While the football stadium Stan Kroenke owns continues to reside in St. Louis, the football stadium he intends to own in Los Angeles has begun to be built. Sort of.
Per David Hunn of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, earth is being moved at the site of the now-closed Hollywood Park in Inglewood, California. City officials have a simple philosophy.
“This is ‘Field of Dreams’ stuff,” Inglewood Mayor James T. Butts told Hunn. “Build it and they will come.”
So who’s they? The most obvious candidate at this point is the Rams.
“If you have the most modern, the most beautiful NFL stadium in the world, you’re not going to have any problem populating it,” Butts said. “If the NFL wants to migrate here, we would welcome it.”
Kroenke obviously wants to migrate the Rams to the new stadium, a relocation that could happen as soon as 2016. Even without 23 other owners approving the move, Kroenke could move the team and force his partners to try to stop him.
Relocating the Rams or another NFL isn’t the only hurdle. Rezoning is needed to permit a football stadium to be constructed, through vote of the City Council or a public ballot. But for a town that already has lost the Lakers and Kings to downtown L.A., that should be the easiest part of the project.