The bill for funding a potential new Minnesota Vikings stadium has officially been introduced to the Minnesota State Legislature, and it has been panned quite a bit by the folks who have seen it. However, there's at least one person that seems to be happy with it, and that's Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton, who has been championing a Vikings' stadium solution for months now.
↵Dayton knows the potential effects of not getting a stadium deal done, too.
↵↵↵"It would just be a travesty. It’s also what makes us a big-league city. You and I can go back to when the Metrodome was built, that was controversial. [But] here you have had, for that public investment . . . two World Series; one Super Bowl; all the athletics, college, high school and amateur; and rollerblading, Rolling Stone concerts and monster truck matches; and all the other uses of that major downtown facility. [It's] been a phenomenal economic return. . . .
↵"[T]here’s a lot more use to this stadium than the Vikings. There’s a lot of jobs involved, all the benefits. It just would be very short-sighted to turn the other way. Now we have a budget. Yes I agree, that’s the No. 1 priority, but the Legislature is able to do more than one thing at a time, and to their credit, they do."
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Yes, the Vikings skipping down would, indeed, be a travesty. So, if I may, I'd like to offer a minor suggestion.
↵Maybe somebody. . .or, perhaps, a bunch of somebodies. . .should unjam their collective thumbs and do something about it. This is the final season of the Vikings' lease with the Metrodome, and they won't play there after this unless another venue is being built.
↵If something doesn't get passed very, very soon. . .well, there aren't many people that are going to be willing to listen to the excuses when the team skips town, and a lot of people that make up the current legislature are going to need to start updating their resumes.
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