Vikings gear up for stadium lobby

Team VP Lester Bagley says it’s all about job creation

Stop us if you’ve heard this one before, but the Vikings want a new stadium. It’s been four years since an intensive 2006 lobbying effort by the team to get a deal done for a site in Anoka County crashed and burned. Since then, the team has been relatively quiet at the Capitol.

That will change this session. While Brett Favre brought interest in the team on the field to an all-time high, things were more problematic elsewhere.

Polls have shown a majority of Minnesotans don’t want to fund a new stadium. All levels of government are scraping by. And the Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission, which controls the Metrodome, asked the Vikings to sign a lease extension beyond 2012, the last year the team is slated to play in the dome, to the tune of $4 million a year.

“That was viewed by team ownership as a hostile act,” says Lester Bagley, the team’s vice president for public affairs and stadium development. Bagley is a familiar face around the Capitol, having been a lobbyist since 1995 (for the last five years as an employee of the team).

To hear him tell it, the Vikings will add a new wrinkle in trying to get the state to fork over some money: job creation and economic stimulus.

While construction costs and interest rates are down, the total price tag is $650 million for a 64,000-seat, open-air facility, $870 million for one with a retractable roof. Bagley says that making a stadium happen would require funding from the state of $29 million to $42 million a year over 30 years, with the final tab depending on whether there’s a retractable roof or not.

Fat chance? Bagley is undeterred. We caught up with him at the Minneapolis Club on Tuesday, two days before Gov. Tim Pawlenty floated the notion of devoting some Minnesota Lottery revenue to a new football stadium.

Capitol Report: I ask this only half-jokingly: Are we going to see Brett Favre at the Capitol this session?

Lester Bagley: [Laughs] I’d love that. I hope we see Brett Favre in a Vikings jersey next year. At this point, it’s a 50-50 proposition.

But he’s done an awful lot in one year for the organization in bringing the team together and mobilizing our fan base. The Brett Favre effect, or Brett Favre factor, on our stadium discussions might bring …

CR: That’s why I say only half-jokingly, is there a scenario where you might send Favre or anybody else over there, player-wise?

Bagley: I don’t know. The Twins had Kirby Puckett and Kent Hrbek over and they testified on the Twins bill, and that wasn’t a very effective way to move the discussion forward.

I think what these last few months have done is remind our community, our legislators and our fans how important this team is to Minnesota. Part of the state, part of the fabric. So it’s conceivable that we might ask a couple of our guys to come to St. Paul.

CR: Is this an indication of your general angle on approaching lawmakers this legislative session - the vitality of the team to the region?

Bagley: Generally, our case is how important our team is to the quality of life.

Just our average TV audience, for example. We have about 5 million people in the state, and half of those people in the state were watching - or listening to or attending or following on the internet - the Minnesota Vikings. And there’s never been more people following the Vikings than there are today.

CR: Having said that, polls show that most Minnesotans are opposed to paying for a new Vikings stadium. And, frankly, you’ve got lawmakers that go out on a limb and maybe don’t make it back next election cycle.

Bagley: Well, they said that about the Twins. The Twins bill passed. When the thing opens, everybody will be cheering. And the fact is, no one lost their re-election race because they voted for the Twins bill.

You can’t stick your finger in the air and ask how people feel about funding for a Vikings stadium. If this was the way we did business at the Capitol, we would have never built the light-rail line, we would have never built the Guthrie, we would have never built the convention center, and we would have never built the Twins ballpark.

The real question is, are the Vikings worth saving? Is it worth finding a public-private partnership, just like 28 other NFL cities since 1992?  Is it important to have the NFL in Minnesota?

CR: What’s wrong with the Metrodome and the Metrodome site? I mean, you have the Mall of America naming rights deal, it was built for football, and now there’s a new revenue stream. What’s the problem?

Bagley: Right. The Mall of America Field was a great deal, and thank God they stepped up for naming rights, and for a modest fee, because they are good business partners. But with that deal, we are still at the bottom of the NFL for revenue. The model of the Metrodome does not work any longer. It’s the smallest stadium in the NFL, [in] square footage. It’s less than a million square feet. It’s the second-oldest without a renovation, and the footprint is too small. There’s not enough to generate revenue. So, what we’ve done, essentially, is leave the most dysfunctional facility to the state’s most popular team.

CR: Is the Metrodome site out?

Bagley: Not necessarily. The Metrodome site provides tremendous advantages as far as infrastructure. Roads, bridges and utilities to get people in and out to serve a 64,000-person stadium. But there’s also a challenge as far as political support …

CR: Don’t you mean financial support? The county and the city are tapped out as far as stadiums are concerned.

Bagley: Both. If you take a look at the votes for the Twins deal, Minneapolis was essentially handed a sports facility, and a lot of the legislators from Minneapolis voted against it.

But, my point is, the Metrodome site has tremendous advantages, but there might be other suburban sites that have other advantages - leadership, financial support, and even the possibility of parking and acreage. So there are other sites that people have brought forward to us.

The fallout we had with the sports commission is what invited the suburban sites to come in.

CR: What sites are in play?

Bagley: I’d rather let the local communities come forward on their own. I don’t want to speak for anybody. There are a number of them. We have one chance to do this, and we feel like we owe it to the state to exhaust every opportunity and do it right.

CR: Anything to the buzz about the Anoka County plan being back on?

Bagley: No. We have not heard from them.

CR: Who are allies at the Capitol?

Bagley: I don’t want to speak for anybody there either. I think there’s a lot of good work going on right now behind the scenes. We’ve got a pretty decent core group of folks in each of the four caucuses, Democrats and Republicans. There’s a discussion going on, and the business community is engaged, the building trades and labor are engaged. Elected officials [and] the governor’s office are in dialogue, so there’s some good discussion going on. But I don’t want to call anybody out right now.

Why 2010 makes sense: Interest rates are at a 20-year low, construction costs are down, there’s a tremendous desire to create jobs. And here’s a chance to create jobs. It’s the largest economic stimulus proposal out there. They’re talking about jobs, so why shouldn’t this issue be on the table as far as job creation and economic stimulus? The Vikings pay approximately $20 million a year in taxes. You can’t dispute that without the Vikings, there’d be a $20 million hole in the budget they’d have to fill.

CR: It’s still going to look bad, politically, in this economic situation.

Bagley: There are creative ideas out there. What does it hurt to talk about it?

That’s our expectation for this session. That there be some dialogue, some progress, and we end up in a position to get it resolved. To sweep it under the rug, to say it’s not a priority, puts the whole situation at risk.

CR: Pawlenty has never wavered on  state money for stadiums, at least as far as the Twins and Vikings are concerned. What makes you think you can change his mind now?

Bagley: We’re having dialogue with the governor’s office, and, again, they can speak for themselves, but they’re looking at how things have been done in other communities.

CR: What’s the total price tag as it stands today? What are the Wilfs and the team willing to chip in, and what’s the gap to be closed there?

Bagley: The way we should look at it is, the Viking contribution should be calculated on what one-third of an NFL stadium should cost: $216 million. So, back that out from an open-air stadium or from a retractable roof stadium. What you’re looking at is a gap of $430 [million] to $650 [million].

If you bond this thing, the numbers are between $29 million and $42 million a year for 30 years. That difference depends on the roof.

CR: Does the team have a preference on open-air or retractable roof?

Bagley: We don’t need a roof for 10 football games. Perhaps the roof should be looked at as a state benefit. And therefore we should look for state revenue to pay for the roof. You could argue that having a roof allows a facility to be used year-around for state high school athletic events.

We could also benefit by NCAA basketball, and a Super Bowl, which we would get if we get this problem solved. But all of those benefits don’t accrue to the Vikings. They accrue to the state of Minnesota, and they should pay for it.

We would control our revenue. We would pay rent and we would like the revenues from our games. Any other event, if it’s publicly owned, the public should benefit. Monster trucks, U2 concerts, whatever. That should go to the public.

CR: Can you say what kind of resources the team will put into the lobbying effort as far as personnel or financial?

Bagley: No. [Ownership] is investing in a team of seasoned professionals that can help us, because there’s 201 legislators, and there’s a lot of ground to cover. But we’ve got a story to tell, and we need some help to bring it forward.

We haven’t been over at the Capitol aggressively since 2006 and Anoka County. In ‘07 we oriented toward Minneapolis. In ‘08, there was a bridge collapse, which [made it] understandable that there was no stadium debate. Last year in ‘09, there was a significant economic downturn and budget challenge. There was no stadium debate, so it’s now down to 20 games left at the Metrodome.

So we don’t have a choice but to bring it forward. We can’t wait until lawmakers invite us over [to the Capitol], because they’ll never invite us. It’s got to be done collaboratively. But we’re down to the short rows, as they say on the farm.

One Response to “Vikings gear up for stadium lobby”

1. John L Says:
   February 8th, 2010 at 2:49 pm

   Great. I am all for job creation. Since the smae number of job will be crated whether Zig buys the stadium of the taxpayers do, my vote is to have the Vikngs buy it and pay property taxes on the site.