Look for stadium fallout to linger for months

Artist's rendering of the Findlay Cordish MLS soccer stadium proposal for Symphony Park, submitted September 2014. (Courtesy/Findlay Sports and Entertainment)

City officials spent some media face time last week downplaying Major League Soccer’s decision not to award Las Vegas a franchise to go with its controversial downtown stadium development.

Mayor Carolyn Goodman, for whom the stadium at Symphony Park was a redevelopment centerpiece, took particular pains to present the disappointment in the appropriate political perspective. She planned to continue pushing for big-league status, she said, but she also acknowledged her favorite city’s underdog status.

“I would continue to support major league sports, in particular, soccer,” she said in a Review-Journal story. I will keep fighting, as long as I breathe.”

Maybe. But I’m guessing she’s breathing a sigh of relief.

The news that Las Vegas had been eliminated from the running against Minneapolis and Sacramento — cities well ahead of ours in the stadium planning and soccer-development departments — was almost to be expected, especially after all the acrimony on display at City Hall.

But I am willing to bet an autographed Pele jersey that, if they were being completely candid, Goodman and the other members of the City Council who voted in December to go forward with the $200 million private stadium plan despite strong criticism over $56.5 million in taxpayer subsidies are privately grateful the development debacle has come to an end in February and not closer to election day. The mayor might say she wholeheartedly supports a big-league stadium for downtown and “will keep fighting, as long as I breathe,” as she told the Review-Journal, but Goodman also knows she has a campaign to run and a race for re-election to win.

Make no mistake: Jobs were on the line as long as the soccer stadium plan remained alive and kicking.

The passage of the stadium plan generated far more than the traditional squabbling from the council and heat from the press and distracted public. From a political standpoint, the issue had a poison bottle’s skull and crossbones written all over it.

Seldom in the past 30 years have I seen an issue at the city genuinely threaten to trip a slate of candidates and a department head or two from office. But this might have done it. The naysaying wasn’t coming from the usual lone-wolf councilman, gadflies and cranky Review-Journal reporters. Although Councilman Bob Beers was by far the most adamant and articulate critic of the plan, fellow council members Stavros Anthony and Lois Tarkanian also looked askance at the proposal of The Cordish Cos. and Findlay Sports & Entertainment. Even Councilman Bob Coffin appeared to have to be dragged to the other side of the ledger to secure the wobbly 4-3 vote for passage.

While Justin Findlay and his family’s fledgling sports group ought to be lauded for giving their idea the college try, the whole thing felt like a rush-to-close sales job from the start. City cheerleaders sounded more gushing and desperate than skeptically encouraging. Exclusive development partner Cordish, which accomplished zilch in four years, was leading from behind. And the appearance of consummately connected attorney Jay Brown only made the controversial deal look more juiced and judicious.

Anthony parlayed the palpable public outrage into a run for Goodman’s job. Beers, who has visions of a U.S. Senate seat, didn’t take a lost council vote for an answer and bloodied the noses of the development’s City Hall supporters. That includes City Attorney Brad Jerbic, who unsuccessfully sought to block a citizen’s petition backed by Beers and Anthony to attempt to get the voters to do what a majority of the council failed to do: stop a plan that would have encumbered public dollars for decades to come.

Jerbic likely will find keeping his job difficult in the coming months — especially if the fallout from the stadium deal pays off for underdog Anthony or one of the little-known challengers other council members have drawn.

But who knows, maybe the incumbents survive and in a few months the soccer stadium plan quickly fades in the public’s consciousness. Perhaps.

I’m not betting that way just yet.

John L. Smith’s column appears Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Email him at Smith@reviewjournal.com or call 702-383-0295. Follow him on Twitter @jlnevadasmith.