Who Should Pay for the Roof Over the Vikings' Heads?

A disagreement is brewing in Los Angeles over two developers' competing visions for a potential stadium that might help bring the NFL back to the country's second largest media market. In Miami, public officials and hoteliers are squaring off in a battle over the costs of a potential renovations to Sun Life Stadium, home of the Miami Dolphins. In Minneapolis, meanwhile, the wrangling over a potential replacement for the Metrodome has taken on a more traditional flavor, with the NFL's Vikings alternating demands with veiled threats, and a populace and legislature stuck having to decide whether the team's needs or the public's needs come first.

The collapse of the dome's roof in December has surprisingly had little to do with the arguments taking shape. If anything, the incident has brought the sides closer together on the need for a new venue. The question is what type to build. The Vikings have pledged to pay a third of a new stadium's construction cost, but have made it clear that another dome doesn't serve its interests, and that the team won't help pay for that portion of the project. "A roof does not provide any benefit to the Vikings," the team's vice president of public affairs and stadium development, Lester Bagley, told The Associated Press last week. "It also costs a couple hundred million dollars more in capital costs, in addition to the operating costs that are much higher for a covered facility."

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