bill would like to start the program again welcome back i hope you enjoyed your lunches they were really good good the prime center does a fantastic job with lunches don't think they can promise th year's planning committee is pleased to present our regional business organization conference business achievement award this award recognizes a business that has had a positive influence on our entire east metro region and western wisconsin through its service dedication and has had significant contributions to the economic vitality of our community just this year we have the pleasure of recognizing anderson companies marine could you please join us marine  is the industry standard anderson products are best no one and the best brand of windows in new construction and home improvement anderson is headquartered in bayport minnesota anderson has about ten thousand employees across north america with nearly half of them in minnesota and in western wisconsin the impact andersen corporation hands on the east metro region is fast i'm sure many of you have their products in your homes and businesses and many of you have sure also actually live it was wisconsin and so that bridge would get a part of it to all of us but we've always been part of the community our first ten years in hudson on the western second river and for the last ninety seven years our headquarters is tonight had the chance to work together on the same boat chamber board and they truly are a significant member of the community and then we all acknowledge and think them for what they have given to us thanks again to anderson corp all right let's talk about stadiums what a what a great idea you know in the last few years this region has had a number of significant stadium projects the minnesota twins stadium this is the goal for stadium in stadium so it had positive impacts on our community creating jobs having economic development and many things that they have done for us there also are questions all about what is the appropriate role of government funding for stadiums and today we have a number of key leaders that will join us to talk about stadiums could i ask the members of the committee to please come forward that they're coming up here i just said a couple other comments these stadiums are important to our vitality and what we're doing as a community many of us have had the chance to follow the twins with exciting season this year making it to the playoffs watching that stadium through the first that are fine where you're sitting guys are through their first season the saints are always fun to go to those games they're dynamic they're energy following that they're a little pig  a grows up during the year the vikings what it what a great season they're having they're ready to break open in heaven big winning streak you were in and basically were wondering what is the role of the legislature and government and everything as we move stadium development we have kevin smith with the minnesota twins and we have already next senior fellow in co director of human capital research collaborative from the hubert h humphrey institute of public affairs and these are the introductions let me go into the introductions now let's start with tommy lee from one thousand nine hundred three in one thousand nine hundred eight time served as the saints director of operations and assistant general manager he spent two seasons as corporate sales director of the tampa bay devil way three speed for joining the gold playing group in two thousand and one he was principally involved in the start up of canned ems league brockton rox and the construction of a new ballpark  n center in in suburban boston in two thousand and two then in two thousand and two we returned to saint paul assuming his current position as executive vice president in that role he was principally involved in working with state and local government  organizations in pursuit of success or regional ballpark to the metro to the midway stadium that will remain the hub of amateur and professional base for official minor league baseball let's start with tom tom if you could just share a little bit of your thoughts about stadiums and their impact and what the opportunities are with the saints and coming here i'm just i'm always reminded of the sesame street diddy which one of these is not like the other when i come up here public i believe does have a role in these in these buildings and we can get into that later night and in our case we play are our home games were professional minor league baseball club player games were in the mid wearie in st paul and played a place called midway stadium it's a small facility seats about six thousand people and you know without droning on too long about it the reason why we feel is a public role as we look at the nature of the of the sports and when university calls at home in minnesota state high school league whole hosts regular season playoff games in some state turn him in games there and when the saints go out of town the summer american  use it minnesota amateur baseball so in a summer season out of about two hundred days there's something going on in that building one hundred sixty two hundred seventy days since account for fifty of those events the rest of them over one hundred are are  amateur related and and when you start to look at you know does the state have a role in it you know i would say it does if you were just fifty saints games i think our argument my position here would probably be a little smaller but we are a little bit different in that regard i mean we're not a state asset you would call the st paul saints nobody in the middle gives you know two whips about the saints they do about the twins in the vikings and the other you know university of minnesota  but i we really focus on the on the nature of our building and what it is saying so yeah i think we do have a role regionally i think we fill a niche in the marketplace we're affordable very family friendly it's our tickets this year we're twelve eight five bucks how dogs are two bucks and there's a need for that is community it's it's you know big league sports are great i go to a lot of it  brings more than two decades of public affairs of state experience to his role as the vikings vice president of public affairs and stadium development currently in a six year is life president big league oversees the vikings public relations public affairs community relations and charitable giving initiatives along with a prominent role in extra no relations he also directs internal communications for the team and has spearheaded efforts to reconstruct the restructure excuse me the vikings ok thank you ted appreciate the opportunity to be here thanks the prime center great to be here after a win and two in three and packer week so it's exciting to this week at the facility always exciting but this is a special week and exciting to go over to green bay we still have yet to play a real good game and we're we're two and three so we're we're kind of coming on so excited about that it's exciting to be in the facility  get a couple of my colleagues here dirk and jeff anderson from the vikings are here working on the stadium project amongst other things with the vikings but we get to work with run in to associate with have lunch with our players and in our facility and and i had a true true story i had an incident this was last year i was walking to the cafeteria down the hall and i kind of was talking to somebody looking over my shoulder the door i reached up to grab the door and i didn't realize it was already open and did one of those things where i was stumbling into the door and the person that was coming through on the other side was adrian peterson and of course i would have fallen right into him but he gave me a little juke and he was gone i looked up it was a true  the twins ballpark has been to the community to the economy to our quality of life so you know that's we're kind of where we are our issue has been debated ten years plus the twins took that long you know it's a very difficult issue important issue and takes some time and time is important but you know there are i think there's a reason why our issue for the vikings is finally coming into focus and and not the least of which is the fact that our lease is up we have ten games left after this season when we get to the next legislative session well have ten games left at the metrodome again the ballpark has shown the tremendous benefit and it's hard to point to that facility and say it was a mistake although it was a very difficult discussion and and you know kind of that result has taken the edge off a little bit of our of our issue you know it's also you know timely in the fact th to that again we're talking about seventy five hundred construction jobs that we have we have building and construction trades that are that are thirty to forty percent unemployment so we need jobs all the candidates for governor talking about jobs how do you create jobs well here's the largest economic stimulus package out there it's a public private partnership facility that will be owned by the public used by the public but it also allows us to keep and retain our treasured n f l franchise here for the next generation so where we are right now and it will be other opportunities and questions but just where we are now is we've got a good coalition of support we've got the business community at the procul levels well statewide to make some of the major employers in our community are putting their shoulder to the wheel we've got labor organized labor from the hospitality workers and the construction folks that are really behind it and we had a great coalition of legislators last session that started to move the debate forward at the capitol both democrats and republicans in the house and the senate and we have a fans our fan base is is mobilized we have we have twenty eight thousand plus fans on minnesota momentum  look again as tom said we learned something from marty's a great guy but it's also you know he represents a position very well makes you think about some of these very important questions but we were talking about maybe taking a show on the road  because this is the second one we've done and then on to see if you can come to because i love kevin has a great sense of humor and you'll find out a second we could take the show on the road be like all star wrestling we could all ride together and be buddies and then we get up there and we brawl and then we go back and ride home have a beer any once or so again thanks for being here i'm happy to take questions and respond more specifically to any issue that arises lester before we move on to kevin i do want to remind you all i see a couple of you with your out what we're talking about so you're not you're already all right let's move on to kevin and by the way we will we will have a chance for questions from you also so please be thinking about some questions that you would like to ask our panelists all right kevin smith kevin is the executive director of the public affairs for the minnesota twins and is responsible for the team's corporate communications p r and media relations he also oversees the team's community relations efforts smith also serves as the primary had contact for all inquiries related to design construction operation of the twins new ballpark target field in addition smith serves as the sick of director of the minnesota twins community fund whose mission is to enhance the world series next year absolutely i can tell you the target field opened up and was met with more enthusiasm than any of us could have possibly imagined in the city of minneapolis in the region in the state and in the country there was more positive media about the twin cities because of target field than we ever ever imagined we earned fifty five million dollars in free media from around the country from articles and television shows and international shows that came in to do features on target field it really was has been great i think we all know i'm still here but lucky having gone through year one of the brand new world class facility we all know how it came to be a twelve year struggle by the organization that you're all well aware of and when it came down to it the end was it came down to a couple things a site specific location where we knew it was needed to be built and a taxation example that was easy to understand was very simple how it was going to happen where the public financing was coming from and it was it was up a hard pill for some to swallow but those who did you know it was going to sugarcoat so we're living proof that it can work after a long struggle same with the vikings and i hope they get what they want because i think that would be an enhancement to our downtown minneapolis and st paul the entire region and all of you so i can talk more about that later i and social policy he previously served at the federal reserve bank in as a senior vice president and the rector of research and is an associate economist with the federal open market committee which is monetary policy making body for the federal reserve system well next essays on public policy issues have gained national attention to his british research its interests include baking in financial economics monetary policy of tough it's been some tough years in detroit i want to congratulate the andersen window corporation i know you're a terrific corporation and you great things for the community other other other employees here from anderson how about from ecolab we have anybody here from equal lab or three m anybody from three m med tronics general mills just talking about a few well known companies in this community if i asked their c e o steve come up here and talk about their businesses and what they do for this community over the years and the point i'm making is the economic point i'm making is we have some critical companies that have built one of the best economies in the world in this state they all give to the community i mean i think at three am i think of mcknight and the employee implications the impact mcknight is hand over the years and you can go on and on i serve on a board you know the minnesota early learning foundation board c e o cargill is the chair of the board this is all about early childhood education and all our corporations are major corporations and our small corporations are contributing to this in order to  improve education so we know we have great companies imagine if we were to lose a three am or general mills tronics for best buy so any c e o up here could make the same case i actually would argue a much more powerful case because if you look at the type of jobs that are created by these kind of companies we have in fact on a per capita basis more fortune five hundred companies than any other state in the country why do you think that is it's not because of entertainment it's not because of the weather we have a highly educated workforce and it's the workforce that attracts the kind of quality businesses that we have here so when you ask about a public role most economists would tell you they they think government should be neutral let the market figure out what markets do and they figure out which companies should make and which companies can't and so generally speaking economists would say treat all businesses the same keep taxes as low as you possibly can and businesses i know people think taxing corporations or taxing the rich that's not true it's actually a pretty regressive tax generally speaking you want to treat all businesses the same so the question here today is what public role should we have in stadiums and arenas etc sports entertainment recognize the kind of economic argument you're hearing here it's not the right one why would we care about why would we fund the twin stadium or way back when with the timberwolves of the wild and now with the vikings because they are threatening to leave they are playing what we call an economic bidding war one state against another one city against another so if we don't build a stadium here they're going to go somewhere else the sports the professional sports teams have been t playing this game all over the country ninety percent of stadiums today are built with public money when i was growing up the night train lane bobby lane we had amazing teams in detroit was all your governor you don't want to lose the vote nobody wants to lose the vikings so but i can recognize that's the economics behind this it's an economic form of blackmail it's not just the sports guys that play this game we know major corporations play this game you really do need some national leadership to end it but recognize that what it is now if you don't know in this political campaign i'm sure you're hearing we have limited dollars so the real question is what is the best way to spend say it six hundred million for a new stadium is it for a new stadium i'll give you a better investment and be interesting to ask just do the survey the public survey on this right now well let me take my let me take detroit as an example they have two new stadiums and three and  dying seventy five percent of the kids in the detroit public school systems do not graduate high school i don't care how many stadiums you build how many casinos you put there that economy is is in rough shape now in it will be rough shape until they turn that around the best research we have by far is how to turn that around to start with our children is really as you can this is what the minnesota early learning foundation is so we have a very simple proposal make sure every poverty kid in this state has a scholarship to go to high quality early and program you give me six hundred million like that and i can guarantee you this economy will be the best in the world because no other state has done this we will make sure most of our kids graduate high school go on to college and you will you will see a great will support the kind of great entertainment we have here with a vikings in the twins in the saints and the wild at great entertainment that's icing on the cake the fundamental is human capital so again we're going to have to make a tough decision here we're talking six hundred million dollars let me just conclude with one incident i had with john she was a former publisher and owner of the star tribune eight years ago he put his arm around me and i really like the work you're doing on early childhood education i think it's terrific but i disagree with you on stadiums we need a new twin stadium we need a new liking stadium i said john you have to be careful you've got a conflict of interest here your business depends heavily on that so you gotta be careful what you but you got to make choices he says no you don't we can have both my kids tell me that all the time to me this is like a discussion i have and make my family all the time on one side and then on the other we can have both so it's interesting eight money we spend for at risk children and high quality early childhood education in real terms inflation adjusted has gone down so the notion that we can do both i don't see it at least i'm going to argue the next six sure to have a conversation let's start with tom again if we could so tell us a little bit about your project that you're looking to do in this year and in that let's try to keep our answers for about a minute each year  so that we can move move through these a little bit more quickly but tell us about your project in and also try to address the budget situation in the states we do have a deficit how do we prioritize this project first of the other things that we should be working with the state i guess i'd respond to the second part of your question first and again it gets to sort of don't tell me what are we saying i don't think it's fair to just put sports in its own category or big league sports and its own category if you don't want to fund that i think that's fine but you can't that's a you know i happen to like sports you don't sort of argument i think we need to look at recreation is a whole more economic development as a whole that does the state have a rule in doing that before they get their education issue solved i believe is on the table would agree educating the kid is more important then than going to a ballgame or having taken lawyers no question about that so is it up is it on a higher plane no doubt but i think the issue is if if if we're not going to fund this stuff at the state level let's not do it the state just spent eight hundred million dollars to acquire state park in northwestern minnesota i would ask why it's probably still people in part anyway it can go hunt fish do whatever i love living in a state where people do that and i don't do them i never killing thing with a gun i'm never going to guns terrify me i want to get within a mile of one but the state did that in card so that people could i love living this to take my money to go do it i'm happy i want to live here because i love a state where the dead can go out with this kid i don't know why they would ever do it but i do love being in a place really do it so then i think it it's a broader argument than just money for professional sports teams if you're talking about the role of the what role does the public of its consume publicly that's what i'll say we're no different than a walleye i guess is going to a saints game and you go catch a wall a need same thing to me it is just in terms of our project specifically we are seeking twenty five million dollars from the state we're not big enough to do a stadium on our own to go with him in broad strokes ten million that the team would put in and we have the city as a partner in this who's agreed to assemble land and clean it up if that's needed our sites currently are in downtown st paul that's me at the end of the light rail line that's where we think we could do the most good we've been at the capital this will be our our fourth session back there it's going well but that's in essence what it is we are looking for a handout were we want to put significant amount of money for us into a building that we're not going to own just so that we have a place to do business our buildings not like all these guys and that you're in a you're in a physical building it wears down it's not going to last forever and that's our our situation we're trying to look out five or ten years look at what our building really is what role does it have in the community also look i'm not going to say this is you know it's the yeah it will be very good for the saints to be in a new building it's good for all these guys businesses to be in a new building but in our case our building is used for more than just saints games and so  three thousand employees work on the construction of target field over the two and a half to three year time frame three thousand construction workers who would be what had been on the bench and then depressed economy during that time period two blew through the minority small business and women hiring practices i'll give an example we had one minority trucking company the one one of the bits this company made one point four million dollars in two thousand and eight on the target field project had he not received that bid had a target field have been built he would have made probably three hundred eighty four thousand dollars for his company the entire year those things happened time and time again scores of times hundreds of times with all the vendors we have we try to keep things local we try to get our products from sustainable forests in minnesota we got the limestone on the outside of the building for better still a company man kill minnesota we did a lot of stuff with waste management to be a green facility over again will the company so we try to do things local and get those dollars the tax dollars quite frankly to under sixty million dollars worth get those dollars back into the community in the your businesses who helped us build target we're pretty proud of that with now moved on to other jobs because they've got to work at target field they get the experience and now they're off to other projects on the part of the country so that's just one small part that we pay a three million dollars tax the city of minneapolis every year three to downtown minneapolis eighty one regular season games play here the gentleman who owns a looter restaurant downtown minneapolis said he had his biggest most of may twenty five years of owning that restaurant there are restaurants against one and almost a fair fight although are still within us but just a couple things one the vikings have never threatened to leave the market but along those lines were you know the point that art made up front was let the market figure it out and the issue is if you do let the market figure it out and we don't have a public private partnership on a stadium that's owned by the public used by the public we won't have an n f l team it's not the vikings threatening to move it's it's a market reality and that's and that's you know to so i agree with with art on that if there is it is a dynamic you know we if we want to have a have an the do all those things that are said but they're also put their shoulder to the will to resolve this viking issue because they know it's crucial to have an n f l team to have to be an n f l city and the tremendous benefits quality of life economic and otherwise and b n r so let's treat all businesses the same but i would argue that all businesses are not the same three m is a great business but they do they average sixty a share they have two point five million people watching them every  every game every two point five million minnesotans following them on behalf of our state and you know every every day they're not the same and you know so i would agree with john coles i think you can do both you have to balance these out we saw that with the twins there was there were economic and other challenges the twins as the vikings do respect the state's priorities and we can resolve there's no question early childhood is a priority how do we solve the viking stadium issue you know we came out of the last session with some about are those that are actually supporting the stadium if you so you know those those are user benefit should pay it whether it's a voluntary lottery scratch off we tried and then we weren't successful what do we do with the vikings went and sold and through our brand the state lotteries going to generate about twelve million dollars and their state lottery because the vikings brands the number one scratch off game in the history of our state lottery and all of that and ninety percent of the benefit is going to the state and it could have gone to a stadium development project so that was one one idea that and i think it's still a viable option there's you know n f l murcia and those who buy a football or a jersey or a football card there's a significant amount of money that is spent want to take a portion of those and put it into a stadium so those are user benefit we progress on that we also want to wrap up here they also said that you guys need to go like the twins did you got to have a local partner kevin said you got to have a local you have a site and a plan and a simple plan and our spend complicated because of delayed our project has now doubled in cost we could have built the with government leaders at the local level and we've been doing some due diligence in getting to the bottom of the site because we agree with kevin you got to have a site a plan a partner you come back to the legislature and say here's a deal between the vikings and a local partner if they if we want the facility to have a roof then we got to have another discussion because that's a whole nother matter as the roof does not benefit the vikings but there's more support for roo know people say i don't know if i want to stay but if you do it you got to have a roof or other guys at the capitol saying you know i'm not going to help you but it's got to have a roof like yeah the roof that benefits the public and benefits the stayed and lets us play high school baseball and football and cheerleading all year round twenty first of all that one benefits the twins but it doesn't benefit the vikings and it's a state wide benefit so where we are is you know come later in the fall we expect that our the conversation to be a little bit more public and as we finish some of the due diligence and kind of lay out a little more specifics and what i'd you know jump too deeply into that but clearly we need we need public private partnership we need leadership it's great that all three candidates for governor have said we need to solve this issue and we need to solve it now the state has a role this day needs to be at the table and so that's a good start but we've got a ways to go that's enough ted long enough loesser it does actually that's great i'm glad you guys all listen to me to keep the answers to about a minute that's wonderful art so let's say you're one of the leading economists in the in the upper midwest you understand stadium's your understand work how could this equation work how do we get across the finish line what what is what is the right answer here so i want to get back to some of the comments were just made and tom raised the issue that this should really be we should think this is a pod or economic development and these sports teams bring a lot of economic development i agree with them that it is about economic development but recognize when we talk about economic development broadly what drives economies is not buildings it's people it's human capital it was true when i was going to school and my mom said to me go to college because you're in a lot more back then which what they call the education premium a college degree was worth about forty forty percent more than a high school degree lifetime earnings today that's up to eighty percent and growing so so i am trying to make an economic development argument if we think of limited resources how best to invest them to benefit our economy we know the private sector does a lot of great things on its own but there are certain public goods were it fails and this is the role of government whether it's the importance of a legal system whether it's importance of education which is a there's a real public good safety pollution  talking about this is probably these are private businesses this isn't a power you build a parking lot making anybody rich there's no windfall here there's a windfall every time we do something for a private business and we get a subsidy does it create jobs and i think kevin made a good argument that it creates i mean you could see the stadium go up i used to drive by watch those workers all the time sure looks like it creates jobs where the money come from that went to the twins  hundred fifty million but one thing we often confuse when we think about government creating jobs is when they give money to a company we just look at that company or that business and those jobs are worth the money come from if i take it from company and give it to company b company a now doesn't have money to create jobs so what do the two hundred fifty million come from came from the taxpayers that would have used the money in some other way that would have been different kind of jobs the notion that the government can take from peter and give to paul and create jobs economic snake oil i don't believe that you can look at the stimulus package and what we heard from washington in what the estimates were of all the new jobs that we're going to be creating and what did they do they took some money from the  sector and put it back into the private sector and that very little effect the problem is it's a tough economy understand we're out of it education education education retraining so be careful when somebody some company you got a subsidy points out all the wonderful things they did of course you give me two hundred fifty million dollars i'll do wonderful things you give any one of your companies two hundred fifty million dollars and you'll find plenty of jobs well then you're going to kind of me if i were in their shoes and they were making this point their spillover effects and there are there are some there are some public we all kind of root for these teams feel good when they win feel bad when they lose so there is some publicness there but when economists have gone out and tried to measure these benefits the publicness and they've gone they've looked at cities that had stadiums it's just cities that didn't have a choice a case study if you will but but they don't find much and to give you an idea the bottom why of their study that in the book it's called major league losers there's an awful lot of public money that's gone in the name of job creation and it doesn't really do that it creates beautiful stadium it creates jobs for some people but it's taken money out of the  economy so be careful when you when you look at the economic argument bottom line i admit if i were a policymaker and i was worried even though the vikings are not explicitly saying they're going to leave i don't know if you remember was a friend and carl and i used talk about this all the time he did not want to make play the bidding war he won a new stadium but he didn't want to threaten to leave because he didn't want to leave but you really don't make this happen unless you have a credible threat why bother it's a private business they make a lot of money if they want to fix up their stadium a new stadium just like if you want to fix up your business you sure money to do it why should the public do it why should my neighbor who doesn't give a damn about sports have to pay for this spillover effects on the stadiums just and these teams are just not that great yeah a lot of people watch the game so what a lot of people watching the lions and the tigers in the in the red wings you think that makes a difference in that economy you think of seventy five percent of their children are graduating high school i don't know how many i don't get tigers can win is can win the world series they're not going to it's just not that young to have a night or two and everybody will celebrate they'll sell more beer i can tell you economic development is not about restaurants and beer it's not it's not the way you grow great economies it's not the way you would track sustainable economic growth so that's not the argument guys the argument has to be a possibility of losing them and that puts us in a tough position if i had my way i would negotiate to say ok guys if i have to do this i want to percentage of your gross revenue to go to scholarships for high quality early and in fact i want all of us to go for that let's see if we can negotiate that i'll take the first american on cue plus of the seconds of the first part is we don't live by bread alone entertainment you know clearly there's a significant percentage of the income of our income we use for entertainment  so it was interesting when the north stars left minnesota what do people do for entertainment it was they started selling out to go for hockey games more parents went to high school hockey games they found other forms of entertainment guess what the entertainment dollars were still there they found other forms of entertainment it's not clear that they had this there's lots of substitutes here lots of substitutes in the entertainment field in the i'm not saying that they're still there isn't some public rule there but it should be relatively small and i'm just saying it's gotten way out of line because they're putting want to get to the other end you have to make the assumption that we would have gotten a hockey team without the public subsidy now there's some interesting counterfactuals here we're and i don't know i don't know the i don't know enough of the history behind sports teams but i do know there are a lot number of companies were sadie's benz is a good example they were coming to the south and they were going to locate a plant in what they did in the south and what they did is they got four or five states build a building on it alabama one paid about two hundred thousand per job which was now doesn't look so much but was quite a bit but they were going to be there anyway ok so i understand what you're doing a lot by allowing public officials to get involved in this bidding war if you're distorting economic decisions in many cases those decisions would be made anyway that you would have had in a reunify quality entertainment here because you have a highly paid workforce a highly educated workforce workforce that demands that some sort of entertainment so don't assume that simply because you're not giving a subsidy to some of these farms you won't have that entertainment i'm going to say they're substitutes and i'm saying the market generally works very well in entertainment and this is a high quality economy with a fairly well to do work workforce that will demand that kind of entertainment it will be here just business right over  here to the question of ten games and multi purpose facility kind of opens up the roof question as to should we build a facility in the twins went through that legislature and public going through that debate this cost benefit analysis of by having a facility that's open year round or for you know for baseball to have a roof that will occur on our on our issue but you know the having the myriad of other events and programs that can that can only be played in that size venue that we will get a super bowl back and that's several hundred million dollars of economic damage impact to our state and one of em to loan the n c double  basketball regionals and final four they basically told our community that we're not coming back to minnesota until you resolve your stadium issue and it was the result because there's just too much competition in in all these other markets of major league sports or college sports the reason why the twins and the gophers are out but there are besides super bowl once you double leg the metrodome has had seventy seven million people go through those doors and in twenty eight twenty nine years  that there's an opportunity for major league soccer something that that we could bring to this this community there's all kinds of community events the monk new year there's all kinds of programs you know bill lester the sports commission director told me that this is the twentieth y rollerblading now doesn't make any money for the community and but five hundred thousand minnesotans have have gone through there and for that program so one of the things that we talked about at the legislature last year and we've worked with our legislative leaders on is to make sure that when we resolve this issue that we put a stadium authority in place that is motivated mandated to  out right now the metrodome the sports commission runs the metrodome their job is to open it clean to clean and close and they're not out and aggressively trying to recruit events to come to minnesota we have a great community we need to have don't have time for one more kevin any of us it's important you know that we went through the rough thing that we all have a rough that's where it was that's that's where we built such a great part because we had the creativity down without having to put so much engineering thought don't have that's priceless and we will continue to do that at target appeal as best we can with the state high school in our current groundskeeper is not here today so i can tell you we might have outdoor concerts and time could field in subsequent years that would be that would be fun to do if you have two hundred seventy events non baseball related events in target field general mills target the companies that are talked about have all had meetings and events at target field so that's a public resource that we haven't had before which has been a really nice piece of business of course quite frankly but it's also a new venue and something nice recommended him that's different from the hotel ballroom so we're trying to use tiger to feel even though it's an outdoor facility three hundred dates a year so it doesn't sit in pier i don't and it is open to the public thirty five thousand people have already gone through public tours of the ballpark and we do that bubble twelve months a year so i think to talk any last comment what are i can't get out of my head he said for this to work you have to have a credible threat to move and we say we're going to rule nobody cares all right right i really want to thank our analysts for the spirited trevor statement that we've had about that about stadiums and their environment and public funding of them this conversation will continue at the legislature this year it will continue in our media  it's a conversation that impacts all of us directly through our fallacy of life or opportunities for entertainment and through our money that our taxes go for so thank you again your panelists you did a great job think  fine i'd also like to think each of our organizations who sponsor today's event you know you do great work in our communities and it's really important that we have you representing the business community in this economy and in this environment we had a number baskets in the back and we've we have your name i'm sent a basket here so you can pick these baskets up at the fed the front door and i'm just going to draw names we have a gift certificate to your russo's brother great italian restaurant and that would be for bob rink we have a basket of chocolates from gnocchi straw puts in that will go to mary lawless and we have it autumn harvest gift basket and that will go to adam johnson and we have a bottle of wine from st croix vineyards in that band will go to peter gasland so thanks to close up at the front desk again i want to thank each of you for coming today the retail business organization is an annual conference where we try to give you the opportunity to learn about other organizations please stop at the tables in the back of the room remember to vote the elections are coming up next tuesday tuesday november second and thank you again