Dayton: Vikings Would Be L.A. Bound Without New Stadium
ST. PAUL, Minn. (WCCO) -- Governor Mark Dayton said Wednesday that the Minnesota Vikings would be moving to Los Angeles if the state had not built a new stadium.
The Governor's comments come as the new downtown Minneapolis facility is 90 percent completed. On Tuesday, the Vikings led a tour of the state-of-the-art U.S. Bank Stadium six months before the team plays its first preseason game there.
Gov. Dayton strongly defended the $1 billion, publicly-funded stadium and why Minnesota was right to build it.
"It's a phenomenal success story," said Dayton, a Democrat, who said without it, the Vikings would be leaving now.
"Yes. Absolutely," he said. "And we were told that absolutely by the Commissioner."
In January, NFL owners approved a plan to move the St. Louis Rams to Los Angeles.
Without U.S. Bank Stadium, Dayton said it would be the Vikings instead.
"They weren't going to sign a renewal lease at the Metrodome. So they would have been without a lease. They would have been without a reliable stadium whose roof was falling down," Dayton said.
The stadium debate divided Minnesota for a decade.
Dayton says it has already generated $1.5 billion in new development around the facility, more than the $1 billion price tag of the stadium itself.
"This transformation of that whole part of Minneapolis that was just languishing and was increasingly dilapidated, and had no other prospects for the kind of resurgence that is now underway," he said.
But not everything about the stadium is good, Dayton said.
If he had it to do over, Dayton says he would not have allowed the Vikings to charge thousands of dollars for Personal Seat Licenses, which he once said he didn't know was in the stadium bill.
