[Elvis]

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt ... b7089.html

'Is there something we can do to keep you here?'

by David Hunn

ST. LOUIS • The relationship between the St. Louis Rams and local officials wasn’t always like this.

Before 2010, before Stan Kroenke exercised his option to buy the rest of the team, and years before he submitted an application to move it to Los Angeles, Rams Park executives and their landlord, the St. Louis Convention & Visitors Commission, had an amiable and productive relationship.

John Shaw, president of the Rams then, and Dan Dierdorf, former chairman of the visitors commission, liked each other, talked regularly, and cut the deals required by the Rams lease — including $30 million in improvements to the Edward Jones Dome, where the Rams play.

“John was always accessible,” Dierdorf, a former all-pro lineman for the St. Louis Cardinals, said late last week. “That’s the way the Rams organization was run 10 years ago.”

Then Kroenke, a minority owner, bought the rest of the team. And the tone of the conversations changed.

Kroenke’s staff never turned down a meeting, said Bob O’Loughlin, who took Dierdorf’s place. But the message was always the same: “We met with them numerous times to say, ‘Is there something we can do to keep you here?’” O’Loughlin said. “And they said they just wanted to follow the rules in the lease. So we went to arbitration.”

The Rams are now one step from leaving St. Louis. National Football League owners will meet Tuesday and Wednesday in Houston to discuss Kroenke’s proposal to build a glittering $1.9 billion stadium in Inglewood, Calif.

He has competition. The San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders have proposed a $1.8 billion stadium in Carson, just a dozen miles down the L.A. freeways.

Kroenke has a gilded proposal. His submission to the league, sent last Monday, describes building a “world-class, iconic” stadium in L.A. The facility is designed to handle 100,000 visitors for large events. A clear roof protects fans, but open sides let in cool ocean breezes. Set among 8.5 million square feet of office, hotel and dining space, it could, Kroenke said, serve “as the epicenter for a NFL retail and entertainment district.”

In order to move with the league’s blessing, Kroenke needs to gather votes from 24 of 32 owners.

But they won’t be basing their decisions on the glitz of L.A. plans alone.

A six-page list of league relocation policies and procedures guide the owners. NFL executives have consistently pointed out that it’s not a set of rules, just guidelines.

Still, St. Louis fans are largely hoping Kroenke has failed to meet them. Did Kroenke effectively serve his current community? How much tax support have the Rams received since they arrived in 1994? Has the club lost money?

And has Kroenke engaged in “good faith negotiations” on terms that might keep the Rams in St. Louis?

That, as it turns out, is harder to answer.

‘STONE COLD EASY MONEY’

Kroenke’s relocation application, released Tuesday following a request from the Post-Dispatch, raised ire across the region. St. Louis County Executive Steve Stenger called it “demonstrably preposterous.” Nixon scoffed at Kroenke’s claim that the region couldn’t support three teams. Mayor Francis Slay said the owner has long been “absent and unavailable.”

Officials and fans alike began dissecting Kroenke’s data and logic. Some of the owner’s points were conceded, some quickly cast aside. Others are still being debated:

The St. Louis economy is not that of San Diego or Oakland, clearly. But does it “lag” so far behind in economic drivers that it can’t support a football team?

Not likely, said experts. Several metro areas with successful NFL teams — Pittsburgh, New Orleans, Cleveland, for instance — rank lower than St. Louis in the U.S. Conference of Mayors’s annual projection of economic growth.

And are the Rams the best team to return to Los Angeles? Kroenke’s relocation application said the Rams have the strongest connection with L.A. fans, and he cited two polls showing 53 percent and 51 percent of the respondents preferring his team.

But the first poll was an informal online-only survey by the Los Angeles Times. And the second was a poll on Twitter conducted by an ESPN writer. Yet Kroenke didn’t reference a third poll, conducted by a professional survey company, of the five-county Los Angeles metropolitan area, which found that the Chargers and Rams were loved about the same.

Finally, is the local proposal to build a new $1.1 billion open-air riverfront stadium such a bad deal — as Kroenke’s application says — that any NFL team accepting it “will be well on the road to financial ruin”?

Gov. Jay Nixon’s stadium task force, which has worked with the NFL on the proposal for more than a year, bristled at the notion. “We have no idea how the Rams estimated a negative cash flow of $7.5 million,” the task force said in its formal response to the league.

John Vrooman, a Vanderbilt University sports economist, calculated that Kroenke will make more than a $100 million a year — in operating profit — if he moves the Rams into the proposed riverfront stadium.

“The value of an NFL club would increase by 20 percent to 40 percent just by moving into a new venue — even on Mars,” Vrooman said in an email to the Post-Dispatch. “NFL ownership is automatic stone cold easy money.”

Still, by Vrooman’s calculations, Kroenke’s profits double in L.A.

All of this leaves St. Louis fans and officials wondering:

Has Kroenke avoided area officials, stayed out of Dome negotiations, and skipped nearly all media interviews because he has wanted — ever since he bought the whole team — to get out of the Jones Dome lease, and move?

INGLEWOOD LAND

Kroenke did not agree to an interview with the Post-Dispatch on Friday. He has denied such allegations in the past. And his staff denied them again last week.

But his own relocation paperwork sheds some light on the subject.

As 2012 approached, leaders at the convention center were working to avoid arbitration. The lease with the Rams required the Dome be “first-tier,” or a top-eight stadium, by 2015.

They knew they were in trouble, O’Loughlin remembers now. A half-dozen brand-new NFL stadiums had bloomed by then. It would cost hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade the Dome to match. And that would only keep the Rams in their lease until 2025.

O’Loughlin and others talked to the Rams numerous times about another option, outside the lease — like a new stadium. “The answer was pretty standard,” O’Loughlin said. “‘We want to abide by the lease, and the lease says you have to be top-tier.’”

Finally, they gave up.

The Rams won the arbitration, and heard nothing further from local leaders for the next 16 months, according to Kroenke’s NFL application.

But Kroenke was not idle, he wrote in the league paperwork.

Over that same period, he met with his fellow owners, and with the league.

And with their “full knowledge and encouragement,” he began assembling land in Inglewood.

[BuiltRamTough]

'Is there something we can do to keep you here?'

Lol

[LoyalRam]

I almost don't care how we get to LA, as long as it happens. I want the Rams in the dream venue where they should be..in the town they should never have left. They ARE the Los Angeles Rams..Get it done Kroenke, leave no doubt.

[SoCalRam78]

Everyone in St. Louis wants Kroenke to bail them out and give them a pass.

To disregard his rights under the lease and engage with the task force and invest a ton of his own coin so everyone can be happy. Sorry, business doesn't work that way.

By the way, any article I read that makes John Shaw out to be a saint I can use to wipe my ass with.

[snackdaddy]

St. Louis is acting like the previous ownership was great or something. They were as dysfunctional as any organization. The only success they had was with Martz and their front office drove him away because they bean counter they hired to make football decisions was an idiot. It was a horribly run franchise. I guess st. louis position is "Yeah, they were a horrible franchise, but they're our franchise".

[Hacksaw]

I guess st. louis position is "Yeah, they were a horrible franchise, but they're our franchise".

pee's in a pod. or is it peacocks.