Real S.L. is wooed by Utah County

(by Leigh Dethman, Kersten Swinyard and Jared Page desnews.com 7-13-06)

Real Salt Lake owner Dave Checketts has more options than he has time.

The soccer team's contract with the University of Utah to use Rice-Eccles Stadium is up after its 2007 season, and if construction on a new stadium doesn't start somewhere by the end of August, Real Salt Lake has no home.

Now Utah County wants to play, and investors have dangled free land to lure the team south to the old Geneva Steel site.

"We've got to take a deep breath and look at all of our alternatives and decide what to do," Checketts said Thursday. "There's going to be a lot of things coming out of the woodwork here."

On Tuesday, after the Salt Lake County Council rejected Sandy's idea of using $30 million in hotel taxes to help build the stadium, the alternatives for a new Real home were Salt Lake City, the Utah State Fairpark, an out-of-state location and now, Utah County.

Then on Wednesday, Anderson Geneva, owner of the Geneva Steel property, called Checketts to propose the stadium as an anchor to a 1,700-acre mixed-use development in Vineyard.

Michael Hutchings, a partner in Anderson Geneva, said the development firm is willing to deed as much as 30 acres to Checketts at no cost. The company believes that handing over free land is worth it for the potential commercial development around a stadium, he said.

The former site of Geneva Steel, a World War II steel-production plant, is undergoing cleanup efforts that are expected to take another five years to complete. Portions of the site — including the proposed stadium area — are ready for development now, Hutchings said, although the project would still need to go through Vineyard's zoning process.

Anderson Geneva, an affiliate of Sandy-based Anderson Development LLC, has a Salt Lake County connection in House Speaker Greg Curtis. The Sandy Republican is a lawyer for Hutchings Baird & Jones law firm, and Hutchings is a partner in both the law firm and Anderson Development.

Curtis has said that he still solidly supports Sandy as the best site for a stadium. But Sandy Mayor Tom Dolan said Tuesday the project was "dead" in his city, and Curtis doesn't want another site to use hotel-tax money if Sandy doesn't.

Checketts has said from the beginning that he wants a public-private partnership to build the stadium, but Thursday he said that he might try to build exclusively with private money — although he acknowledged that option could be nearly impossible. Without public funding, the Utah County location is more tantalizing with its offer of free land.

If Checketts can't find a way to build a stadium in Utah, he said he will not move the team to another state. Investors and local officials in both Rochester, N.Y., and St. Louis have contacted Major League Soccer Commissioner Don Garber about the possibility of buying Real Salt Lake and moving the team.

But Checketts said the team will first consider Utah options.

Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson has resurrected last year's plan to build the stadium at the Utah State Fairpark, calling for the state to lease the Fairpark land to the team for decades while allowing for adjacent development.

Curtis, however, has said repeatedly that the stadium isn't a state problem. He doesn't want to ask "taxpayers across the state from Logan to St. George to subsidize economic development in Salt Lake County."

Several members of the Salt Lake County Council don't want the team to switch locations at all, at least not for another year.

Councilwoman Jenny Wilson wants the team to stay at Rice-Eccles and thinks the county should give the U. $2 million to make it happen, either through lower rent or stadium enhancements.

The university used a tax-exempt bond to expand Rice-Eccles for the 2002 Winter Games, and if Real stayed too long, the U. would risk losing its tax-exempt status on the bond, because the profits would go beyond a 10-percent revenue limit for nonuniversity events. If the county helped pay off that bond, the team could stay there longer and earn the community's trust to invest public funding, Wilson said.

But Checketts said, "the University of Utah is not an alternative — period. There is no scenario where we can continue playing there."

Real CEO Dean Howes said the team would rather focus on finding a way to build a new stadium, and it would continue to lose money if it stayed at Rice-Eccles. With the one-month deadline, Sandy seems to be the best option, Howes said, because the team already purchased land and has architectural plans ready.

That ownership gives Sandy a jump on building, but without the county's financial support, the plan is stalled.

Meanwhile, several Salt Lake City Council members met for a brainstorming session Thursday to generate ideas about a downtown option. But Councilman Eric Jergensen said they still recognize that it's up to Real to decide on the best location for a stadium.

A year ago, Salt Lake City floated Block 22, the 10 acres between 600 and 700 South and Main Street and West Temple. The block has several different property owners, but the largest — Earl Holding's Sinclair Companies — has little interest in a stadium now, said Clint Ensign, the senior vice president.

"If Real continues to seek subsidies the size of that proposed in Sandy, I cannot recommend to company officials that we offer the downtown land for the stadium," Ensign said. "The amount of subsidies that Real has requested relative to the cost of the stadium itself has been, in my opinion, excessive."