Minnesota paying Vikings owner to store his own construction dirt

access_time personNeil deMause

I’ve seen a lot of oddball hidden stadium subsidies, but this is a new one: The state of Minnesota is paying Vikings owner Zygi Wilf $90,000 to store the dirt from construction of his new stadium. Apparently the demolition of the Metrodome generated a big-ass pile of dirt, and rather than truck it offsite, the state decided to store it on neighboring parking lots owned by Wilf, in exchange paying his property taxes on the site for the duration of the dirt storage.

This isn’t a lot of money, but it still rankled some elected officials like state senator John Marty, who said, “In the big picture of things, yeah, it’s small potatoes. But, I mean, do we have to give [Wilf] everything the guy ever wants?” To be fair, though, who would pay for dirt storage is probably something that wasn’t addressed in the original stadium deal, and when the state approached Wilf to ask if he’d store his own damn dirt for his own damn stadium for free, he demanded some kind of payment for—

[Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority Michele] Kelm-Helgen acknowledged that, instead of asking whether the Wilfs would store the dirt for free, the stadium authority offered the tax deal.

*Sigh*.
 

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6 comments on “Minnesota paying Vikings owner to store his own construction dirt”

  1. Yes John Marty, you do have to give me everything I ever want. I’ve got the signed contracts with the state of Minnesota to prove it. Wake up to who your new plutocratic overlord is. It’s ME, capiche?

    I love the smell of public stadium cash in the morning!

  3. John Marty is one of the good guys in the legislature. Unfortunately there are only about 5 of them.

  4. So in exchange for not getting to use his land all he’s getting from the gov is basically “Don’t charge ME for it while you’re using it” and is almost certainly the cheapest and easiest deal the city/state/project could get both in terms of cost AND convenience…and Wilf is a jerk? Please.

  5. “So in exchange for not getting to use his land all he’s getting from the gov is basically “Don’t charge ME for it while you’re using it” and is almost certainly the cheapest and easiest deal the city/state/project could get both in terms of cost AND convenience…and Wilf is a jerk? Please.”

    So your contention is that a businessman getting hundreds of millions of dollars from the state for a project that benefits almost exclusively him and his co-owners should not provide use of his land to help with said project? I mean I realize why he wouldn’t WANT to do it for free. He is an amoral greedy sociopath. But the State/MSFC are being complete idiots to put up with it.

  6. “…all he’s getting from the gov is basically “Don’t charge ME for it while you’re using it”
    That, and a stadium.

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