Lawsuit Settled, Public Money in Hand: Arena Renovations Moves Forward in St. Louis

Sarah Fenske provides a post-mortem on a deal that allow taxpayer funding of a renovation of the Scottrade Center, home of the National Hockey League's St. Louis Blues.

"Faced with two principled stands against a giveaway of money for Scottrade Center that could cost St. Louis taxpayers $107 million, the Blues fought hard," writes Fenske.

Fenske's assessment of the situation is that development interests with aggressive lawyers run the city, and the article includes all the gory details of the lawsuits that overcame the opposition to deliver taxpayer funding to the project.

St. Louis has navigated a series of stadium proposal controversies in recent years. First there was the scramble to build a new NFL stadium in the failed effort to keep the National Football League's Rams in the city. Later, St. Louis voters rejected a soccer stadium proposal that would have relied in part on public financing. Still, some developers keep coming back to the well. In October, developers announced plans for a Ballpark Village that would rely on a $105 million bond offering by the St. Louis Industrial Development Authority.