Missouri will keep paying for St. Louis Rams’ stadium until 2022

Hotair ^ | January 23,2016 | Jazz Shaw

[Hojczyk]

St. Louis and Missouri taxpayers paid the full $280 million cost of construction for the Edward Jones Dome in 1995. In an effort to keep the Rams in St. Louis, government officials tried to persuade the team to stay with the promise of $500 million for a new billion-dollar stadium. Rams owner, and billionaire, Stan Kroenke decided to move despite the generous taxpayer gift. The problem is that Missouri taxpayers aren’t off the hook because they will be paying $12 million until 2022 on the Edward Jones Dome.

In addition, according to the Salt Lake Tribune, “An effort to persuade the owner of the St. Louis Rams to keep his team in Missouri by building a new riverfront football stadium not only failed, but also left the public on the hook for $16.2 million in expenses.” The article also noted that, “Architecture firm HOK made more than $10.5 million for its work on the stadium plan, while the Dome authority’s attorneys, Blitz, Bardgett & Deutsch, billed almost $900,000. Thompson Coburn bond and financing lawyers charged an additional $760,000.”

[Pearls Before Swine]

In a time of bread and circuses, it’s good to own the circus act.

[Hildy]

Wanna laugh until you cry...watch this:

John Oliver on Publicly funded sports stadiums

[doldrumsforgop]

and the corrupt politicians who negotiated this deal and profited from it are never going to suffer. Just the taxpayers.

[Texas Eagle]

Those suckers in St. Louis fell for it hook, line and sinker.

Let this be a lesson to other cities.

Here in Sacramento, people voted to tax themselves to build a new arena for the Kings (I think they play basketball. It could be Hockey. Maybe Jai Alai) even though the owners of the team (both of whom are lawyers) have threatened to move the team several times in recent years.

[KarlInOhio]

I hope that since the threat of moving the team to Los Angeles can no longer be held over the heads of taxpayers (well except for San Diego and Oakland), we can be done with the era of NFL blackmail. Cities might not be taunted into building gigabuck stadiums over the threat of moving the team to Portland (the largest metro area without a team nearby).

Oops. I just remembered, Portland is now the second largest metro area after St. Louis.

[hal ogen]

Hahaha...

[Darth Reardon]

“Architecture firm HOK made more than $10.5 million for its work on the stadium plan, while the Dome authority’s attorneys, Blitz, Bardgett & Deutsch, billed almost $900,000. Thompson Coburn bond and financing lawyers charged an additional $760,000”

Now, I don’t know anything about designing stadiums, but this doesn’t sound right. Let’s say an architect is billed out at $105,000/year. That’s 100 architect-years to get to $10.5M. I’m probably on the low end here, the architect himself probably makes $105K, but even if I’m off by 2x it seems suspicious that it would take 50 architects working full time for a year to design a stadium. Sure, there were probably environmental assessments and the like, but $10.5M???

I suspect someone who was not paying with OPM would find a much better deal.

[petenmi]

[RetiredTexasVet]

Well the St. Louis fans can still go out to the stadium on the weekends, tailgate party, and watch the Rams on little portable TV sets .... just like being there.

[hawaiianninja]

They can also do what we do with the Aloha Stadium: Rent it out for swap meets and flea markets and high school events.

[wardaddy]

I thought the Maloof family owned them

The Maloofs beer distributorships and hotels and casinos

Christian Lebs

Rich

[AnotherUnixGeek]

I thought the Maloof family owned them

The Sacramento Kings? The Maloofs sold them in 2013 to Silicon Valley billionaire Vivek Ranadive.

[GreenHornet]

If building and operating a stadium or arena were a profitable enterprise, NFL, MLB, NBA, and NHL teams would insist on building and owning their own venues.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Thank you Governor Jay Nixon (D-MO).

[wardaddy]

Damn I’m slow aren’t I?

[dr_lew]

That was in the Chicago Tribune Crossword puzzle today, 1/23/16:

ACROSS

21 “That’s a riot”

Answer : HAHAHA

( I know the answer because I did the puzzle ! )

[cherry]

we still had to pay $50million many years ago when TPTB decided Seattle needed not only a new football stadium but also a new baseball stadium, right next to each other, and the taxpayers had to foot the bill for the Kingdome which was perfectly usable....

[hanamizu]

To be fair, this happened long before Nixon became governor. If I remember correctly, the deal for the Jones Dome in STL was a package deal. St. Louis got the dome, KC got a refurb of Arrowhead, and Springfield got something like a minor league ballpark. The two metro areas don’t have quite enough votes in the legislature to impose their will on the rest of the state, so the Springfield bit was vital to make the deal happen.

This time St. Louis knew it was going to finance a new stadium without state help. There was no way the state legislature would kick in money. They didn’t when the Cardinals were looking for state help and the Cards are a lot more beloved than the Rams.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Jay has been wanting to spend a billion to keep them there.