reprinted from:
By Lee Shappell, The Arizona
Republic In the aftermath of the passage of Proposition 302, which provides a tourist tax to help pay for a retractable-roof stadium for the Cardinals and the Fiesta Bowl, Cardinals owner Bill Bidwill hinted that he might have thought twice before moving to the Valley from St. Louis if he had known it would take until the dawn of a new millennium to get a stadium. "Well, that's hindsight. It's hard to say what anyone would have done at that time," Bidwill said. "I think the Valley of the Sun is a wonderful place to be, a wonderful market for the Cardinals." It is just as unlikely that he would have moved elsewhere without a signed agreement for a new stadium in another city if Proposition 302 had failed. He brought the team here from St. Louis on an oral promise from Valley civic leaders without getting anything in writing that a stadium would be built while the team played temporarily at Arizona State's Sun Devil Stadium. "I think that's behind us, a long way behind us," Bidwill said. "Now it's done. We're moving forward." Bidwill said it always has been his preference to keep the Cardinals in the Valley. After the Rio Salado Crossing Project was crushed at the polls last year, "We considered for many weeks what we should do. We agreed that we would try again." Regarding what he learned from
the defeat of Rio Salado Crossing that might have helped the campaign for
302, Bidwill said: "Primarily that it's tough to get a 'yes' vote on a
tax in Mesa." |
