St. Louis Gets Rich Wish List From the Rams
The Rams, stepping up efforts to find a more profitable home, have sent St. Louis officials an ambitious wish list that includes not only all revenue from games to be played in a new domed stadium there but also payment of $30 million the team still owes for Anaheim Stadium improvements.
But St. Louis, which is trying to outbid Baltimore, Hartford, Conn.--and Orange County--for the Rams, likely could not satisfy all of the National Football League team’s desires.
“If this was a list of demands and not wishes, we’d never be able to do all this,” said Mac Scott, director of communications for the office of St. Louis County Executive George (Buzz) Westfall. “However, this is a list of wishes, things they’d want if they could have everything. It’s a place to begin negotiations.”
The letter, sent a week and a half ago, is one of the first concrete glimpses into what the Rams are looking for if they are to be lured from Southern California, where they have played since 1946.
In addition to the $30 million--which would pay off a debt incurred when Anaheim Stadium was expanded to accommodate the Rams’ move from Los Angeles in 1980--Scott said the team has also asked St. Louis to:
* Compensate the team for lost revenue if it was forced, because of an unresolved lease situation, to play the 1995 and ’96 seasons in Busch Stadium, which has 54,000 seats and no luxury suites, instead of the new 70,000-seat domed stadium under construction. Premium seating in the new stadium is expected to generate up to $12 million a year for the team.
* Pay an estimated $10 million in relocation fees to the NFL. When the Cardinals moved from St. Louis to Phoenix in 1988, they paid $6 million to $7 million as a penalty for removing Phoenix from the list of potential NFL expansion sites.
* Build a separate practice facility, at an estimated cost of $10 million to $15 million. The existing stadium lease calls for the city to build such a facility for a new NFL tenant.
* Give all new stadium revenue to the team. Under the current lease, a team would receive all concession, in-house advertising, luxury suite and club seat revenues, but it has not been determined who would receive single-game ticket revenue.
“I told (Ram Executive Vice President) John Shaw that we’re prepared for them to ask for the moon, and we’re prepared to give them the moon, but it depends on the size of the moon,” Westfall told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Shaw, reached at the Rams’ UC Irvine training camp, deferred comment to Heidi Sinclair of the Los Angeles-based Burson-Marsteller public relations firm, which has been hired to handle questions regarding a possible move. But Sinclair could not be reached Tuesday afternoon.
The Rams, unhappy with an outdated lease and a stadium that Shaw has called “economically obsolete,” in May invoked an escape clause that allows them to leave in early August, 1995.
The current lease calls for the Rams to pay rent of 60 cents per admission, not to exceed $400,000 a year, and give the city 7.5% of ticket revenue, 20% of luxury box revenue and about half of parking and concession revenue.
Hurt by declining attendance in its fourth consecutive losing season, the team made a profit of about $3.5 million in 1993, but Shaw said a substantial loss is projected this season.
The owner of baseball’s Baltimore Orioles, Peter Angelos, who is trying to purchase a minority interest in the Rams and move them to Baltimore, has made three trips to Los Angeles to meet with Shaw and Rams owner Georgia Frontiere.
A St. Louis delegation that included House Majority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) met with Shaw in June, and A. Searle Field, chief of staff for Connecticut Gov. Lowell P. Weicker Jr., visited Shaw in July.
Baltimore and St. Louis are considered the front-runners in the Rams derby. Though the Rams’ wish list is imposing, St. Louis officials are at least encouraged by the team’s apparent willingness to play in 29-year-old Busch Stadium for two years.
St. Louis’ NFL expansion effort last year and its current efforts to lure an existing team to relocate have been hampered by a lease dispute that could prevent a football team from playing in the new, $258-million stadium in 1995.
St. Louis beer distributor Jerry Clinton, who has had several meetings with Shaw, controls 30% of the lease and does not appear willing to turn over his share to FANS Inc. (Football At the New Stadium), a nonprofit group formed by Westfall and St. Louis Mayor Freeman Bosley Jr. FANS Inc. controls 65%. The remaining 5% is owned by two smaller investors.
Clinton at one point demanded $8 million for his share of the lease and has been quoted recently as saying it might be worth much more. But the lease dissolves in 1997, at which point it would revert to the city.
“It may be cheaper to compensate the Rams to play in Busch Stadium for two years, until Clinton’s hold on the lease expires, than it would be to pay off Clinton,” Scott said. “We’re not all on the same page on this deal, unfortunately.”
Meanwhile, Orange County continued Tuesday to expand its efforts to keep the Rams. Leigh Steinberg, co-chairman of the Save the Rams Task Force, said his group will put up 12 billboards, seven in Los Angeles County and five in Orange County, that say: “Keep Our Rams in Orange County.” Some 3,000 T-shirts with that slogan are also being produced.
Anaheim Mayor Tom Daly told the Save the Rams group that the Orange County region could lose about $36 million a year in annual sales and income if the team leaves. City officials culled their information from the economic impact reports of three other cities that have pro sports franchises.
Steinberg said Daly’s findings “go to show the real risk to Orange County of losing this team. There’s tangible economic consequences to the loss of the Rams.”
The group, which is also considering plans to renovate Anaheim Stadium, purchase a share of the team and renegotiate the stadium lease, said it will unveil its formal proposal to the team at the annual Rams booster luncheon on Aug. 19.
“I don’t think Orange County can match the financial offers of St. Louis and Baltimore,” said Jack Lindquist, former Disneyland president and co-chairman of the task force. “But we can come close enough so that a move wouldn’t look quite as good to the Rams.”
Times staff writers Matt Lait and Tracy Weber contributed to this report.
* ANAHEIM GETS MOVING: City Council takes first step toward improving stadium. B7
