Garber: We’ll sell like heck to get investors interested in St. Louis.
MLS Commissioner Don Garber told me a little while ago that the league will continue to try to steer investors toward Jeff Cooper in an effort to put a team in St. Louis and that having now solidified itself on the West Coast as well as the Northeast, the next area the league wanted to strengthen was the Midwest. “We are hopeful we can work with Jeff to find investors to help bring his application to point where it meets what we’re looking for,” Garber said. “We want a team in St. Louis.”Garber said he “felt strongly” that the Soccer Park site would make it easier for Cooper to get investors for the team and the size of the investment group remained the main obstacle to a team. Cooper agreed that the almost-Fenton site would help get investors as well, though it will take several months to determine whether or not a soccer stadium could be built on the site that occasionally floods.
Garber said he and league president Mark Abbott will “sell like heck to get investors interested in the market” and he also preached patience, saying that the league first spoke with Vancouver investor Jeff Mallett almost 10 years ago.
The timeline for adding the next teams hasn’t been set yet. The league could add two teams in 2012, but when they would be named, when bidders would need to submit applications and what the expansion fee would be hasn’t been determined yet. Cooper told me he felt a need to act very quickly before other cities entered into the picture. Right now, St. Louis and Ottawa are the only candidates out there. Miami isn’t going to figure into the picture for a while, and Atlanta remains very hazy. But there’s also Montreal and the possibility of a second New York team. On the East Coast, the league doesn’t have a city south of Washington, D.C., but with Miami out of the running, having just one team down there may be less appealing. But my MLS tea leaf reading is spotty at best.
So to summarize: League still wants St. Louis, Cooper needs more investors, league is working to help Cooper get investors, Soccer Park site and A-B involvement should help. League could add teams in 2012.
Don Garber continues to sell the dream. He has used ST. Louis for the last 2-3 years.
Tom, did you ask him about the PHilly situation? My understanding is that there are some ‘issues’ with them getting a stadium.
Did you ask him why HD Network pulled out of the game/week?
Did you ask him why the league has lost nearly a half a billion dollars since inception?
Though Garber is not the original commish. This league is just a shadow of what it was.
AB involvement? All InBev did was get rid of an asset they had no reason to keep around. I love how you are trying to still sell that fantasy.
Steve, I can understand your frustration, and Garber has always praised every expansion bid at some point, but to say MLS is somehow less now than it ever was is complete nonsense. It has indeed lost MILLIONS of bucks over the years and is only now turned a big corner towards profitability. Do you know that at one point THREE groups controlled every team in a ten team league, that MLS contracted back to 12 clubs around 2000 because the Florida franchises were not making it? And that the turnaround happened under Garber’s watch? Now, every club has an indivisual ownership group except Columbus and Dallas which are owned by the Hunt family, one of the groups that kept the dream alive when many thought MLS would fold. New stadiums designed for the game are popping up all over the league, just like the deal Cooper has outside of St Louis. If Cooper has lacked a big bucks partner to help offset start up costs, so be it, he has time now to right the ship and get it done. Good luck! StLouis will make it to MLS.
I meant to say MLS dropped FROM 12 teams back down to 10 during its darkest hour. The league aint perfect, but it is on the rise, and when it reaches possibly 20-24 clubs StL will be a part of the mix.
I call BS. We’ve heard the same thing now over and over again. Don’t worry St. Louis you’re next. Cooper is being used to drive interest in other cities. I thought we were a lock after the Collinsville vote? Bring on the Lions USL team. I’m tired of wasting my time waiting for MSL to come to St. Louis.
Sorry, Mr. Garber. I could well be dead in 10 years. I’m tired of being patient. I bought that line last time and I won’t do it again.
Soccer Park site. Well, how do you move quickly? You have to do a feasibility study. Then you have to do an environmental impact study. You have draw up completely different stadium plans than you had at Collinsville. You have to figure out some way to get around the flooding and then correct that situation. You have to figure out some way to get around the highway access problem and correct that situation. Then you have to get the governmental backing like you had in Collinsville to make this all happen, which may be the biggest hurdle of them all. Basically, you’re farther back than square 1. You’re at square 0.
Montreal and New York will be the next two teams, IMO. There is a better chance of those two cities solving their problems than there is St. Louis solving their problems.
Again, I appreciate your efforts, Tom! Good work on the story! I do hope we eventually get a team, but I’m not holding out much hope.
Also, knowing that development in Collinsville might not still be around for a 2012 expansion, why didn’t Garber “sell like heck to get investors interested in St. Louis” before now?
Its all about the benjamins…and our investors do not have enough. Why resubmit an expansion application when all the ducks are not in order. Let’s forget about this until Mr. Deep Pockets comes on board.
By the way, Soccer Park as a stadium site, laughable. No parking, floods twice a year, not big enough, never will be first class. It would be a nice youth soccer center, but that’s all.
kc put it best above: we’re back at square 0. Figuring out how to cram a stadium, parking, and highway access into a little scrap of floodplain will take years, if it’s even possible. And there’s no chance Fenton or St. Louis County or any other public entity is going to pony up any cash for any of it, which just makes the capital shortage that much more of a problem.
The Collinsville stadium was the major thing we had in our favor. If it’s out the window, St. Louis is now way behind Atlanta, Miami, Montreal, Ottawa, etc. At least those cities have billionaires backing the bids.
If St. Louis ever mounts a serious bid for MLS again, it will be so far in the future, and in such radically altered form, that it’s impossible to even speculate on right now. In the meantime, it’d be nice to have USL-1, at least.
Enormous thanks to Jeff Cooper for the time, energy, and expense he put into this. And thanks, Tom, for covering it so well. It was a nice dream, wasn’t it?
Maverick, I think you hit the nail on the head. All this time that Cooper has been working to get a team in St. Louis - MLS has not. Apparently, we were not a priority. Hopefully, now we are and this is why MLS is now working on our side. I’m willing to give them the shot.