[Elvis]

http://www.stltoday.com/sports/football ... 8b3e7.html

Progress on stadium front, but will Kroenke play ball?

While conceding there's a lot of work to be done, Dave Peacock and Bob Blitz expressed growing confidence that the St. Louis stadium plan will have all the boxes checked to meet NFL approval in the fall.

But as they pointed out on more than one occasion during a media update Friday, then it's up to Stan Kroenke and the Rams.

"We're gonna take it to a point, but we've got to be met halfway," said Peacock, the former Anheuser-Busch executive. "We've been clear from January, and we didn't change in this message, that we're trying to get somewhere in the $400 million range in public funding."

An additional $150 million will come through sales of personal seat licenses.

"And then we expect $450 million in team and league (money), which is private funding," Peacock said. "It's meet us halfway and this project progresses."

Of that $450 million, the St. Louis stadium group wants $250 million from Rams owner Stan Kroenke. If that's the case, the league will chip in $200 million from its G4 stadium loan program.

Add it all together, and you come up with the roughly $1 billion price tag for a riverfront stadium on the north edge of downtown.

Will Kroenke be willing to participate if the St. Louis stadium plan is finalized?

"We have not had direct discussion with Stan Kroenke about that," Peacock said Friday. "But the league in our discussions, and Kevin Demoff when he sat through our meetings, are all very aware of our construct from the financing standpoint."

In other words, there can be no new stadium built without the private financing, and without a commitment that there will be an NFL team in St. Louis beyond the 2015 season. Kroenke seems intent on moving the Rams to Los Angeles, and has been working diligently on a $1.8 billion stadium project in Inglewood, Calif.

Peacock said getting the public piece of the money — the $400 million — in place by the fall is achievable.

"We can do it," he said. "There won't be money in an account come the fall, but there certainly should be a clear understanding of sources and how those sources can be released. But again, we want $450 million in private investment. So we have to be met halfway before there's any releasing of public money.

"We're not building a stadium and hoping a team comes, or stays."

Peacock said Demoff, the Rams' executive vice president for football operations, has been involved along the way in the St. Louis stadium project. But league sources have told the Post-Dispatch that the team's participation has come only with some arm-twisting.

"They've been helpful," Peacock said of the Rams, speaking specifically of Demoff. "It's not like the team has been dark. In the market study process they've been helpful.

They've been helpful in how to look at certain things.

"Stadium-wise it's great to look at pictures, but when you look at square foot for patrons in the club area, and how big are the seats. Things like this. . . .they helped with. We've got a good working relationship with him."

If the St. Louis stadium plan is finalized in the fall, the league can try to force Kroenke to stay, or try to bring another team to St. Louis, with the Oakland Raiders most often mentioned as a possibility.

As things now stand, the Rams, Raiders, and San Diego Chargers are all interested in moving to Los Angles. The Chargers and Raiders have partnered on a competing LA stadium plan (to Kroenke's) in Carson, Calif.

The NFL wants a maximum of two teams in the Los Angeles market, so one team could be left standing empty-handed in this high-stakes game of musical chairs.

As things stand now, Kroenke's Inglewood plan is seen as the furthest advanced, according to league observers, followed by St. Louis, and then Carson. The San Diego and Oakland plans — to keep the Chargers and Raiders in their respective "hometowns" — are badly trailing the pack as evidenced by the fact that they were not invited to make presentations to league and club officials Wednesday in New York.

As the two-person task force appointed by Gov. Jay Nixon to spearhead the stadium project in St. Louis, Peacock and Blitz spoke in largely general terms Friday about their two major remaining hurdles:

• The assembly and purchasing of the land on the stadium site.

• The financing plan to come up with the $400 million in public money

In terms of land purchase, the stadium group has letters of intent in place on the majority of parcels in question.

"A lot of it's through option agreement," Peacock said. "You spend a little bit of money, so you say, 'Hey, I want to be able to pay X-price if this progresses.' We've had great progress so far. There will be a good amount secured by mid-summer, and we should have enough access to the land to get started on the project on its normal course of progress by the fall."

The financing piece remains trickier and murkier.

"The financing plan, there are steps that you have to go through," Blitz said. "In looking down the road on those steps, there isn't a major obstacle there. They're just procedures that you have to follow to do it. And once we get through those procedures. . .all you have to do is pull the lever."

But at face value, the current state of the financial plan doesn't look that tidy. For one the St. Louis Regional Convention and Sports Complex Authority, the public body that owns and operates the Edward Jones Dome, has filed suit against the city of St. Louis seeking to avoid a civic vote on the use of taxpayer money for the new stadium.

"It's never proper to comment on a pending legal case, OK?" said Blitz, the attorney for the dome authority. "But I can say that we filed that case because we are convinced that the city ordinance does not apply to the refinancing plan and the financing plan that is going into the new stadium. And that there does not have to be a vote to have financial assistance from the city.

"That's all I really want to say about it right now, because it is pending in court, and it's an important lawsuit."

Blitz said they hope to see the suit resolved by September.

[Hacksaw]

IMO, the only way that Kroenke stays is if the league put's their foot down. Since he has to kick in on the stadium with little return, I cannot for the life of me see the other owners doing that to one of their own, especially when he has such a perfect alternative to offer.