Two Minnesota professional sports teams need new homes.
One just lost the NFC championship game and could end up seeking hundreds of millions in taxpayer assistance. The other charges $3 a beer and employs a pig to bring baseballs to home plate.
Through equal parts hubris and snark, the St. Paul Saints just might be the most famous minor league baseball team in America.
Maybe you remember the time they held a Love Boat theme night to poke fun at an infamous Minnesota Vikings scandal. Or the time they gave away a "bobblefoot" doll after then-Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho was cited for soliciting sex in an airport bathroom. Or "Randy Moss Hood Ornament Night" after the receiver's run-in — literally — with a traffic control officer.
But their home — the city-owned Midway Stadium — is a joke, too, and not in a good way.
So the Saints will be at the state Capitol today for some serious business — lobbying lawmakers for $25 million to help build a new field in St. Paul's Lowertown area.
"We've spent a lot of time trying to figure out what would make it fun, sexy and the first of its kind, which in our business is great to be able to do," Saints president and owner Mike Veeck said.
If approved, the 7,500-seat stadium would open in 2012. The Saints have committed to keeping concession prices unchanged, as well as assuming long-term capital maintenance of the park and using suite, naming-rights and parking revenue to help pay for it.
The Saints would kick in $10 million. The city would cover the rest, including cleanup of the site — the old Diamond Products building across from the St. Paul Farmer's Market. The total price tag could fall around $45 million.
The $25 million bonding request is a fraction of what the Vikings are likely to ask for, and Veeck jokes that he can't threaten to move the team. "Hey, we're going to Roseville!" he cracked.
Built in 1981, Midway Stadium is in bad shape. There's
The Saints "conference room" is a beat-up table in the umpires' changing room with a shower stall in the corner (too small, Veeck said, for some of the umps). The locker room has just two shower poles so the team showers in shifts after games. Public bathrooms are few, so the team uses portable toilets to alleviate the crowds.
"You can go to the bathroom and get a beer at the Xcel Center in six minutes, and return to your seat," Veeck said. "And that's what really has emphasized what happens here. The biggest problem from our standpoint is food. People get in line and aren't seen for 3 1/2 innings."
The city is pitching it as an economic development project, and it has the support of major employers such as Travelers, Ecolab and Securian. With light rail destined for one side of the proposed stadium, the rebuilding of the Lafayette Bridge on the other, and with new Lowertown restaurants providing signs of vitality, civic leaders hope the Saints can be an economic engine, doing for Lowertown what the Minnesota Wild did for the West Seventh Street area.
"The statistic that has the most impact for me is that the Saints will bring into Lowertown half the people that the Wild bring in, in half the time," said Susan Kimberly, interim president and CEO of the St. Paul Area Chamber of Commerce.
That was seconded by Veeck, who lives in downtown St. Paul.
"When I first got here in '91, you could shoot a cannon down Seventh Street, ride naked for three miles before someone noticed and you got arrested," he said. "And the change, what the Wild has done, is just tremendous."
It is also being pitched as a boon to amateur baseball.
Of the 160 events at Midway Stadium, just 50 are Saints games. The rest are mostly amateur baseball events, including Hamline University and American Legion games and the state high school baseball championship tournaments.
"That programming will stay and grow with a new stadium," said Wendy Underwood, a lobbyist for the city.
Amateur baseball enthusiasts such as Billy Peterson of Friends of St. Paul Baseball, who coached both Dave Winfield and Paul Molitor, are anxious for a new field.
And the request has drawn bipartisan support. The bill being heard today is sponsored by Sen. Ellen Anderson, DFL-St. Paul, but among the co-sponsors are Senate Minority Leader David Senjem, R-Rochester and Assistant Minority Leader Geoff Michel, R-Edina. A companion bill in the House is sponsored by Rep. Tim Mahoney, DFL-St. Paul.
"This is a community facility that serves people from all around the state. That's why there's so many legislators that understand, " Anderson said.
Whether the request makes the final cut remains to be seen. It wasn't on Gov. Tim Pawlenty's $685 million bonding proposal, but Democrats are putting together a $1 billion proposal that will be released within days. However, there are pending requests for more than double that amount.
