Zellers: Progress is being made on Vikings stadium

House Speaker Kurt Zellers said Tuesday there has been progress in putting together a public subsidy deal for a new Minnesota Vikings stadium, but stopped short of saying the project would be brought to a vote this year.

Zellers spoke shortly before the Legislature on Tuesday convened for the year.

His comments came one day after Gov. Mark Dayton told the Vikings that the team would have to commit to building a new stadium at the Metrodome in downtown Minneapolis in order to have the project win legislative approval this year.

"When you look at where we've come, even in the last six weeks -- let alone six months, or a year – we've actually now kind of gotten down to a point where we're site specific," said Zellers.

But Zellers indicated that a bill – which has yet to be introduced -- would not be brought to a House vote unless there were assurances it had enough backing to be approved. Zellers said he and stadium supporters were wary of what happened in the late 1990s when a proposal to build a new Minnesota Twins stadium failed at the Legislature, derailing for years the team's attempt to obtain public subsidies for a new stadium.

Zellers also said he did not have a preferred Vikings stadium site. "I've not gotten into which site is best," he said. "I don't think it's fair for me to say, 'This should be the one.' "

But Rep. Tom Hackbarth, R-Cedar, was one Republican who on Tuesday was critical of Dayton's attempt to have the stadium built at the Metrodome, where the team has played for 30 years. The Vikings have preferred a $1.1 billion stadium in Ramsey County's Arden Hills, and had also expressed interest in a site near the Basilica of St. Mary in downtown Minneapolis.

The DFL governor, said Hackbarth, "has a lot of Minneapolis people working in his administration" and Dayton himself is "kind of a Minneapolis guy. I think he kind of wanted one of the Minneapolis spots all along."

He said Dayton's plan to push for a Metrodome location probably "gets a lot of DFL votes", but not necessarily Republican votes. "If they want to pass a bill with mostly DFL votes, that's the way to go," he said.