Sandy to unveil its Real plan

(by Amelia Nielson-Stowell desnews.com 6-27-06)

Sandy officials will finally reveal their top-secret funding plan for the Real Salt Lake soccer stadium today.

Both Salt Lake County and Real team leaders are still in the dark about what the details may be but will hear new numbers when they are presented to the Salt Lake County Council.

Various funding options have been floated since the state Legislature approved two crucial bills during the 2006 session that allowed public dollars to flow toward infrastructure costs on the stadium site in Sandy. But according to Sandy Mayor Tom Dolan, those numbers have been revisited, rehashed and renewed. And city officials have so far been mum on the new dollar amounts.

"Tuesday is only the first of what I think will be five or six significant steps that will have to be done before Real would even be able to break ground," said Randy Sant, Sandy's economic-development director. "But it is the most critical."

Sandy is pitching its plan almost a week after Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson sent out his proposal for a stadium site to state and county leaders. The capital-city mayor wants Real to stay in the city that bears its name. He proposed giving Real triple the acreage of the Sandy-stadium site by offering the Utah State Fairpark, for half the hotel-tax dollars Real had proposed using for the Sandy location.

Real wanted the county to bond for $35 million of hotel-tax money. But the county would have paid $87.5 million over the life of the loan in interest payments, so county Mayor Peter Corroon rejected the option in May.

Team owner Dave Checketts announced last October that Sandy would be the site for the 22-acre stadium and an adjoining hotel and broadcast studio. The team purchased the land shortly after that.

Checketts has not made a public statement concerning Anderson's proposal, and team officials have said little about his plan.

Team staff on Friday sent an e-mail to soccer supporters, asking them to contact their council representative and to attend the Tuesday council meeting donned in Real gear.

"We need to let the council know that there are thousands of people who believe strongly that we should support soccer in Utah and help keep professional soccer here for good, just as we have provided public funding for infrastructure for almost every other major Utah project," the e-mail read.

Despite denying the amount of public funding Real wanted, county officials have actively pursued keeping the team in Utah.

After Corroon denied funding for the Sandy plan in May, county officials informally contacted the mayors of Salt Lake City and Murray, hoping to find another, cheaper piece of land for Real. A year ago, the three cities had been engaged in a bidding game for a soccer-stadium site.

Murray had previously been hoping the Fireclay district, the city's 97-acre redevelopment project, was an ideal site for the team. But Mayor Dan Snarr said last week, "We're out of the soccer business," as the land has already been sold for a transit-oriented development.

Sandy's plan consists of using a community-development-area (CDA) money, available through new Redevelopment Agency (RDA) legislation, to pay for infrastructure costs around the site and to give an additional lump sum of money up front to account for the debt-service gap. Original estimates put the community-development dollars at $10 million. County sources earlier this month told the Deseret Morning News that the debt-service gap amount was $6 million. But Dolan in recent days has said the numbers have changed.

The community-development-area money is the only option under the revamped law that would allow redevelopment-agency dollars to be used for entertainment venues like a soccer stadium. Redevelopment agencies allow various taxing entities to forgo their share of property dollars for a length of time so that the money can be diverted into city-redevelopment projects.

A community-development agency uses only the city and county's cut of property taxes. Other taxing entities, like the local school district, can also opt in.

Real's current 136-acre parcel for the stadium, at 9400 South State, is an empty field that needs improvements such as sewer lines and sidewalks. Sant said the public money would go for those costs.

"Somehow, people have a misconception that we're using public funds to build the soccer stadium," Sant said. "There is not one dollar being used to build a soccer stadium. It's being used to build the infrastructure. Our feeling is Real has the responsibility of building the stadium."

Sant refers to the city's contribution as "seed money" to spur economic development in the acres surrounding the stadium. He would not elaborate on whether Sandy's plan accounts for long-term financing or a city or county bond. But, he added, "I think when our proposal has been released, no one will be surprised."