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“The hardest thing of all is to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if there is no cat.”
This quotation from Confucius ought to be read at the beginning of today’s Ways and Means Committee of the Board of Aldermen, as it somberly convenes to decide whether to commit hundreds of millions in future city funds to a new NFL stadium.
Think of the stadium plan as the black cat in the dark room. Through 10 agonizing months of angst and emotion and fury and change after change after change, nailing down the details of this $1 billion-plus dreamy enterprise has been elusive, to say the least.
But I’ve always felt there was likely no cat in the room at all, because even if St. Louis interests were somehow able to use the stadium plan to convince NFL owners to prevent Rams owner Stan Kroenke from moving the team back to Los Angeles, Kroenke would have no reason or obligation at all to invest in the very stadium that crushed his dreams.
As I’ve pointed out more times than I care to remember, Kroenke possesses nine one-year options to play at the Edward Jones Dome on the sweetest lease in the NFL. It costs him precisely zero dollars to renew this option each year, as opposed to the $250 million—as in quarter of a billion dollars—that he’d have to invest in a new stadium he wouldn’t own in a city he’s trying so hard to leave. And, oh, he’d have to lock into an unbreakable 30-year commitment, as opposed to maintaining his valuable status as one of the NFL’s only free-agent owners unburdened by a lease commitment.
This last point is by far the most important. Even if Kroenke is denied his proposed move to Los Angeles—by no means a certainty—he can still take his time and play out all his options, at the Dome and otherwise.
More important than me saying it, however, is NFL officials saying it. That’s precisely what happened yesterday when NFL vice president Eric Grubman all but declared the new stadium project dead in an interview with Bernie Miklasz on his sports-talk show on 101 FM.
With stunning directness, Grubman told Miklasz, “There’s no compelling proposal from any city. St. Louis will fall short of having a compelling proposal that will attract the Rams.”
He added, “The stadium is going to cost more than is on the drawing board at the moment. The funding has declined, and new taxes are being proposed for the Rams.” Grubman repeatedly pointed to Kroenke’s options at the dome, at one point saying that Kroenke had a better deal there than at the proposed new stadium, and Grubman said that recent stadium-plan developments had even “moved away” from the already disinterested owner.
Grubman made it abundantly clear that the NFL owners who had reviewed St. Louis’ stadium plan did not consider it “first-tier” and had said as much to stadium backers led by Dave Peacock. He made no prediction about whether Kroenke had the votes to get to Los Angeles, but he offered St. Louis no reason for optimism even if Kroenke doesn’t.
It’s against that backdrop that the aldermen convene in committee today and with the full board tomorrow. But don’t expect much to be said about the apparent futility of it all: All the local officials, residents, and media types will be too consumed with the drama of the day.
I’m sure that the aldermen will feel like they’re at the center of the universe amid all of the angst and emotion and fury over the stadium issue. They’re not. Indeed, all of the theater will surely yield breathless news coverage about the drama, on the assumption that St. Louis’ NFL future is hanging in the balance.
It isn’t.
In all likelihood, the city will ultimately agree to the most recent funding scheme proposed by stadium backers led by Peacock (and including Mayor Francis Slay, who strangely needs to appear removed from a group that has included his key advisers from the start).
Slay will ultimately get the votes he needs—seemingly against all odds—because, well, he’s in his 34th term as mayor and that’s what 34-term mayors do. Comptroller Darlene Green is firmly on record as opposed to the plan because the numbers don’t make sense, and she’s right. But that hasn’t stopped the city from making dozens of other “economic development” giveaways to the privileged in the past.
Aldermanic President Lewis Reed is the swing vote in all this, and he’s smartly remained tight-lipped as to what he’ll do. Even though he isn’t saying it, I’m guessing he’ll come down on the side of letting the project go forward, because there’s a lot to lose in seeming to kill it.
If that’s the case, he and others who support the project can be comforted by the knowledge that it’s most likely one of the largest exercises in political futility on record.
There’s no cat in the room.
St. Louis Magazine co-owner Ray Hartmann is a panelist on KETC Channel 9’s Donnybrook, which airs Thursdays at 7 p.m. He is also the author of the monthly column Think Again.
