Committee sorts through stadium options

05/13/2006

Roof issue central as Vikings tweak plan

BY ARON KAHN and PATRICK SWEENEY
Pioneer Press

Roof or no roof?

That is the question for a legislative conference committee trying to negotiate compromise stadium plans for the Twins and the Vikings.

“We would love to have a roof. We would also like to have Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez, but we can’t afford them,’’ Twins point man Jerry Bell told the committee Friday, referring to the New York Yankees stars.

It was well-greeted levity after months of hand-wringing at the state Capitol on the controversial stadium matters.

With talk of retractable roofs reverberating among the House and Senate conferees, other lawmakers found a fix for a procedural problem that has held up progress on the University of Minnesota stadium project. The outcome will clear the way for a second conference committee to meet next week on differences in House and Senate plans for the proposed $248 million on-campus football stadium.

Meanwhile, the Vikings said they will propose a greatly revised stadium plan when the first conference committee resumes deliberations Monday.

With the Vikings struggling to win approval in the waning days of the legislative session, the team is expected to remove its request for any state funds, thereby mirroring the Twins’ more successful plan.

The Vikings bill in the House requires the state to contribute $230 million for a 68,500-seat roofed stadium in Blaine, with the money coming from three sources:

• Future growth in sales taxes paid in a special stadium district.

• Future growth in state property taxes paid by the team and businesses in the stadium district.

• Future income taxes for the team and its players, in excess of what they pay now.

Lawmakers and Gov. Tim Pawlenty have rejected all the state sources. The other public money in the House plan is a proposed 0.75 percent sales tax in Anoka County. The Vikings’ new plan is expected to retain that tax, but it was unclear whether there would be any new public revenue source.

Without additional public funds, the Vikings might have to jettison their plan for a retractable roof, which would reduce the cost of their project to about $675 million from the current $790 million.

In the complex mix of stadium alternatives, there is also a plan to pay for the Vikings and Twins projects, along with mass transit improvements, through a half-cent sales tax in the seven metropolitan counties. But that proposal, which is part of a Senate plan, is likely to be ditched by the committee.

The revised Vikings plan will be presented Monday by Vikings owner Zygi Wilf, who sat quietly in the audience at the committee’s Friday meeting. Though he lives in New Jersey, Wilf has been spending much time at the Minnesota Capitol trying to keep the Vikings stadium plan alive.

Senate Majority Leader Dean Johnson, DFL-Willmar, suggested that lawmakers and Pawlenty might agree to build an outdoor stadium that could accommodate a roof later. But House Speaker Steve Sviggum, R-Kenyon, said the Vikings’ chances for stadium approval this year are not good.

There is no roof planned for the more popular, $522 million proposal for a Twins ballpark in Minneapolis’ Warehouse District, but state Sen. Sharon Marko, DFL-Cottage Grove, suggested that might be a bad idea, given Minnesota’s inclement weather. Bell told the committee that the Twins are comfortable with that reality, however.

Adding a roof to the proposed 42,000-seat ballpark would delay its opening a year, to 2011, he said. It also would require an additional $125 million that the team is unwilling to pay.

Still, Bell said, “We’re better off in an outdoor ballpark than we are in the Metrodome.’’

The Senate bill requires a referendum on a sales tax for a ballpark; the House version does not. The Twins say that if a ballot issue is mandated, the team will drop out of the deal.

The University of Minnesota also wants out of the Metrodome, and a conference committee will try to resolve differences in bills that would pave the way.

The House plan calls for the 50,000-seat stadium to be built with a $9.4 million-a-year state payment, a $50-a-year student fee and a $35 million naming rights deal with TCF Bank. It also requires the university to create a huge nature preserve in Rosemount and eventually allow the state to buy the property for $1.

The Senate version increases the state contribution to $12.9 million a year and drops the student fee, the TCF naming rights deal and the nature preserve agreement.

Johnson said Friday that none of the differences was big enough to prevent enactment of a compromise bill.