Nashville warbler after window strike in downtown St. Paul

Football fans were reveling over the design of the new Vikings stadium this week, but bird watchers remain skeptical.

Glass, they say, kills birds. And it looks like there’s a LOT of glass on that new stadium.

The issue actually came up back in November, in a review of the stadium project’s proposed environmental impact statement “final scoping decision” document.

Then, Minnesota DNR Regional Environmental Assessment Ecologist Melissa Doperalski noted the potential for bird strikes at the new stadium: “The DNR would like to encourage project designers to consider bird friendly building designs that would help to reduce the potential for a bird collision to occur,” Doperalski wrote to the Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority.

Is the new stadium design “bird friendly?”

That remains to be seen. As Tom Fisher, the dean of the College of Design at the University of Minnesota noted on Monday, the new stadium may have the largest transparent doors and roof in the world. It also seems to have another potentially dangerous feature for birds — glass on both ends of the building, offering the illusion that they can fly all the way through it.

Mark Martell, director of bird conservation with the Minnesota chapter of the Audubon Society, says the design certainly got his organization’s attention. “It’s an amazing structure,” he said. And it may pose a problem:

“We’ve been aware of the issue of bird collisions in urban areas for a number of years. In fact, we’re leading an effort to monitor that very thing in both downtown Minneapolis and St. Paul and to work with building owners and architects to find ways to reduce that. In the context that there’s a large structure going up near the Mississippi River, we are always looking for ways in which we could reduce the impact that would have on birds.”

But he also said that they hope to work with the architects and planners working on the stadium to come up with something that might minimize the danger to passing flyers. The Audubon Society actually has a 40-page guide for making buildings with glass more “bird safe.” Ideas include exterior shading and using pattered or translucent glass. Martell says Audubon would still like that to be part of the stadium design process.

“We know that birds don’t perceive glass in the same way we do. They didn’t evolve worrying about hitting glass in the middle of the prairie or the woods. It is something that we have to be concerned with, however, there’s been a lot of progress made on ways in which we can reduce the impact on birds, reduce the number of collisions, through a variety of techniques, and hopefully we’ll be able to present some of those ideas in the future.”

MSFA spokeswoman Jennifer Hathaway says the stadium authority is meeting with the Audubon society at the end month to discuss the matter. The DNR is currently reviewing the MSFA’s full Environmental Impact Statement, and is expecting to respond on the bird collision issue by the second week in June.

So long electronic gambling taxes, hello cigarette taxes and additional corporate income taxes.

That’s Governor Mark Dayton’s plan to close the revenue gap in the Vikings stadium financing plan.

The tax earmarks were laid out  today  by revenue commissioner Myron Frans in a House-Senate Tax Conference Committee, to be included in this session’s omnibus tax bill.

It’s actually a two-step plan.

The first step would redirect a one-time cigarette excise tax on current tobacco inventory. Money from that payment, estimated at $24.5 million, would be put in the stadium “reserve” account. That’s the once planned-for $35 million rainy day fund that the finance department, Minnesota Management and Budget, has been slashing away at since last fall in its budget projections.

The second part of the plan is an adjustment on  “unitary sales revenue.”  It would close what the state considers a tax “loophole” that lets some businesses count some of their sales revenue outside of Minnesota.

Here’s how revenue commissioner Frans explained it:

Myron Frans (MPR Photo/Tim Nelson)

“We want to say that if you have $15 million in sales in Minnesota, you should pay tax on all that $15 million in sales. What people are doing is they’re trying to put their sales outside of Minnesota, these corporations where there’s no direct contact, and avoid paying Minnesota income tax based on all of their sales.”

Technically, the revenue department says that the change will apply to companies that AREN’T located in Minnesota, but have a corporate connection (or are part of a “unitary sales” group) and have sales in Minnesota. Those sales will be counted toward Minnesota corporate taxes in the future.

It’s projected to raise about $20 million extra a year.

That lines up with the estimate earlier this year from charitable gambling operators. They figured they could chip in $8 to $10 million annually to the stadium fund — although they were originally projected to be nearly twice the $30 million expected debt service on the stadium. Now, there should be enough money to pay the mortgage.

Both the cigarette excise tax and the “unitary sales revenue” provisions were already part of the plan for this year’s tax bill. The only change is that they’re now being earmarked for the Vikings stadium.

“We would have made these changes anyway,” Frans said.

That drew a rebuke from Republicans, who said the plan was a violation of Gov. Mark Dayton’s vow not to use general fund money to pay for a new stadium.

“Absolutely it is,” said Senator Dave Thompson, (R-Lakeville) who said the stadium funding will be coming from the same pot of money that pays for schools and health care.

Frans defended the plan.

“These are new revenues coming into the state for the first time, and the same thing is true of the new electronic gaming situation,” he said. “That was a new revenue source, and it all goes into the general fund. It’s just that the Legislature designates some of those funds to be used for certain purposes.”

Senator Julianne Ortman (R-Chanhassen) said the last-minute fix was a poor substitute for the years of negotiation that went into the stadium plan.

“We had user fee proposals, we had, you know, outdoor heritage proposals. There were better ways to fund this Vikings stadium, and we could have ask the owners themselves to be the guarantor of the costs if the pulltabs didn’t deliver,”  Ortmann said. “So there were much better ways to fund a Vikings stadium.”

Here’s the handout on the plan:

Minnesota Wild t-shirts at Target
(MPR Photo/Tim Nelson)

The plan to boost Vikings stadium-bound revenue likely won’t include a sports memorabilia tax.  That proposal appears dead.

Supporter of the memorabilia proposal House Taxes chair Ann Lenczewski announced at a conference committee meeting that she’d opted to back the governor’s so-called “secret” plan to make up for the shortfall in gambling tax revenues.

Electronic pulltabs and bingo currently earn a small fraction of what state finance officials thought they’d bring in in gambling taxes.

Lenczewski knows what the new stopgap plan is, but declined to say. Here’s how she explained it outside the committee room:

“The governor is looking at some different options on how to fund the gap in the Vikings stadium. And I committed to the governor that I would carry his preference. We’ve been doing sports memorabilia on our bill, and he has some concerns about that…

I said I would put that in my offer right now, to get that out in front of the conference committee, and that the House would accept the governor’s position on that…

The (revenue) commissioner will be telling people about that later…  The House is going to give up the sports memorabilia approach and support the governor’s approach.”

The memorabilia tax was included a bill last month, after a tax committee hearing where it got support from Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority chairwoman Michele Kelm-Helgen, among others.

But word came yesterday that the Target Corporation didn’t like the plan: the wholesale tax could hit its warehousing operations that bring all the discount chain’s sports memorabilia to Minnesota for distribution.

It looks like we’ll get a look at the “secret plan” in the tax conference committee meeting Thursday.

Licensed items retails say would be covered by a memorabilia tax (MPR Photo/Tim Nelson)

A proposal to tax sports memorabilia to help backfill disappointing Vikings stadium revenues has come up against another state institution:  Target.

Senate tax chair Rod Skoe, DFL-Clearbrook, says lawmakers are rethinking the 10 to 13 percent tax on jerseys, bats, balls, gloves, shoes, trading cards and all manner of other sports-themed products, even children’s onezies and dresses, like these at SuperTarget.

“Target brings all their memorabilia in to Minnesota that they distribute across the whole country,” Skoe said Tuesday. “The tax is implemented at the wholesale level, so it would impact all of that. So we’re concerned about all of that.”

Lawmakers in the House and Senate added the measure to the tax bill this session in response to disappointing results from electronic pulltabs and bingo. They’re bringing in a small fraction of their expected revenue, and are rolling out at a pace much slower than anyone anticipated.

Skoe said the Senate tax committee is weighing options. He isn’t sure now whether the state needs to dedicate revenue to the stadium bonds — they’re funded out of the general fund anyway. The state will likely have to pay about $30 million a year in debt service. “We’re going to look around and see if we can’t find some other revenues if we need to, in order to make sure the state fulfills its obligation to build a new Vikings stadium,” Skoe said.

Target didn’t immediately return a request for comment.

Minneapolis mayor R.T. Rybak displays a rendering of the proposed project. (MPR Photo/Tim Nelson)

A massive, 5-block, nearly $400 million development is headed for the area just west of the planned new Vikings stadium.

The city of Minneapolis, Ryan Cos. and the Star Tribune announced the project this afternon.

It will include $320 million in office and housing in two privately-developed towers, near where the Star Tribune’s current building stands. There will also be a 1,328 stall parking ramp for the Vikings stadium.

The city is putting $65 million into the project, most of that to finance the parking ramp, the rest for a green space, dubbed “The Yard” by Minneapolis mayor R.T. Rybak this afternoon. It’s expected to serve as green space for the office towers and about 300 residential units in the area. He also said the project won’t use any tax increment financing, a common and sometimes controversial method of public subsidy for real estate development.

Other features of the project include:

• 1.2. million square feet of new office space
• More than 5,000 employees
• 40,000 square feet of retail
• $3.5 million in new property taxes
• Skyway connection to the downtown core
• Potential new Wells Fargo campus

Star Tribune publisher Michael Klingensmith said the newspaper was looking for a new headquarters somewhere in Minneapolis. “Our building at 425 Portland was originally built to house a large-scale manufacturing plant,” Klingensmith said. “Today, the remaining building presents inflexible limitations for our company.”

In the newspaper’s place, Ryan is trying to woo Wells Fargo. Minneapolis officials said this spring that the company was thinking about consolidating a nationwide business downtown, possibly including its home mortgage operations on the old Honeywell campus in the Phillips neighborhood.

Wells Fargo spokeswoman Peggy Gunn wouldn’t confirm those plans today, but did say the company was exploring its options in the so-called Downtown East neighborhood.

Minneapolis mayor R.T. Rybak offered a what might be some insight into Wells Fargo’s thinking.

“Wells Fargo made a groundbreaking decision in south Minneapolis that helped rejuvenate the Phillips neighborhood. We’re very thankful not only that they did that, but they delivered far more tennants than they ever expected to have there. They’re outgrowing that campus, that will continue to be a very major presence. They now have some employees, for instance, in the West End in St. Louis Park, and they are looking to grow in other places,” Rybak said.

And he added that the Viking stadium’s front yard would be a good spot to start.

“They’ve made no commitment about whether they would move other tennants from other parts of the country here, but they are growing very rapidly,” Rybak said. “So we would much rather create the capacity here than have that created in Iowa or California.”

Here’s what the neighborhood will look like after they leave. (Click for the full gallery)

An aerial rendering of the new Vikings stadium in downtown Minneapolis (HKS Architects)

Stadium builders have unveiled their vision for Minnesota’s new NFL stadium: it’s part fluoroplastic, part Viking sailing ship and an angular nod to other Minneapolis landmarks like the Walker Art Center and the Guthrie Theater.

And the roof won’t be opening.

That said, the south half of the roof will be sheathed in ETFE, a transparent polymer made famous by the glowing exterior of the Beijing National Aquatics Center from the 2008 Olympics. The north half of the roof will be conventional “hard deck” roofing, but fans in Minneapolis will be able to see the sky year round, without sitting out in wintry weather.

VIDEO: Video “fly through” from HKS Architects

“Clear is the new retractable,” said chief architect Bryan Trubey, of Dallas-based design firm HKS Architects. The company also designed the Dallas Cowboys stadium and Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. He says the new Vikings home, with the transparent roof, will be unlike anything else in the U.S.

“The sunshine coming through the ETFE, which looks and behaves like glass, allows the sunlight to pass through to the stands, creating the look and feel of being outdoor with all the temperature and comfort advantages of being indoor.”

The stadium will have what designers have been touting as an “operable” feature. They’re planning massive 95-foot tall doors on the downtown side of the stadium that will pivot open and allow fans to walk through a 350-foot opening in the side of the building

A celestory glass ribbon will run around the stadium, just below the roof, there will be entrances on every side, and all entries will be at street-level, a change from the Metrodome. “This building is all front door,” Trubey said.

The overall design won praise from Tom Fisher, the dean of the architecture school at the University of Minnesota. He consulted on some of the features of the new stadium, like handling cold weather and snow. But he said some of the other innovations really stood out.

“This is going to be an internationally, well known, famous building. It’s gonna be the most sustainable stadium in the world. It has some features, the largest glazed roof in the world. The largest glass doors in the world,” Fisher said. “It’s going to be quite spectacular. It’s asymmetrical, so it kind of captures the dynamism of the activity inside.”

View of main entrance (HKS Architects)

The building will also be high-tech from the outside in. Two massive video boards are planned for either end of the stadium, five stories high and 120 feet wide. There will be 12 hundred HD TV’s mounted through the stadium and a giant 50-foot electronic display outside, on a towering spire at one end of the stadium, reminiscent of a ship’s prow.

Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority chairwoman Michele Kelm-Helgen told hundreds of people on hand for the unveiling that the most important feature may be the simplest: a large open space that can accommodate a wide variety of events, from monster trucks to college baseball games.

“It will be possible for us to now host events such as Big 10 championships. The Super Bowl, the Final Four, college bowl games, Major League Soccer, we hope, national conventions, music concerts and perhaps even World Cup matches.”

Fans were thrilled with the first look they got at the team’s new home.

“I think the new design is awesome,” said so-called “super fan” Larry Spooner, of Excelsior. He  was tailgating outside the Guthrie after the unveiling — which he admits is the first time he’s set foot in the theater. “I tell you 16 years of my life has been committed to lobbying for this night. What a night. The Super Bowl we never won, we finally won,” Spooner said, noting his team’s four unsuccessful trips to the NFL championship.

Groundbreaking is expected to be in October. The stadium is supposed to be finished in July 2016. Vikings will play their 2013 season in the existing Metrodome, which will then be demolished.

HKS Architects

The future of the Metrodome and the Star Tribune headquarters, bottom left are taking shape this week. (Photo: Wikipedia)

Minnesotans will get their first look this week at what will replace the Metrodome and, likely, the Star Tribune’s nearby headquarters.

Architects, the Vikings and the Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority are unveiling their plans for the final design of the billion-dollar stadium project tonight. It’s been more than a decade in the making, and planners say it will make an even longer-lasting impression when it’s built.

Vikings vice president Lester Bagley says fans will see a mix of high-technology, ancient mythology and a dose of politics in the final design of the new stadium in the works for downtown Minneapolis.

“What we’re going to see tonight is a vision with local architecture, our Vikings tradition, our sort of Scandinavian heritage here,” Bagley said. “All those things you’re going to see laid out tonight and ultimately worked through the design that we’re very excited about.”

The team and the authority hired an architect in September. Dallas-based HKS offered two preliminary designs. Planners say those renderings have been scrapped and something altogether different will be rising on the Minneapolis skyline after a groundbreaking in October.

“We’re going to see tonight lots of light, lots of glass, a very open feel to this facility,” Bagley says.

What Bagley won’t say, yet, is whether fans will be seeing the clear open blue sky when the stadium opens in July, 2016. Three of the last four NFL stadiums have had retractable roofs, and the other was open-air. The Vikings also have rights to bring a major league soccer team to Minneapolis, and have suggested a retractable roof would be a good fit for soccer.

“We’ve been driving toward a retractable feature, and a retractable element, so we’ll see. We can’t give it away exactly, other than we’ve been determined all the way through to deliver a retractable feature,” Bagley says.

Tom Fisher is the Dean of the College of Design at the University of Minnesota, and also co-chair of the city of Minneapolis’ Stadium Implementation Committee. It’s a group of experts, officials and interested parties that’s going to review the stadium design for the city. He’s also consulted with HKS on the stadium, particularly on the challenges of building in a cold climate.

Fisher doesn’t know whether the Vikings new stadium will be a convertible — with a roof that opens.

He says his hunch is that it won’t, for a couple reasons.

One is the pressure of high-definition television. The Vikings may need eye-popping visual experiences within the stadium to keep fans buying tickets and coming to the games. A fixed roof might be better for holding up big digital screens or scoreboards over the field.

Fisher also wonders if a retractable roof is really practical in Minneapolis.

“You know, so many stadiums have retractable roofs, those are extremely expensive,” Fisher said. “They add a lot of cost in terms of the structure, and as anybody knows that has a house, you put a hole in the roof, its hard to keep the water out.”

Michele Kelm-Helgen, the woman who heads the Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority, says she thinks the design will ultimately reflect well on the state.

“I don’t think there’ll be any thought that there’s anything about this facility that isn’t going to be a very high standard. But it is sort of Minnesota in that it definitely has a certain quality about it. Perhaps understated,” she said.

Kelm-Helgen also says the design will reflect the hard-fought negotiations over the stadium’s financing. She says Minnesotans shouldn’t expect the kind of multi-million dollar upgrades the Xcel Energy Center or Target Field got from their teams as the facilites were being built.

“The budget is the budget,” she says. “There’s no more money coming for this facility.”

The unveiling is scheduled for 7 p.m. Monday at another architectural landmark, the Guthrie Theater. The stadium authority is offering several hundred tickets to the public. They’re free and will be available first come first serve at the Metrodome’s Gate B ticket office starting at 5 o’clock tonight. The Vikings will also be streaming the announcement live on their website.

The Star Tribune’s Eric Roper is also reporting that the newspaper’s real estate future will be unveiled tomorrow. City officials have suggested that real estate developer Ryan has a deal in the works with Wells Fargo, possibly to consolidate its home mortgage business on a new campus, just west of the new stadium.

The paper’s departure from its long time home was hinted at strongly in the Minnesota Sports Facilties Authority’s Environmental Impact Statement on the new stadium. Here’s how the statement describes it:

“The Proposed Project would also involve the demolition of the existing Star Tribune building on the block bounded by 4th and 5th Streets and Park and Portland Avenues. Approximately 600 people currently work in the 425 Portland. If these employees need to be relocated, the Star Tribune has stated that it will search for existing space in downtown Minneapolis to lease.”

It looks like electronic pulltabs and linked bingo are hitting the road next month.

Allied Charities of Minnesota, the trade group that represents about half of the state’s 1,200 charitable gambling operators, says they’re going to Rochester, Willmar, Marshall, St. Cloud, Fergus Falls, Bemidji, Duluth and the Twin Cities on an 8-stop road show.

Al Lund is executive director of Allied Charities. He says he thinks the games need a better introduction than they’ve had so far. He says they’re going to bring manufacturers, distributors, charities and bars together to have an up-close and personal look at the games.

“I think that there are still a lot of charities that haven’t really looked at it closely enough. I know that a lot of charities have their opinions,” Lund said, speaking from a bingo convention in Biloxi, Miss., “But we just think this will be a time that they can come in actually and see the devices, see what they do, and talk to charities that have been involved.”

He said they’ll also have officials from the Minnesota Gambling Control Board and the state Department of Revenue to answer regulatory questions about the games.

Lund is scheduled to lay out the plan for legislators Thursday. The Legislative Commission on Sports Facilities is scheduled to hear from him, Vikings vice president Lester Bagley, Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority chair Michele Kelm-Helgen and Minnesota Gambling Control Board executive director Tom Barrett.

Allied Charities also is planning to set up a website for the public, so that would-be players can find where the games are and play them.

Supporters of the games have long complained that they don’t have the marketing muscle of, for instance, the Minnesota Lottery, to draw attention to the games. They’ve brought in PR guru and former gubernatorial contender Tom Horner to help raise the profile of the games and win converts among the paper pull tab sellers who are skeptical about the new games.

MPR Photo: Jennifer Simonson

Governor Mark Dayton said today that a “surprise” backup funding plan for the new Minnesota Vikings stadium is in the works.

Electronic pull tab revenue, which was authorized in last year, has fallen far short of projections to cover the state share of the stadium project.

Dayton would not provide any specifics, but he told reporters at a press conference Wednesday that he’s been talking to House and Senate leaders about ways to shore up the funding. He stressed that the plan does not involve the Vikings or Minnesota citizens paying more.

“We’re looking at a couple options. We don’t have it nailed down. But I want and the leadership in both the House and Senate want to have a backup source that is absolutely secure and absolutely sufficient to cover whatever the shortfall is with the e-pull tabs and the bingo.”

He declined to talk about what it might be. “I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise,” he said, although he did add that the sports memorabilia tax is not part of the plan. UPDATE: The Star Tribune’s Baird Helgeson is reporting that closing “tax loopholes” are a likely option.

“It’s something that you’d never even imagine,” he said.

Dayton said he still thinks the e-pull tab revenue will improve, but he said a backup plan is important for the integrity of the stadium project. He suggested details of the plan will come out sometime after next week’s unveiling of the stadium design, scheduled for Monday night. The Legislative session ends May 20th.

– with reporting from Tim Pugmire