February 22, 2011
Mondale floats Vikes stadium on newspaper land
As David Brauer of MinnPost puts it, "Whoa, Nellie — get ready for the mother of all journalistic conflicts of interest!" Minnesota state stadium chief Ted Mondale has found another possible Vikings stadium site, and, well, take it away, Minneapolis Star Tribune:
The head of the Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission on Tuesday said there's a fifth option for a Vikings stadium — the Star Tribune land next to the Metrodome.
It's an option that has been around for a while, but Ted Mondale's comments to reporters at a commercial real estate forum in Bloomington was the first public confirmation in the latest round of new stadium chatter.
The idea would be to buy the Star Tribune land, knock down the buildings and leave the Metrodome standing to have two facilities and not lose revenue, Mondale said.
"I think it's definitely a potential option that the Vikings or the public would buy that site," he said.
Gotta love that "Vikings or the public" — you know, somebody. No firm word on how much buying the site would run, though the Star Trib reports that the Vikings offered $45 million for at least part of the land in 2007 before backing off.
Brauer notes that the paper doesn't really need all its downtown property, after the massive downsizing that jettisoned much of the editorial staff a few years back, leading to the journalistic vacuum and reporting labor glut that helped create MinnPost. All we need now is for MinnPost to move into the vacated Metrodome once the Vikes leave, and the circle will be complete...
What you may not have read was the part in a subsequent post where Mondale told Brauer that the team wants $40 million from the public if they have to play in the smaller TCF Bank Stadium on the U of M campus during stadium construction. So for this reason, morons such as Mondale may go for the "spend $45 million for more land" idea. Meanwhile, Mondale is also talking about using another site on the other end of Downtown, near Target Center and Target Field, to make "a new downtown" of stadiums. Unfortunately, to use this site, they'd need to move businesses, a homeless shelter, and a popular farmer's market. But if the wealthy freeloaders want it, the corrupt bums will put it up... www.novikingstax.com...
Posted by Chris David on February 24, 2011 03:00 AM