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January 28, 2011
Mondale checks out ammo plant as Vikings stadium site
The polluted ammo plant site in Arden Hills is in the news again as a prospective Minnesota Vikings stadium site, with Minnesota stadium chief Ted Mondale meeting with local officials yesterday. The site still comes with no ideas for how to pay for the thing, and as history has shown, until that happens it's best not to get too worked up about where exactly the building will go.
Still, the occasion provided a golden opportunity for local pols to mouth off about what a wonderful economic catalyst a football stadium would be. Per the Minneapolis Star Tribune:
[Ramsey County commissioners Tony] Bennett and [Rafael] Ortega, chair of the County Board's facilities committee, say putting a stadium on the site would kick-start development on an eyesore of a property that doesn't contribute to tax rolls. They say that there's plenty of room for other development, such as hotels and shops, and that with a few nearby road upgrades, the site would be easily accessible.
Hands up, all you hotel and shop owners who are dying to locate near a football stadium that's open ten days a year and dark the other 355. As a St. Louis restaurateur told me a couple of years back: "I am a five-minute walk from the stadium, and I am closed on Sunday. The games start at noon, so there's a very short window beforehand, and a lot of people tailgate. After the game, people tend to move on and go home, and the few people left are primarily intoxicated, loud people, which is not a prime business model."
The last paragraph about small window of opportunity is crap! There have been many times when a bunch of us go to a bar/restaurant before and after the game and places are packed! Please put the name of your establishment out there so I never go to it! Apparently you don't care to make money on Sundays! Oh and not all the people who tailgate are loud and drunk! Come out from under the rock your living under!
Posted by Pam W. on January 28, 2011 01:54 PM
The last paragraph about small window of opportunity is crap! There have been many times when a bunch of us go to a bar/restaurant before and after the game and places are packed! Please put the name of your establishment out there so I never go to it! Apparently you don't care to make money on Sundays! Oh and not all the people who tailgate are loud and drunk! Come out from under the rock your living under!
Posted by Pam W. on January 28, 2011 01:55 PM
The last paragraph about small window of opportunity is crap! There have been many times when a bunch of us go to a bar/restaurant before and after the game and places are packed! Please put the name of your establishment out there so I never go to it! Apparently you don't care to make money on Sundays! Oh and not all the people who tailgate are loud and drunk! Come out from under the rock your living under!
Posted by Pam W. on January 28, 2011 01:57 PM
Come out to California and leave the whining state of Minnesota to worry its sorry head off about how they'll manage to get on with their collapsed dome (a good crack house?), polluted ammo plant (an attractive trash heap?), and their broken economy (sans the income tax revenues from footballers with megabuck salaries and bonuses). Kick this woe-begotten, tin-earred state right in its pinched up behind and come out to where a roof is completely unnecessary to begin with.
Posted by Rich on January 28, 2011 07:05 PM
Build a new stadium and the rest will come and be successful. Bars, Hotels, restaurants, water slides, stores, a casino to fund it...all of it will be successful. Just build the damn thing already! As for the opinion that we need a roofed stadium for other events...we have one, it's called the "Dome". We can use the Dome for "Monster Truck" (Stupid), NCAA Basketball and the like and, yes, we can use an outdoor venue for the Vikings and all sorts of Spring, Summer, and Fall activities like concerts, soccer (yuck, but if it makes $ then it's all good)), or outdoor hockey in the winter.
Build it, I say, and build the bars & hotels and, rest assured, the rest will come. Now is the time to build something in the middle of no-where
when the cost is cheap and the construction industry is hungry.
P.S. Drunks are people too...and they spend a lot of money!
Build a new stadium and the rest will come and be successful. Bars, Hotels, restaurants, water slides, stores, a casino to fund it...all of it will be successful. Just build the damn thing already! As for the opinion that we need a roofed stadium for other events...we have one, it's called the "Dome". We can use the Dome for "Monster Truck" (Stupid), NCAA Basketball and the like and, yes, we can use an outdoor venue for the Vikings and all sorts of Spring, Summer, and Fall activities like concerts, soccer (yuck, but if it makes $ then it's all good)), or outdoor hockey in the winter.
Build it, I say, and build the bars & hotels and, rest assured, the rest will come. Now is the time to build something in the middle of no-where
when the cost is cheap and the construction industry is hungry.
P.S. Drunks are people too...and they spend a lot of money!
It's important to note that if this proposal goes through, it will most certainly lead to a Vikings Sales Tax in Ramsey County, home of the ammo plant.
It's also possible, as I note at www.novikingstax.com/ , that the team really wants to stay downtown but is using this proposal to extort a Vikings Sales Tax out of Hennepin County or Minneapolis city officials.
This insanity has to end!
Posted by Christopher David on January 29, 2011 12:26 AM
I agree with Christopher. Wilf wants a stadium downtown. He owns land there. As a Hennepin County resident, I'm all for Ramsey county doing what they want---as long as it's not pushed through like the Twins stadium.
As for development around the stadium, any stadium, one only has to look to the days of Met Stadium. I can remember exactly one hotel, the Thunderbird, that made any money. Everybody tailgated. And brought their own beer. And parked near the stadium. Wilf isn't going to let anyone build a bar/restaurant near his, err, I mean "The People's stadium." Do you think anyone is going to walk across the entire parking lot from a bar to go to the stadium?
Ask Bloomington if they wold trade Mall of America for a new Vikings stadium. Stadiums don't do anything but cost money.
Posted by john on January 29, 2011 03:47 AM
The Vikings will be announcing they are leaving deplorable Minneapolis on Tuesday.
Los Angeles here we come!!
Posted by Mary Tyler Moore on January 30, 2011 02:17 PM
The Vikings have about as much of a chance of leaving Minnesota on Tuesday as Barack Obama has of becoming a saint and undoing the terrible things he did so far as President.
Posted by Jessy S. on January 30, 2011 06:16 PM