It's interesting to see some of these Johnny-Come-Latelys who weren't around in 1982 when the Metrodome opened talk about what a relief it will be to have the Twins no longer playing in the building in 2010.
Yes, it hasn't been the greatest baseball park. But if the Metrodome hadn't been built, there would have been a good chance that the Twins would have moved to Tampa or some other place. Calvin Griffith, the former owner of the Twins, was reluctant to even sign a lease to play in the Metrodome in 1982, because he wanted the right to move the team if he desired.
If not for the great salesmanship of local businessman Wheelock Whitney, who convinced Griffith that the Dome would be great for the ballclub, then the Twins would have left town. Griffith was given an escape clause if the team lost money or didn't draw well.
Give Vikings co-owner Max Winter and his general manager, Mike Lynn, credit too. They pushed for the Dome's construction so the Vikings could have a comfortable home.
Two World Series, two Final Fours and a Super Bowl later, the building put the city of Minneapolis on the map and brought millions of dollars of business to this area that never would have happened if businessmen John Cowles Jr., Chuck Krusell, Pete Ankeny and others hadn't acquired the land with private funds and donated it where the Dome was built. John Cowles Sr. had played a big part in getting major league baseball here, and you can give his son a lot of the credit for the Dome being built.
Since it opened, some 85 million fans have attended events at the Dome. That includes the Timberwolves' inaugural 1989-90 season, when they set an NBA season attendance record of 1,0272,572, a record that figures never to be broken because no NBA team ever will play in a dome again.
And the best part of it all was that cost of the Dome was about $55 million, and with the help of the $25 million the Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission got for the Metropolitan Stadium land they owned and some reserves, the building was debt-free.
It is going to be interesting to see how fans of college football and major league baseball react to sitting outside in bad weather after 27 years of watching sports in comfort. They might believe that the Dome was a pretty good place.