After months of premature cork-popping and unhatched-chicken-counting, it’s now official. The Minnesota Vikings will be getting a new stadium. In Minnesota.
The Minneapolis City Council voted Friday to ratify a Thursday vote to accept the deal that went from bill to law in the Minnesota Legislature earlier this month.
The project reached the finish line five weeks to the day after a trip by Commissioner Roger Goodell and Steelers owner Art Rooney II to the Land of 10,000 Lakes created sufficient concern that the Vikings, absent a new stadium, could soon join the Lakers in Los Angeles.
Once again, the measure passed City Council by a vote of 7-6. Which is sort of fitting because it’s a reminder of the low scores of Vikings games played outdoors at Metropolitan Stadium, the pre-Metrodome home of the Vikings.
Speaking of outdoors, the only remaining question is whether the Wilfs will kick in enough extra money to put a retractable roof on the new venue. You know, for those two games per year when it would make sense to slide it open.
Even then, sliding open the lid would sacrifice some of the sound that the Vikings so famously generated at the Metrodome.
Regardless of the amount of noise, the best news the franchise and its fans in Minnesota is that the team will be staying put, at least for another generation or so. When the time will come to squeeze the public coffers for enough money to build the next new stadium.