Welp, looks like the owners of F.C. Cincinnati has figured out where they’re going to get their missing stadium money now that the city and county have topped out at $51 million:
The City of Cincinnati hopes to obtain $10 million from the state to help cover costs related to building the FC Cincinnati stadium, should the city be awarded a Major League Soccer team later this month…
The ask is among 43 Hamilton County projects totaling $64.6 million being vetted for a final list the region wants the state to fund. The soccer stadium project request is by the far the largest on the list, accounting for 15.5 percent of the total…
“These projects are very important to the community,” said Gary Lindgren, executive director of the Cincinnati Business Committee, which is coordinating with the Cincinnati Regional Business Committee and the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber of Commerce to present requests to the state.
I am admittedly somewhat confused who’s doing the asking here — a bunch of local business groups? the city of Cincinnati itself? the Cincinnati Enquirer doesn’t seem to make a distinction — but the point is that the United States’ multi-level system of government may come to a team’s subsidy rescue once again: If you don’t get what you want from one level of government in this country, you can always go ask a different one.
Any state subsidies won’t be decided until the new year, so presumably this won’t help sway MLS’s expansion decision later this month, but maybe they’ll figure “Enh, close enough, they’ll figure out somebody to pay that last $20 million or so, not our problem so long as we get out $150 million expansion check”? I mean, maybe — or maybe this will be good reason to bump Cincinnati’s bid to next year after all the funding is (presumably) nailed down. We’ll see in just a couple more weeks.