RSA Endorses Setting Aside Rams Settlement for ‘Multi-Generational’ Impact
Date Posted: November 10, 2022
Posted In: News,
From St. Louis Post-Dispatch: The board that oversees The Dome at America’s Center voted Wednesday to recommend parking NFL settlement money — more than $500 million — in a fund, rather than spending it all.
That fund, like an endowment, would generate earnings to pay for projects and services benefiting St. Louis and St. Louis County for years to come, said members of the board of the Regional Convention and Sports Authority (RSA).
The goal, they said in a resolution that received nearly unanimous support, would be to “maximize the community benefit and to have a transformative, multi-generational economic impact on the St. Louis region.”
While it didn’t explicitly say it, the resolution appeared to endorse an idea floated by Greater St. Louis Inc. in a recent white paper: a long-term trust or endowment that uses the settlement principal to generate earnings for regional projects in perpetuity. The economic development group’s white paper was first reported by the St. Louis Business Journal.
RSA Board member Joseph Blanner, who introduced the resolution, at first made a motion encouraging “the strategic investment” of the NFL settlement into “an endowment or trust fund” before amending the wording to simply say “set aside.”
“I want to make sure that 10 years out we don’t look back and go where did all this money go?” Blanner told the Post-Dispatch after the meeting. “I want to have seen a meaningful impact from the money, used for transformational purposes.”
The RSA’s recommendation comes as negotiations approach the one-year anniversary of the $790 million settlement reached with the NFL over the Rams’ move to Los Angeles. After more than $275 million in attorney fees to law firms Blitz, Bardgett & Deutsch and Dowd Bennett, the remaining half-billion dollars landed in an account with no instructions on how the city, county and RSA should split up the funds.