St. Thomas Looking to Buy T&C for New Arena

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USAF said:
It'd be a shame to see bolstad and the barrister gone.
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Drink! You still have me unblocked. It's really creepy to keep blocking me and unblocking me. I had a GF about a decade ago that used to do that and that was strange. Having an unemployed obsessed message board stalker do it to me is about the creepiest I can imagine. Your family must be proud knowing you can't find time to get a job but can shoehorn in some obsessive internet stalking.

As to your point, I'm not a St. Thomas fan at all. I actually strongly dislike St. Thomas. I grew up cheering for the Johnnies. I have friends who went to St. Thomas and my relationship with St. Thomas is considerably more like hated rival than a friend. I also don't think I've EVER started a thread on here about St. Thomas.

That said, you clearly need to try to bring me up as much as you can because you're an obsessed fan boy. Your life would be better if you got a job. This whole charade of yours is just a symptom of the justifiable hatred you feel for yourself. Your soul doesn't want to be a leach and it's killing you. Getting a job would really go a long way towards fixing this. It's never too late. Redeem what's left of your life.
 

Some guy said:
Something that will help is that there has been a focus on downtown housing for 10-15 years already. It is less of a commuter downtown than it used to be (though it still is)
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Yeah, I am interested to see what happens here. I lived downtown for a few years and have lived in other downtowns and one of the main reasons I was willing to buy an apartment for the price of a house was so that I could walk to work and that the downtowns were vibrant.

I lived in DT Pittsburgh and there were considerably fewer people had to come into downtown to work and they had a really hard time filling up the apartments. There was so much money dumped into these luxury apartments that eventually they had to drop rent, allow section 8, etc. Living downtown became a real mess because the number of people who were enticed by the quick walk to work dropped.

Obviously, I have no idea how this plays out and I hope downtown Minneapolis can stay vibrant with a number of jobs going remote. It just feels like a slippery slope to Detroit.
 

HitMeAgainIAmStillMoving said:
That how the Nets got a new building in Brooklyn, a developer wanted property and had deep enough pockets to buy the team, get the property in Brooklyn, than sell the team and keep the excess property.
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Yeah, it actually happens all the time. It's pretty well-established law that a sports stadium can be deemed "public use" in terms of an eminent domain analysis. "Public use" does not mean government owned and the property "taken" can definitely then be conveyed to a private entity.

If the legislature deems a use to be for the public good, it's really difficult to get that oveturned by the courts.

So yeah, lobbyists could, hypothetically, get politicians to consider the taking of T&C for St. Thomas as a "public use" but there is no chance of that happening. That would be political suicide.
 

Admittedly, I have not been on the UST campus in a few years. (well, more than a few...)

It all comes down to what they want. Are they talking about a new combined hockey & basketball arena, or separate facilities? and what about football? That will determine how much space they need and what the price tag will be.

thinking out loud - if they were to tear down and replace the current arena and FB stadium with new facilities, they would have to play off-campus for a couple of years, but then they would have long-term on-campus facilities.

I imagine parking is another issue. I remember that parking around there can be a bit problematic.
 

Gophers_4life said:
Well, what is plan B?

I still think the obvious thing about their move to DI is that they need to focus on bball.

Still think they should pull a Pitt and build major basketball arena and practice facilities on the current football stadium and track. There are many nearby places that it seems like they could reasonably strike a deal with to pay rent and share facilities. Mac, Concordia, SP Central, etc.
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Plan B is the old Ford spur in Highland park. This was one of the options for the Riverview corridor light rail planned from St Paul to the airport, and in the community advisory meeting for that project last week it was mentioned that it's off the table because UST has a contract with Canadian Pacific for that land. This parcel and the one just south of it west of Cleveland, ~13 acres.

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www.tommiemedia.com

St. Thomas to focus on Highland Bridge, others as Town & Country Club rejects $61.4M offer

The Town & Country Club rejected St. Thomas’ $61.4 million offer Tuesday to purchase the club’s golf course, which would add 94 acres to St. Thomas’ campus and provide land for new athletics fa…
www.tommiemedia.com www.tommiemedia.com

Some guy said:
Spot on. If they are concerned with 61 million they aren’t expanding
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Agreed, though it's interesting that the offer was initially made public during a town hall called to discuss financial issues the university is facing.

 
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SMPLSGopher said:
Plan B is the old Ford spur in Highland park. This was one of the options for the Riverview corridor light rail planned from St Paul to the airport, and in the community advisory meeting for that project last week it was mentioned that it's off the table because UST has a contract with Canadian Pacific for that land. This parcel and the one just south of it west of Cleveland, ~13 acres.

View attachment 17141

www.tommiemedia.com

St. Thomas to focus on Highland Bridge, others as Town & Country Club rejects $61.4M offer

The Town & Country Club rejected St. Thomas’ $61.4 million offer Tuesday to purchase the club’s golf course, which would add 94 acres to St. Thomas’ campus and provide land for new athletics fa…
www.tommiemedia.com www.tommiemedia.com



Agreed, though it's interesting that the offer was initially made public during a town hall called to discuss financial issues the university is facing.

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Would be interesting to see how many/what kinds of athletic facilities they could fit in that wedge area of land. Article you linked said they were just looking at new hockey arena, baseball, and softball field. I think that wedge, as is, would do the trick there.

If they could purchase the Ford Little League fields next to it as well, that would open up more options.

Get athletic facilities away from the main campus and the grumpy neighboorhoods might be in their best interest going forward, all around. Just have to shuttle students down, in that case. Not sure how much on site parking could fit, maybe one ramp.
 

SMPLSGopher said:
Plan B is the old Ford spur in Highland park. This was one of the options for the Riverview corridor light rail planned from St Paul to the airport, and in the community advisory meeting for that project last week it was mentioned that it's off the table because UST has a contract with Canadian Pacific for that land. This parcel and the one just south of it west of Cleveland, ~13 acres.

View attachment 17141

www.tommiemedia.com

St. Thomas to focus on Highland Bridge, others as Town & Country Club rejects $61.4M offer

The Town & Country Club rejected St. Thomas’ $61.4 million offer Tuesday to purchase the club’s golf course, which would add 94 acres to St. Thomas’ campus and provide land for new athletics fa…
www.tommiemedia.com www.tommiemedia.com



Agreed, though it's interesting that the offer was initially made public during a town hall called to discuss financial issues the university is facing.

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I think the T&C offer was kind of a longshot PR move. It was very radical and in response plan B will come off as much more reasonable to the public.

That said,

Having large events at Montreal and Cleveland would be a traffic nightmare the way it is now.

I think UST is making a big mistake with this whole move to D1. University enrollments across the board has been sliding and people are having fewer kids. The higher Ed bubble is about to pop. Marketing d1 sports to prospective students versus the cost of getting decent programs going to be a very long term ROI.
 

TurfGopher said:
I think the T&C offer was kind of a longshot PR move. It was very radical and in response plan B will come off as much more reasonable to the public.

That said,

Having large events at Montreal and Cleveland would be a traffic nightmare the way it is now.

I think UST is making a big mistake with this whole move to D1. University enrollments across the board has been sliding and people are having fewer kids. The higher Ed bubble is about to pop. Marketing d1 sports to prospective students versus the cost of getting decent programs going to be a very long term ROI.
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Gen Z is a pretty big group and the Millennials (biggest generation) probably started having kids about 10 years ago, so I think the population will continue to slowly increase, as will college enrollment.
 

Gophers_4life said:
Would be interesting to see how many/what kinds of athletic facilities they could fit in that wedge area of land. Article you linked said they were just looking at new hockey arena, baseball, and softball field. I think that wedge, as is, would do the trick there.

If they could purchase the Ford Little League fields next to it as well, that would open up more options.

Get athletic facilities away from the main campus and the grumpy neighboorhoods might be in their best interest going forward, all around. Just have to shuttle students down, in that case. Not sure how much on site parking could fit, maybe one ramp.
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If they can at least get a soccer field there I think that'd be enough. I seem to remember during initial discussions on the Ford plant redevelopment they talked about new little league fields. UST could chip in to make one a bit nicer and use it for softball. That'd free up the fields on south campus, and combined with the Binz it'd be enough for a nice little football stadium (similar size plot of land to Kinnick without endzone stands for example). Then drop a new basketball/hockey arena where the stadium is now.
 



SMPLSGopher said:
If they can at least get a soccer field there I think that'd be enough. I seem to remember during initial discussions on the Ford plant redevelopment they talked about new little league fields. UST could chip in to make one a bit nicer and use it for softball. That'd free up the fields on south campus, and combined with the Binz it'd be enough for a nice little football stadium (similar size plot of land to Kinnick without endzone stands for example). Then drop a new basketball/hockey arena where the stadium is now.
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Makes a lot of sense! Track down around the soccer field. IE the track infield is the soccer pitch.
 

TurfGopher said:
I think the T&C offer was kind of a longshot PR move. It was very radical and in response plan B will come off as much more reasonable to the public.

That said,

Having large events at Montreal and Cleveland would be a traffic nightmare the way it is now.

I think UST is making a big mistake with this whole move to D1. University enrollments across the board has been sliding and people are having fewer kids. The higher Ed bubble is about to pop. Marketing d1 sports to prospective students versus the cost of getting decent programs going to be a very long term ROI.
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UST is facing a budget issue. Enrollment has been down 4 years in a row and their timing to try to do big time athletics was way too late.
 

St. Thomas is incredibly expensive. My son was thinking about going there, but it's not worth the premium.
 





WilliamsArenaGuy said:
My niece is going there next year. They are no upper class overly wealthy family. They said she will only be paying slightly more than if she went to the U. She has good grades.
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Yeh, I think they give good scholarships for many.
I sat in on the financial meetings and for our situation it wasn't going to be as close to the U price as what they maybe think it will be.

Anyway, the part that kind a dropped it from consideration was when we went through the tours and they broke into groups of about 7-9 students. They asked where everyone was from. "Wayzata, Wayzata, Wayzata, Edina, Wayzata, Wayzata". There was a healthy lack of diversity compared to all the other campus visits he had done.
 

UST tends to cut a lot off the sticker price for good students but they also require you live on campus for two years, which is a lot of extra dough
 

TurfGopher said:
UST tends to cut a lot off the sticker price for good students but they also require you live on campus for two years, which is a lot of extra dough
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is that 2 year requirement new? my son moved out of the dorms after his first semester back in 2015. I think they have built a whole new dorm since then, so maybe he got to move out because they were short of space.
 



FWIW the offer for the golf course worked out to like $90,000 per equity member. Factor in a 2+ year wait to join a new private club in the area and a $30-60k+ initiation fee…made no sense to sell. The gains are minimal and if you’re an equity member there very minimal.
 

WilliamsArenaGuy said:
My niece is going there next year. They are no upper class overly wealthy family. They said she will only be paying slightly more than if she went to the U. She has good grades.
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Lot of the MIAC schools offer nice scholarships/grant packages to students, to get the costs down to "public-ish" levels.

In a sense, jacking up tuition and then compensating with more internal schollys/grants to students is just a way for the school to get more incoming dollars out of their endowments.
 

Face The Facts said:
Yeh, I think they give good scholarships for many.
I sat in on the financial meetings and for our situation it wasn't going to be as close to the U price as what they maybe think it will be.

Anyway, the part that kind a dropped it from consideration was when we went through the tours and they broke into groups of about 7-9 students. They asked where everyone was from. "Wayzata, Wayzata, Wayzata, Edina, Wayzata, Wayzata". There was a healthy lack of diversity compared to all the other campus visits he had done.
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Would think Catholic private relative small campus would appeal more than anything to Catholic school kids and/or Catholic families.

It's another thing if you're getting in to Mac or Carleton. But UST is not that.
 

Face The Facts said:
Yeh, I think they give good scholarships for many.
I sat in on the financial meetings and for our situation it wasn't going to be as close to the U price as what they maybe think it will be.

Anyway, the part that kind a dropped it from consideration was when we went through the tours and they broke into groups of about 7-9 students. They asked where everyone was from. "Wayzata, Wayzata, Wayzata, Edina, Wayzata, Wayzata". There was a healthy lack of diversity compared to all the other campus visits he had done.
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Not sure I buy your story considering I never met a single person from wayzata or edina in my 4 years there.

maybe it’s different now, but when I graduated the poor kids from wayzata went to st Thomas and the rich kids left the Midwest
 

"Poor kids" of Wayzata meaning those that don't actually live in the city of Wayzata. ;)

(which is the large majority of their students)
 


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