Add It Up: Mpls Council Member Finds Hidden Fees in Stadium Deal

Last Tuesday, the resolution went before the council's Intergovernmental Relations committee, which voted to postpone any action on the resolution. (It's not entirely clear what the council could do to thwart any plans even if a majority of members wanted to do so.) But not before Zimmermann, according to the Minneapolis Observer, claimed that stadium construction could end up costing the city as much as $80 million in infrastructure and development expenses.

Saddling the city with those bills would seem to betray a referendum Minneapolis voters approved overwhelmingly in 1997. That vote, taken during one of the many eras of stadium hysteria, ensured that the city could not spend one penny more than $10 million toward any stadium deal. Given this mandate, longtime anti-ballpark activists have looked skeptically at the current site next to the Hennepin County garbage burner. City officials, it is no secret, have hoped to roll money into redeveloping most of the industrial spaces in the area. The new stadium, it seems, would represent the beginning of that movement.

In other words, the current plan doesn't explicitly call for any money from Minneapolis, but--as Zimmermann has noticed--that doesn't mean the city won't be spending any.