A St. Louis Rams fan holds a sign during a game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at the Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis on December 17, 2015. The Rams are playing their last home game of the season as rumors swirl that the Rams and owner Stan Kronke will move the club to Los Angeles at the end of the season. Photo by Bill Greenblatt/UPI
The St. Louis Board of Aldermen will approve a financing package for the $1.1 billion riverfront stadium in a vote scheduled for Friday afternoon after some last minute changes were made to the bill earlier this week.
The approval will come from the city’s proposal…what the city is willing to spend, but there are no guarantees they’ll get help from the NFL. Late Thursday, league Commissioner Roger Goodell made that clear in a letter to Governor Jay Nixon’s task force.
In the task force’s proposal, part of the funding for the new stadium would come from $250 million from the team’s owner. Dave Peacock, head of the task force, also said another $100 million would come from the NFL. Peacock was going off of information provided by some NFL owners.
However, Goodell responded saying the newest plan is “fundamentally inconsistent with the NFL’s program of stadium financing.”
Peacock at times must feel like he’s consistently coming up short on fourth and goal when he communicates with the NFL.
“We have received input from a lot of parties,” he told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “It has been challenging at times to determine what input we should follow. We just want to keep our football team. We have been trying to follow the process as best as we can determine it.”
St. Louis could be running out of time. A league vote is set for mid-January and if Nixon and his task force don’t get the financial assistance from the NFL, their stadium deal may never break ground.
