Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Real Salt Lake Stadium Frustrations

You may have not heard about it with all the chatter about Freddy Adu, the draft, David Beckham, David Beckham, David Beckham and FCD's talks to sign Edgar Davids but the stadium situation for Real Salt Lake is not going well. The state of the mood of many RSL fans is likely on the same level as Are You Loyal?. A very brief summary of the current situation goes like this. The team has a limited amount of time to play at it's current home, Rice-Eccles stadium at the University of Utah. The situation for building a new stadium seemed so-so with no clear sites in Salt Lake City proper panning out. Sandy, a city of @100,000 that's a southern suburb of SLC. The state legislature passed a law allowing counties to use a relatively benign hotel tax to finance projects like the prosed RSL SSS. The initial vote by the Salt Lake County board (SLC is in Salt Lake County but so is Sandy, Murray and some other cities) didn't pass including a lack of support by the county mayor Peter Corroon who is a RSL season ticket holder. There was a revised proposal which was thought would pass once the November elections passed. But it hasn't and it's not looking like a dead deal with now new deals on the horizon. What this means for the franchise isn't definite. There are rumors of the owners moving the team to St. Louis or Phoenix. There is the possibility that the group redeveloping the old Geneva Steelworks site in Provo could buy the team and build a stadium as part of it's huge in-fill project. And just maybe a 11th hour deal will emerge for Sandy. What we do know is things look worse than they did for the team ago despite great attendance in it's 2nd year and landing one of the most promising talents in American soccer, Freddy Adu.

1 comment:

space said...

it's the new 60-90 days

have fun with it