Now that the Real Salt Lake stadium story has reached its conclusion, paving the way for a $110 million stadium to be built in the Salt Lake City suburb of Sandy, you wonder what role the public ultimately played in the state’s decision to grant RSL the $35 million it needed to build its new stadium.
When it was announced last summer that the local governments in Sandy and Salt Lake County would vote on the issue, the people of Salt Lake County demanded that RSL open its books to public scrutiny. The team reluctantly complied, and the Debt Review Committee decided RSL wasn’t financially viable. That lack confidence drove Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Crooner’s decision to kill the deal on Jan. 29.
But once RSL owner Dave Checketts threatened to sell the team, the state stepped in. Suddenly a bill was before the Utah Senate that would allocate the state’s share of hotel tax revenue to the Sandy stadium, bringing in $35 million over 10 years. That bill has now passed, the Senate of House, and the stadium will be built despite public opinion.
The Deseret Morning News conducted successive polls showing that the people didn’t want the stadium. The most recent, conducted on Wednesday as the House mulled the issue, showed that 54 percent were against the initiative, while 39 percent supported it, and 7 percent didn’t know. Gov. Jon Huntsman has suggested that Utahans don’t (yet) see the wisdom in keeping soccer in Salt Lake County.