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November 23, 2009

Vikings threat watch: Metrodome lease offer is "punting"

Minnesota Vikings owner Zygi Wilf continued his war of words against the state stadium commission's offer to extend his team's Metrodome lease this weekend, declaring that the commission needs to "get engaged and find solutions and not sit back and be afraid to tackle this issue. ... To try to avoid the issue ... like the commission did, is really punting when they should be really engaged in trying to find the way to solve this issue." (Press reports didn't say whether Wilf also accused the commission of "running out the clock" with a "Hail Mary play" that "had no hope of beating the spread.")

Commission Chairman Roy Terwilliger retorted that the commission does too want to build a new stadium, but that "the reason [a lease extension] came up is that the feeling was that the timing was going to be difficult next year" in the Legislature to get anything done. The commission is scheduled to release its design for a $900 million stadium it's dubbed "Metrodome Next" (which would be built on the current dome site) on December 17.

To show the urgency of their needs, Vikings officials are going to take state legislators on a tour of the Metrodome and the Twins' new Target Field today, presumably to see for themselves how the new stadium is knee-deep in hundred-dollar bills that the old place lacks. Vikings stadium honcho Lester Bagley added that the team is less concerned about picking a site than in "determining how we're going to pay for it."

Wilf, meanwhile, touted Target Field and the University of Minnesota football stadium as precedents, saying: "I think everybody looking back realizes it was the right thing to do. Nobody is politicizing that decision once it's done, and I'm sure the same thing will happen once we build our stadium." Well, except for certain nobodies

COMMENTS

poor Vikings, they have been siphoning concession revenue from the other Dome tenants for 30 years, they were given stadium naming rights and they have not paid rent in 10 years.

Posted by john on November 23, 2009 04:57 PM

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