shell out. If approved as expected Friday, the issue would need final approval by the NFL at its league meetings in mid-January.
Stadium task force co-chairman David Peacock has said the new stadium will create jobs, revitalize a dilapidated area of downtown St. Louis and help the city retain its image by keeping the NFL.
“He asked whether I’d be interested in helping very specifically the partnership of the Raiders and Chargers move to L.A., develop a stadium, reposition themselves here”, Iger told Sam Farmer of the Los Angeles Times last week.
St. Louis politicians, however, say it doesn’t matter, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
The Board of Estimate& Apportionment in St Louis casted votes that resulted in a 2-1 ratio to approve of the city’s part of financing the St Louis stadium.
Alderman Sharon Tyus summed up the city’s frustration to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “We’re like at the strip club … and the stripper is throwing the money back at us”.
That Dec. 30 deadline is important because that’s the city’s deadline for getting a final stadium proposal into the NFL’s hands.
So while the St. Louis vote today doesn’t guarantee the Rams will stay in St. Louis, it will make it harder for the Rams and the National Football League to claim the city hasn’t supported the team. A 20-year lease agreement on the current stadium, the Edward Jones Dome, ends in 2015, and calls for it to remain a “top-tier” facility. Late Thursday, league Commissioner Roger Goodell made that clear in a letter to Governor Jay Nixon’s task force. The NFL warned the city that its maximum is $200 million, and it may not even give that. The Raiders and Chargers also are interested in making the move.
