The Rams counterproposal to the St. Louis Convention and Visitors Commission became public on Monday, the proposed renovation includes a sliding roof, tearing down the eastern part of the building and installing an additional 6,000 seats in order to make the facility first tier. According to Matthew Hathaway of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Rams' proposal would cost more than $700 million, compared to the CVC's $124 million proposal, said Jeff Rainford, Mayor Francis Slay's chief of staff and the construction involved would cost some big downtown conventions, bleeding an additional $500 million from the local economy, he said. Marc Ganis, a sports consultant who helped negotiate the lease in the 1990s for the Rams, said the plan unveiled Monday comes as close as possible to satisfying the first-tier language without calling for a new facility. "This appears to be a logical, feasible plan that's meant to get a positive result," said Ganis, president of the Chicago-based SportsCorp, a consulting firm. "This isn't a pie-in-the-sky plan designed to get to an impasse ... It looks to me like a sincere effort to get a deal done." Ganis, who said he has no current business relationship with the Rams or the CVC, said the team's plan is well-suited to the Dome's location. It's not a cookie-cutter plan, he said, and it would create "an iconic facility" for far less than the cost of a new one. "A new stadium is going to cost well over $1 billion," he said. "This looks like it would be roughly half of what a new stadium would cost." "My guess is Mr. Kroenke told his people to design a top-tier stadium," Rainford said. "But you can't look at this and draw the conclusion that he's flipping the bird to St. Louis and he is moving to Los Angeles." Source: The Redzone
$700 just for a renovation/expansion? jesus, why not spend a few extra bucks and just build a completely new structure?
