urbanSTL

CarexCurator wrote:
C) A very fancy urban stadium of MLS-quality is built in the city possibly with public support and given to Saint Louis Scott Gallagher. Saint Louis FC uses it as a USL team for a while. Saint Louis FC dominates the USL and gives MLS teams a hard time in the U.S. Open Cup until it becomes obvious to everyone it is an MLS quality team. Saint Louis FC stubbornly hangs out in the USL upsetting the balance of the soccer pyramid. MLS drops the expansion fee and the team gets promoted.

A or B is what people seem to want. C is what the St. Louligans seem to prefer.

This is actually what they prefer. Read below.

Time Travel With Me Back to The Future.

CarexCurator wrote:There is an interesting thread to the MLS in St. Louis conversation that compares to the MLS in Atlanta story.

The Atlanta Silverbacks were a very popular team with strong supporters http://terminuslegion.com/thank-you-silverbacks/, but the MLS team that arrived ignored them completely. Under different ownership and a glut of money, the MLS team let the fan favorites die.

Saint Louis FC has a very strong foundation and partial ownership by a supporting non-profit that can keep them locally grounded. It's the ideal team to represent our region. There are several scenarios the Atlanta lesson offers.

A) MLS, Nixon, and Slay work out a giant barrel of pork and bring in some billionaires from Florida for a public stadium, and Saint Louis FC disappears. The billionaires make a lot of money and move the team around as needed to extort the public for more.

B) Saint Louis FC gets some extra owners and becomes an MLS team while tax dollars maybe build a stadium. Maybe the public pays the $100 expansion fee out of some desperate need for glory.

C) A very fancy urban stadium of MLS-quality is built in the city possibly with public support and given to Saint Louis Scott Gallagher. Saint Louis FC uses it as a USL team for a while. Saint Louis FC dominates the USL and gives MLS teams a hard time in the U.S. Open Cup until it becomes obvious to everyone it is an MLS quality team. Saint Louis FC stubbornly hangs out in the USL upsetting the balance of the soccer pyramid. MLS drops the expansion fee and the team gets promoted.

A or B is what people seem to want. C is what the St. Louligans seem to prefer.

C is impossible nonsense. There's no way a USL team would be able to raise the money to pay an MLS-quality squad, playing USL teams and MLS B-teams while maintaining an MLS-caliber stadium. That would require a world-class talent development program coming out of nowhere. Even if it did, it's hard to see why MLS would be so excited that they would drop the expansion fee, unless they're hard-up for viable expansion opportunities. They aren't going to give up a 9-figure payout because they're embarrassed for USL or whatever. It would be cheaper to just poach whatever STLFC players are responsible.

The only way the USL team will influence the MLS is possibly strong attendance, a la Sacramento. On the other hand, pre-MLS Portland average USL attendance around 5-6k per year, and Seattle averaged a little over 3k yearly in the USL, hardly the stuff of legends compared to 4.8k in STL.

Yep, didn't a certain soccer park in Fenton Park just get a clean up job and will have field replacements after a flood.

On a different, would St. Louis County be looking at a third and fourth soccer park. I thought their was one already to the north of the park (recalling going to a few games for my cousin's son), as well as Fenton. Finally, you got the privately proposed soccer park in Chesterfield that the article references.

The disappointing part in all this is none of these facilities or proposed facilities embrace metrolink or even future Daniel Boone line. Talk about a good tie in to UMSL, Wash U and or SLU or future MSL stadium to share facilities whether it be practice or a nice mid size stadium and other regional draws and amenities. Heck, even share stop and ride facilities.

A new set of soccer and baseball diamonds has been going in along the Meramec river in Valley Park along the levee on the wrong side. In late fall they had just put in all new turf for 4 back-to-back baseball parks, but no screens or stands yet. Also new turf for two new soccer fields. And they paved an area in between for parking. After the water receded, it looks like one edge of the soccer fields turf rolled up a little, but it appears to be intact. Two of the four baseball diamonds look like the grass will recover. The other two don't look as good. They are partially covered with sand, and the grass is brown. Hopefully just dormant. If they get the sand back off, they can see if they need to re-turf. They've already bulldozed the sand off of the bike trail along the river, and I was able to ride it end-to-end on January 30th when the weather was unusually warm.

But in general, I don't think the field suffered enough to kill the project going forward. This is a good use for areas that will likely flood every 15 years. The older parks along Marshall Road have debris all the way to the top of the baseball screens. But they'll get cleaned up and used as usual. This was a historic flood even for the Meramec and is not likely to happen again at this level for another 50 years. I was driving to Tulsa the day of the rains, and it was a continuous cloudburst right over I-44 all the way to Springfield training right over the Meramec basin. Cars were pulling over with flashers because they couldn't see the road. I don't recall that every happening in the past.

David Hunn
‏@davidhunn
A group of business and sports leaders has gotten together to bring MLS to St. Louis. I'll post at http://stltoday.com ASAP. Names too.

moorlander wrote:David Hunn
‏@davidhunn
A group of business and sports leaders has gotten together to bring MLS to St. Louis. I'll post at http://stltoday.com ASAP. Names too.

There's a similar post from Grant Wahl at SI.com: http://www.si.com/planet-futbol/2016/02 ... a-election

In MLS expansion news, an MLS source tells me that losing its NFL team has caused St. Louis to shoot up to “the top of the list” for expansion cities after Miami

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metr ... db8b6.html

The group includes St. Louis Cardinals President Bill DeWitt III, World Wide Technology CEO Jim Kavanaugh, prominent hotelier Bob O’Loughlin, UniGroup President Jim Powers, St. Louis Blues CEO Chris Zimmerman and former NFL task force co-chairman Dave Peacock.

^ Beat me to it. This is great news if you're a soccer fan hoping for MLS to come to STL.

How difficult would it be to turn the Dome into an open air 25k-seat SSS?

With Bill DeWitt involved this may go further than just a new stadium. This might be the situation he needs to make a BPV expansion viable. 400,000+ additional visitors during the summer months. Many weekends March-October could have both MLS and MLB games. Downtown is going to be the place to be, regardless if you're going to a game.

When you think about everything that is pilling up it's overwhelming. A sports themed development that hasn't delivered 25% of what was promised, Scottrade is 'badly in need of repair and modifications', convention center with $500mm+ in renovations, and now the funding plan and site selection for a soccer stadium. Sheesh.

^^I am very confident (80%) this stadium will happen on or along Clark. We really need to start looking at the area south of the Gateway Mall as a separate neighborhood. As I said above, Bill is looking for a way to convince Cordish and other stakeholders that BPV needs to move forward. Occupancy and condo sales are probably just shy of what Cordish wants to see. 400,000+ additional visitors March - October will probably do the trick. Tom Stillman might not have as much of a current investment to protect (outside of the Blues) but he probably wants the immediate neighborhood improved, I also wouldn't rule him out as a potential owner along with Bob O'Loughlin. It's also a good chip to have when negotiating the terms of your venues remodel. Speaking of Bob, I think he'll be one of our best sources of information on this process. The Union Station renovation would change dramatically if they choose to follow the idea or something similar to Space Architecture. If someone notices construction slowing or coming to a complete stop, its probably a sign. If it doesn't, they've either selected a different site or they've decided against the entire thing.

addxb2 wrote:I am very confident (80%) this stadium will happen on or along Clark. We really need to start looking at the area south of the Gateway Mall as a separate neighborhood.

To some extent, that feels true, and presumably we could just call it downtown south rather than sportsville or Ball Puck Village. Hop Alley would be great if we got some breweries to spread out on Clark (old name for BPV). Getting Union Station and the two stadium owners together for a shared development plan would probably add enough weight to make just about anything possible including a full neighborhood plan.

If they came up with a unified website to guide people through game day parking and guide them into walking down Clark, that could be a very great thing. They'd have three MetroLink stations to leverage too. They could probably do some joint advertising just to get everyone to understand that it would be ok to take the train. As long as Cordish isn't put in charge of the whole package...

I can't attend but there is a TEDx Talk at Wash U tonight and they will be talking about bringing soccer to stl.