Friday, December 9, 2011
Mayor RT Rybak formally presented his plan on Thursday.
Mayor RT Rybak's quest to keep the Vikings in Minneapolis still seems stuck in the mud of city council opposition and funding difficulties. That was the message from a city council meeting on Thursday, where the mayor formally presented his plan to the group. As Southwest Minneapolis Patch reported some weeks ago, opposition to the stadium among Southwest’s councilmembers is strong. The mayor’s proposal fell on deaf ears, according to a Star-Tribune report, with councilmembers’ principal objections largely unchanged: the money could be better spent elsewhere, and city residents voted several years ago to impose a $10 million cap on city contributions to any sports facility. As Patch reported earlier, the economics of a stadium are murky, …
Friday, October 28, 2011
Despite opposition—including all of Southwest's city councilors—mayor works to keep Minneapolis in the mix
The odds for getting a publicly funded Vikings stadium built in Minnesota appear long, but that didn't stop Minneapolis Mayor RT Rybak from making a public pitch on Thursday for a city-funded stadium. At the core of the mayor's presentation were details of two different funding proposals to generate between hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue to fund a new stadium in one of three sites around the city. Two of those sites sit just north of the Minneapolis Basilica and the other now holds the Metrodome. Using one approach, a .35 percent sales tax and a 1 percent lodging tax would be used to raise between $195 and $300 million, depending on the site. In the other approach, a 5 percent tax on revenue from a new downtown casino in the …
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Info is scarce, but $72.8 million seems to be the magic number.
Judging by the urgency with which Mayor RT Rybak and Governor Mark Dayton have pushed the idea of public funding for a new Vikings stadium, you might be forgiven if you thought the fate of the Minneapolis economy rests on keeping the sports team in the city. Well, does it? It turns out, that's a rather difficult question to answer. According to Rybak's office, only one recent study (attached to this article) measures the team's economic impact. Looking at a single playoff game, from Jan. 17, 2010, the University of Minnesota study concluded that the 25,160 non-metro residents who swung into town for the game spent about $230 each while here—or $5.8 million overall. This spending ultimately produced a $9.1 million boost to the city's …
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Area councilwomen don't support public financing for a new Vikings stadium.
To spend or not to spend? That is the question city officials are asking themselves regarding a new Minnesota Vikings stadium. According to Minneapolis Mayor RT Rybak and City Council President Barb Johnson, the answer is "yes," at one of three sites around downtown. But their proposal, which will be finalized and presented to Governor Mark Dayton on Friday, has garnered some opposition and reservations from some of Southwest's City Councilmembers. "I’ve never been a supporter of public funding for sports facilities," Councilmember Betsy Hodges (Ward 13) said Tuesday afternoon. Councilmember Elizabeth Glidden (Ward 8) agreed. "I don't support city sales tax to pay for a stadium," she wrote in an email to Patch on Wednesday night. "In …
Maria L. Gaycheck
4:22 pm on Saturday, October 29, 2011
> The Stadium directly creates permanent jobs. No it does not. more ›