New plan for $200 million football stadium in St Louis

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New plan for $200 million football stadium in St Louis

A new MLS team includes plans to build a $200 million stadium downtown that would require millions of dollars in public funding.

By: AP | St. Louis | Published:November 19, 2016 5:41 pm

The NFL’s Rams are gone, and attention in St. Louis now turns to soccer with an ownership group pursuing a Major League Soccer expansion team. The effort includes plans to build a $200 million stadium downtown that would require millions of dollars in public funding.

The ownership group revealed Thursday is known as SC STL. Paul Edgerley, a partner at the investment firm VantEdge Partners, is lead owner and chairman. Among his partners is Dave Peacock, former president of Anheuser-Busch and a driving force behind the effort last year to build a $1 billion riverfront stadium for the Rams.

The football stadium plan died when the NFL in January approved Rams owner Stan Kroenke’s request to move the team to Los Angeles. Since the departure of football, efforts to secure an MLS team have escalated.

The MLS is already adding two new teams to expand to 24 by the end of the decade, and eventually plans to add four more, league spokesman Dan Courtemanche said. St. Louis is among eight markets that have publicly expressed interest in the four additional expansion slots, Courtemanche said. A timetable for when those cities would join the league has not been determined.

Commissioner Don Garber said in a statement that league officials have had “very productive” meetings with Edgerley and his partners.