Warning from Minneapolis: All That Glitters Isn’t Gold

MINNEAPOLIS, MN – It is the best in the NFL, if you ask the Minnesota Vikings. They’ll tell you the $1.1 billion US Bank Stadium was designed to benefit the fans.

“We’ve got the seats and suites that are closest to action than any in the NFL,” says Lester Bagley, who handles public affairs for the Vikings. More than 66,000 seats and 131 suites to be exact. More than 12,000 square feet of videoboard. 2,500 premium parking spaces. A clear roof and pivoting glass doors that make it, the Vikings say, an indoor / outdoor stadium, and more, all on display for the world to see during Super Bowl 52, with a
projected $407 million economic impact on the area.

Fans outside the stadium describe it as: “Awesome, pretty cool!” And, “Amazing, architectural wonder. Very impressive.” And, “It’s just wonderful, I love it, I love inside.” And, “Stunning. Gorgeous.”

Worth it?

“Yes.”

US Bank Stadium has plenty of bells and whistles, and for a billion dollars, it should. But one Minneapolis city councilman has a warning for Charlotte and its leaders, that when it comes to new NFL stadiums, all that glitters is not gold.

“Every year we look at our budget, and we have debt service on the investment we made in the stadium. So we can’t make the investment we wanna make in affordable housing. I still have to questions about whether it was a good investment,” says city council member Steve Fletcher. He wasn’t on council when the stadium project was approved and says if he was, he wouldn’t have voted for it.

Fletcher says public dollars should be used to solve public problems. He says, “Like poverty, homelessness, public education.”

Public money was used to fund about half of the $1.1 billion construction price tag.

But Fletcher warns Charlotte to be wary of ongoing costs to keep a new stadium up to date and meeting needs. Fletcher says there was one benefit: “If you’re thinking about building a stadium in Charlotte, one of things we did really well, is because we made a public investment, we could put some strings on that. We could say, ‘you need to hire local contractors, you need to hire predominantly minority contractors who don’t always get access to this work.'”

Fletcher says strong hiring targets brought workers, especially workers of color, into the middle class in Minneapolis.

But: the city council that voted to build a new stadium was left looking for work. Fletcher says, “Almost everybody who cast a vote for it, lost their seat.”

15 year minneapolis resident Karl Bakken points right to that pressure that cities feel to keep sports franchises in town: “There’s always another city willing to do it, look what they’re doing for Amazon.”

As for his feelings about US Bank Stadium: well, it’s complicated. Bakken says, “I guess I’m more of a sports fan, so I was happy we got all these things, but I do recognize how it’s not fair that cities just have to kind of fold over and do whatever they have to to keep teams.”

Carolina Panthers linebacker Luke Kuechly tells WCCB News anchor Morgan Fogarty he likes playing on grass, outside, at Bank of America Stadium just fine. He talked with her in Minneapolis, just before his appearance on The Dan Patrick Show. “I enjoy our stadium, a lot. I think they’ve done a great job, renovating it with the jumbotron, and the ribbon boards, and they’ve done a lot of stuff I probably don’t even know about.”

But if new Panthers owners mean new Panthers stadium, the man who designed the Vikings new home is up for the challenge. “Panthers fans are different from Vikings fans, different from Steelers, Cowboys, Patriots fans, and the stadium should reflect that. It should reflect the state, it should reflect the people of Charlotte, it should reflect the city,” says HKS, Inc. principal architect Mark Williams.

Fogarty caught up with Williams as he landed at the Minneapolis airport, for the Super Bowl. She asked if any potential Panther’s buyers have contacted his firm about designing a new stadium. He said “not specifically,” but that he’d be happy to help. “That new stadium, you would walk in there and say ‘this is us. This is our home, and this is where the next 30 years of memories are gonna happen, is in this stadium.'”

Another quick note: new information out Tuesday night shows restaurants in the Minneapolis area are reporting losing money the week of the Super Bowl. The Vikings’ new stadium replaced the 31-year-old Metrodome. They say the new one took 16 years from start to finish: 12 years to get it through the legislature, and four to design and build it.