Saints’ owners want a stadium upgrade.
Another sports ownership group in Minnesota is looking for public money to help pay the costs of a stadium renovation. This time it is Minor League Baseball’s St. Paul Saints’ owners and among the things the ownership group wants to add in a stadium renovation is a Ferris Wheel. The ownership group also needs to expand clubhouse and workout spaces to meet Major League Baseball’s standards for minor league facilities. A Ferris Wheel would cost around $9 million but could be used all year even if the temperature is around zero Fahrenheit in the winter. The St. Paul baseball ownership better grab its place in line as other Twin-Cities franchise owners want state money for their venues.
The National Football League’s Minnesota Vikings franchise ownership claims its nine-year-old stadium needs about $300 million in maintenance over the next 10 years. In St. Paul, the owners of the National Hockey League’s Minnesota Wild franchise want upgrades to the city’s 25-year-old arena. In Minneapolis, the new owners of the National Basketball Association’s Minnesota Timberwolves and the Women’s National Basketball Association’s Minnesota Lynx may be looking for a new arena. Minnesota politicians and business leaders in 1954 decided that the Minneapolis area needed to become a major league area despite having the best team in the struggling National Basketball Association and the best player, the Minneapolis Lakers and George Mikan, in town. The Minneapolis Lakers franchise owners never did get an arena and left town for Los Angeles in 1960. Minnesota taxpayers have footed the bill for two multiple purpose stadiums, a baseball stadium, a football stadium, a college football stadium, one arena in Bloomington and a bailout of a Minneapolis arena and two St. Paul arenas in the past 70 years but it is not enough. The stadium and arena game never ends in Minnesota.
Evan Weiner’s books are available at iTunes – https://books.apple.com/us/author/evan-weiner/id595575191
Evan can be reached at evan_weiner@hotmail.com
St. Paul stadium
