News: Expansion Bid News - catch all thread

What I don't get is why did St.Louis have to put it to a vote and why do they need a $200 million stadium? If the San Jose Earthquakes owners built their own stadium without public money or a vote and did it for $100 mil, why couldn't St. Louis do the same? I don't know the area or the costs but I seriously doubt land and construction would cost more than the San Jose-Silicon Valley area....

 

They need to put it to a vote because the city requires that the sales/use tax changes (the source of funding) be put to public vote.

The stadium costs keep getting commingled from different plans, but the overall deal is $140 for stadium, $15 million for site improvements (this was an abandoned freeway project site with ramped grades and gulleys). Remember, that for Avaya, the stadium was $100 million. The land itself was almost as much as the stadium. Large infrastructure projects like these don't vary in cost as much as you might think per market. They do when building on a complicated site. That's what the extra $15 million for the site is. This was an abandoned freeway junction where the cross town piece never got built. It needs to be yanked and graded. See all but last photo below:

https://web.archive.org/web/20021224072351/http://www.kcroads.com/ShowMe/MOTerm/755.html

Avaya was basically flat and pristine. Concrete, steel, seating, etc cost roughly the same. The professional fees are the similar...Avaya used HOK (based in St. Louis). Construction labor is the big difference as long as the sites are similar. The STL stadium is a bit larger, and structurally better too.

As for why STL needs money while SJ doesn't...well, SJ sits in the tech capital of the world. Future cash flow enhancements in terms of ticket prices, boxes, etc are likely. As is the big one: a decent corporate sponsorship deal. If the STL franchise could get $20 million over the first 10 years of the lease and presumably more for the last 20, they wouldn't need $60 million of city funds either. They'd simply borrow against the value of the current and future naming rights. It must be nice. Most metros need cash infusions to make deals like this work.

 

There's no need for a vote if the $60 million in tax funding is simply omitted from the overall budget,. The St. Louis stadium does not need to be larger or structurally better than San Jose's $100 million stadium. Remove $60 million from the $200 million St Louis budget, and St. Louis' budget remains $40 million larger than San Jose's.

Avaya's stadium site was flat but hardly pristine -- a former tank manufacturing facility.

And St. Louis punches above its weight in corporate headquarters. For example, 9 of 10 Missouri Fortune 500 companies are in St. Louis or suburban Clayton or Chesterfield.

https://www.missourieconomy.org/industry/fortune_500/index.stm

 

I don't understand why they can't just add whatever amount the tax on tickets was going to be to the ticket price and call it a "stadium construction fee" or whatever. Then there should be no need for a public vote.

 

Yes, but again....the stadium was really $140 million. Remove 60 million and that's 80 million. No stadium has been built (recently) for so little...and further, you're talking about two different cities with two different levels of market desirability in two different expansion rounds.

MLS wants in the Bay Area badly. They can live with a $100 million venue there. STL is an applicant city in a crowded field and the bar for venues has been subsequently upgraded with the likes of Orlando. The investors, in terms of return, needed the extra seats to capture what they forecast to be an initial swell of attendance over 2-3 years during the expansion "honeymoon" phase. That was baked into their return. The city was also burned by building something that was clearly behind the curve on stadium infrastructure back in the mid 90s with the Edward Jones Dome...which became obsolete within 5 years when the next gen of venues came out. This is why they lost the Rams in the first place.

 

Source for your $140 million St. Louis stadium figure? I've read $200 million.

MLS moved its only Bay Area entrant to Houston at one point, belying the notion the league covets the Bay Area market.

And according to the St. Louis Post Dispatch, Orlando's supposed state-of-the-art facility (plainly modeled on Avaya, by the way), cost only $115 million.

"The Orlando City Soccer Club, in Florida, projects its new downtown facility, opening in 2017, will cost $115 million."

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/...cle_ca9df94c-6107-539c-9a97-a1f56903068f.html

 

I don't think the Quakes move to Houston was really what MLS or Garber wanted. I think its more like what AEG wanted. Granted they owned half of the league at the time but I recall Garber wanting the Bay Area badly as it was a supposed hotbed for soccer and he wanted the team back in 2007. They came back in 2008 , only two years after the relocation.

 

Of course the league knew it was stupid to move the Bay Area's team and injure an important market in the process. But they made the move to ensure they could blackmail markets in the future: build us a stadium or else. The move makes that threat credible -- except in the Bronx.

I believe the league knows it's stupid not to be in St. Louis. But they've boxed themselves into a corner because if they place a franchise there now, in the face of voter disapproval of corporate welfare, it hinders their ability to blackmail other markets in the future.

Always bet on short-sighted greed to win out over a long-term vision. If MLS really knew what it was doing, it would not have waited more than a decade to place a team in the Pacific Northwest or allowed early-edition stadiums to be built without supporters sections.

 

Exhibits A and B of why you trust in town, current (and credible) sources. Check out the dates and change in price from the search listings here:
https://www.google.com/#q=mls+stadium+and+st+louis+and+$140+million

Orlando's media also pegged their venue at $155, not $115. The out of town St. Louis Post Dishrag didn't get ORL right.

Hypothetically, I might have talked to someone who may have needed to review the $60 million ask and other things, which would require getting comfortable with the stadium cost of $140 million. Completely possible, I may have been walked through the process to get to $140 million, and maybe (just maybe), Avaya and Orlando City were the benchmarks. Back of the envelope steps below:

1) Inflate the costs of the existing venues by 1.8% annual inflation (from their start dates to anticipated late fall STL start date). 1.8% from 2013-estimated 2018 inflation. Costs now current.
2) Take current costs and adjust the labor portion (I forgot the proportion of labor / total cost, but call it labor = 30% of total costs). Those are the wages from the BLS by metro for the construction labor occupations. SJ and STL construction labor costs almost identical. ORL 40% less. Which means the total cost is 12% less (40% of 30%). Adjust to SJ and ORL to STL wages. Note concrete, steel, and the like have regional costs variances, but its more about commodity swings over time, so assume no adjustment. Now the costs are current and reflect similar wage rates.
3) Adjust costs proportionally for STL's stated 20K capacity. Results:

Avaya $132.6 million
Orlando City $145.4 million
Average $139.0 million vs. St. Louis estimate of $140 million.

Pretty interesting that once you cut through all the differences, all three are very close in terms of price. Avaya is the most techy. Orlando City is the most "complete" looking. STL went with the sharp roof. I suspect this was done to keep things more cohesive with the wrap while opening up the breezeways for viewing and ventilation. People may find this hard to believe, but STL in summer evenings is more unbearable than Orlando. ORL gets the daily pm rains that cool things down a lot. STL is stifling. Not as bad as Orlando during the day, but it is from about 6-9 pm.

 

Why is the St. Louis Business Journal a more authoritative source than the Post-Dispatch?

 

Again, source?

 

What is magical about the 20,000-seat capacity? Why can't the St. Louis stadium be re-configured with fewer seats and fewer bells-and-whistles. Avaya Stadium has only 18,000 and it is not "incomplete" as a stadium. In fact, it's one of the nicer venues in MLS. Dallas didn't abandon the Soccer Hall of Fame when bids came in over budget; the design went back to the drawing board. The same can happen here.

And St. Louis residents are used to their climate.

 

I will say the Sacramento Business Journal has more detailed information on both stadium development and even expansion info than the Sacramento Bee does. That's a low bar to clear, however.

 

I do hope that investors privately fund an MLS stadium for St. Louis

 

Interesting article

http://www.cincinnati.com/story/spo...cinnati-outdrawing-cincinnati-reds/100710484/

 

According to local sports talk radio host Randy Karraker, MLS to St. Louis is alive and kicking. The ownership group has reportedly recruited new investors that will make up the $60 million stadium funding gap that appeared to doom the city's chances after a tax measure failed at the ballot box last month.

 

Didn't Columbus voters vote against the initial building of the Crew Stadium and Lamar Hunt went ahead and built his own park anyway?

 

I'm gonna laugh if it's just the Foundry group finally getting their foot in with the MLS2STL group.

But for the second time in ten years, a serious MLS bid in STL is on shaky financials. I kinda checked out after the vote failed - it failed understandably, but still. As much as I want STL to get an MLS team, I just kinda want to be done with this whole ordeal. I can't take another wait-and-see. Unless MLS really has that much of a hard-on for STL (and/or Miami) I don't understand why MLS is just sitting on all 12 of its bids - my understanding was that all pending public votes had been done so far (save an unnecessary vote in San Diego this fall).

 

http://www.stltoday.com/sports/socc...cle_6015e9ee-a033-5865-8efa-4a60b4ac7c8f.html

FWIW, Jim Thomas says the bid is not quite dead yet, but it doesn't sound good.

 

http://www.stltoday.com/sports/edge...&utm_content=KickoffStory&utm_campaign=090517

Edgerley: Money still on the table for MLS team in St. Louis

 

I don't know what they are hoping to happen at this point. After the failed vote, I don't see how politicians could give them any public money now. If they want a team, I think they're going to need to pony up some more of their own money, or scale back the stadium.

 

I saw this as a comment on the STLtoday website, and thought I would bring it up here. If Ford Field is good enough to make Detroit a finalist, why couldn't we just use the dome for St. Louis? Is it that much worse, or is it because the ownership wouldn't control all the revenues? It will be interesting to see how that plays out. If they turn into another Seattle or Atlanta, will a 30000+ stadium be the new standard for expansion candidates?

 

Both, I think.