Xcel Energy Center

[StandishGuy]

The $700+ million price tag seems so out of touch considering the current political reality and budget challenges. Are Roy Wilkins and the River Center even needed as venues in the metro right now, and the existing Xcel Energy Center seems in pretty nice shape. How could all this cost so much money? I feel so bad that downtown St. Paul is struggling right now, but is this investment gonna come close to making a difference relative to the high price tag?

[mplsjaromir]

Don’t forget the part where the city of St. Paul is expected to pay $158 million. I can’t say that it seems like a bad deal without a better understanding of St. Paul finances. I would love to see how this benefits St. Paul beyond ego.

[seanrichardryan]

'The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated'
-Downtown Saint Paul

[Emerson Uptowner]

Don’t forget the part where the city of St. Paul is expected to pay $158 million. I can’t say that it seems like a bad deal without a better understanding of St. Paul finances. I would love to see how this benefits St. Paul beyond ego.

Whats even money anymore? It costs $30 to eat at McDonald's.

[at40man]

$300 million could be deployed to help St Paul more effectively than a tourist attraction subsidy.

So... leave an empty vacant arena that was one of the best in the league empty?

And build a new arena for the Timberwolves and land the Wild in Saint Paul's original suburb of Minneapolis? With what money? That's pretty impractical. For all the ballyhoo about downtown St Paul -- what is the compelling case to move the Wild? All I'm seeing is "because Minneapolis" without further explanation, as if I should just accept the premise that we should concentrate everything in Minneapolis and pretend that St. Paul isn't more convenient for nearly half the metro.

Plus, St Paul has a lot more to lose than Minneapolis gains. Rather than throwing public largesse for yet another new arena, it would to be a better use of money to retrofit the Xcel for basketball when it comes time to deprecate Target Center.

It seemed clear to me that the Wild weren't interested in moving but needed a negotiation chip to make sure they get the improvements they wanted. Remember, much of the old Dayton's building nearby was retrofitted to be their new practice facility. They were excited about this due to the proximity of Xcel. (Meanwhile, there is an entirely vacant St Paul Athletic Club close to the Xcel that could easily use the gymnasium space for Timberwolves if we wanted to pursue what I view to be a more practical solution of improving the existing Xcel).

I suppose this is all theoretical at this point, since the Xcel will be getting upgraded, just more modestly. But this continual proposing of concentrating everything in Minneapolis and throwing in the towel on St Paul is like a slap in the face, under the guise of practicality but truly being anything but.

I should also note that I lived in downtown St Paul for many years. Lots of people who lived in my building had season tickets for the Wild, and lived there to be close. We also had 2 Wild players who lived in my building at the time. Saints were also a popular reason for people to live in the area. There is more nuanced effect of the Wild in downtown St Paul that many are not considering.

[MNdible]

-- what is the compelling case to move the Wild?

I'm not advocating for the move, but...

The case is twofold.

1. From a fiscal sanity point of view, there's no reason why a metro area our size should be subsidizing two 20,000 seat arenas that are busy trying to cannibalize each other every time a concert promoter comes to town. A downtown Minneapolis location is centrally located to the metros overall population, and is at the hub of the metro's transportation network.

2. Take a look at the Wild's season ticket holder base. You anecdotally reference that there are some people living in downtown St. Paul with season tickets, but I've been told that the bulk of their base is traveling from the southwest suburbs.

[Emerson Uptowner]

I am not sure if you are sports fans or are paying attention to what is going on but major leagues want one tenant arenas and stadiums. There is no way the Timberwolves and the Wild are going to share an arena while both teams are in the Twin Cities. Not happening. We are more than big enough to support both arenas. When 2 teams share and have different owners you are asking for trouble as far as revenue and who controls what. There are also scheduling conflict to deal with. Target Center is outdated and the X was built as a hockey only venue. This is the reality in 2025.

[BikesOnFilm]

I get that a lot of this is a take it or leave it proposition for cities, but the idea that each major league team needs a specialized, single purpose built, taxpayer funded stadium so that the very rich people who benefit from them don’t have to negotiate with each other seems so wasteful and stupid to anyone who doesn’t live and breathe sports.

[uptownbro]

I will say not all stadiums are created equal. MLB, NBA+WNBA and NHL do drive alot more activity (even with concerts ect) then say NFL

[BigIdeasGuy]

I think the argument to go down to 1 arena is absolutely reasonable one to make but there are certainly trade off to doing that, including things like less than ideal sight lines, not great court/ice quality, atmosphere, etc. but also things like available dates disappearing very quickly

I believe is unique to Minnesota but the state high school league books either the Target Center or X for 6 consecutive weekends from mid-Febuary to late March. That means if we went to 1 arena neither the Wolves or Wild could host a Thursday, Friday or Saturday night game during the absolute core or their season. That timeline extends even longer if you want to host college basketball & hockey tournaments along with probably ruling out concerts or family shows for that run as well. So either you have to convince ownership to accept losing that many prime dates OR figure out where else state tournaments should be located, both seem really hard to pull off politically.

It's okay if find that point unmoving but that's the reality of going to single arena set up is that will have to be addressed

[MNdible]

I get it, billionaires are delicate creatures. But somehow LA, NY, and Chicago, which last I checked are much bigger metro areas than we are, have managed to have an NHL and NBA team share arenas for decades. In the case of LA, until recently they had TWO NBA teams and an NHL team.

Again, I get it that Xcel is too important to St. Paul to let go of, but if we were living in a sane world, this ought to be on the table.

[Mdcastle]

If we really have, to, what about rebuilding or renovating one arena, I don't care which one because they both suck absolutely suck to drive to and park at from the surburbs, for both the Wild and Wolves, and then instead of blowing up the other perfectly good one and leaving the land vacant for 30 years like we did for the Met Center, we can keep it for the hockey tournament and Taylor Swift Concert and Borfin Machine operators conventions. Kind of like we could have put an NHL team in Target Center and kept the CIvic Center for hockey tournaments.

[Didier]

I’m curious if there’s data out there that actually backs up that we’re way over capacity right now?

To be sure, my assumption is that we could probably get by with just one arena. Like, that’s obviously not an outrageous suggestion.

But just to play this out, between the Timberwolves, Wild and Lynx we have roughly 100 dates each year, not including any preseason or postseason. I believe MSHSL uses Xcel for boys and girls hockey, plus volleyball, wrestling, dance and maybe other state tournaments? The Frost now play 12 home games, plus any postseason. So, that’s a decent amount of dates before even considering concerts, Disney on Ice, and whatever else these arenas hold.

Among the metros bigger than us, I’m pretty sure all have either some secondary arena, fewer teams, or both. For example, Chicago has NBA and NHL sharing the United Center, but WNBA plays in a relatively new 10K seat arena, and they also have a 10K seat arena in Hoffman Estates that can host big events. LA long had 2x NBA, NHL and WNBA at Staples Center, but they also had the Forum, the Anaheim arena and several non-sports major concert venues. Also the Clippers now have their own arena.

The two closest comparisons are probably Dallas and Washington. NBA and NHL share an arena in Dallas, but WNBA plays at a 7K arena in Arlington, and the metro also has a nice 14K arena in Fort Worth that hosts a lot of stuff. Washington also has NBA and NHL together, with WNBA at a smaller arena. I’m not aware of another venue that could host, say, an AEW wrestling event, but maybe there is one? Neither city is also the default home to high school state championships like we are.

This is all to say that if the Wolves and Wild did ever move in together, our region would probably still need another mid-sized arena. Locally, the most obvious option would be to replace Williams Arena and have the Lynx move in, and then I guess demolish Xcel?

The other main argument is that Minneapolis and St. Paul are wasting money bidding against each other for events. I presume this is true to some extent, though I can’t recall seeing numbers that back it up. Anecdotally I don’t believe our concerts are more expensive than in other cities, and I’ve never seen either arena lumped in with the most egregious public subsidies. But again, someone can correct this if I’m wrong.

Anyway, this is all to say that even removing the obvious political dynamics (and the fact that no one involved in any of this seems to be pursuing it), I’m wondering if maybe the “we’re way over capacity” argument isn’t as obvious as it sounds?

[Mdcastle]

This is all to say that if the Wolves and Wild did ever move in together, our region would probably still need another mid-sized arena. Locally, the most obvious option would be to replace Williams Arena and have the Lynx move in, and then I guess demolish Xcel?

I mean, what about my idea of just keeping Xcel or Target Center, whichever one we don't rebuild or renovate, as a another arena for whatever. Are they actually structurally falling down, or are they just not posh and sparkly enough for a major professional sports team to print money for the billionaire owners as fast as they'd like?

[COLSLAW5]

a lot of it has to do with the back of house infrastructure not being compatible with modern events. Target center got a nice face lift but apparently the back of house is in really rough shape and I assume the same for the Xcel

[Mdcastle]

Maybe Target Center should have spent their renovation money fixing the back of the house rather than putting in a glass atrium. I'm sure there's a lot of people that thought "Wow, I'm really going to go to a Timberwolves game now that they have a new front door".

[MNdible]

The big issue with the back of house at Target Center is that it's severely space constrained. Big touring shows like to load in with a lot of semis for equipment, and there's just nowhere to put them. They did update it and expand it somewhat during the renovation, but it's still limited by the small footprint that the arena sits on.

[Blaisdell Greenway]

Target Center did use the renovation money to fix back of house. But due to site constraints they can only dock 2-3 semis now (way better than the zero before) instead of the 5 that Taylor Swift brings to town.

[Mdcastle]

So, as summary of the arena situation:

1) The Wild owner wants taxpayer money for a renovation because his giant money bin isn't filling up fast enough
2) The Timberwolves owner wants taxpayey rmoney for a new arena because his giant money bin isn't filling up fast enough
3) The Saints owner wants taxpayer money for a Ferris Wheel because his giant money bin isn't filling up fast enough.
4) Apart from not being posh enough or having enough millionaire suites as the Timberwolves owner would like, there's real logistical issues due to the constrained site, that were there from the beginning but have gotten more apparent.
5) There's no obvious place to put a new Timberwolves arena.

[Didier]

Let me try:

1. Target Center is the oldest NBA arena outside of Madison Square Garden and has a design/footprint that can't be retrofitted to modern standards. Renovations in 2017 extended its shelf life. Now we're waiting on the new Timberwolves owners to propose a replacement, which they've indicated will be privately financed. We're waiting to see what this means.

2. Xcel Energy Center is seeking public money for upgrades. Outwardly the arena still looks to be in good shape, but it's also 25 years old. In theory, the Wild could move into a hypothetical new Timberwolves arena in Minneapolis. In reality, Xcel Energy Center is too important to St. Paul and some publicly funded renovations are likely in the coming years, though probably not at the levels the Wild originally proposed. If the Timberwolves are teasing the idea of building and monetizing their own arena in Minneapolis, it's highly unlikely they'd instead move into Xcel, which is owned by St. Paul and operated by the Wild.

3. The Saints at some point need to upgrade CHS Field on account of moving from an independent league to the Triple-A level. As part of their $17 million upgrade, they've proposed a Ferris Wheel in order to draw people to the area year-round. The team requested $8 million in state money, which hasn't been approved. The city and team share revenue from the stadium.