ST. LOUIS • On an unseasonably warm day this winter, 10 members of a relatively unknown public board unanimously voted to begin hiring contractors for a new riverfront football stadium.
It was Jan. 29. The meeting lasted nine minutes. Gov. Jay Nixon’s two-man stadium task force had said, for the prior month, that planning work had largely been done pro bono.
The resolution signed that day authorized the chairman and executive director of the St. Louis Regional Convention and Sports Complex Authority, the agency that owns and operates the Edward Jones Dome, to begin paying for work planning the new arena.