Vikings to Arden Hills? XXX - Another Deadline, and This Time We're Serious, Really

We haven't talked about the stadium in a few days and because there's an artificial news cycle to be fed, Mark Dayton has issued yet another deadline. If you think you've heard this before, let not your heart be troubled for he assures us, this time it's serious:

Gov. Mark Dayton is giving Minneapolis and Ramsey County until next week to submit final proposals on a new Minnesota Vikings stadium, and he said Thursday that a location for the much-debated project soon will be "clear cut."

"I think the facts will speak for themselves," Dayton said of what will be the final, competing proposals. "One of them will show ultimately to be a better option."

Of course, if the facts are actually allowed to speak for themselves, we wouldn't be involved in this enterprise in the first place and Zygi Wilf would build his own stadium without asking for public money. But we'll leave that aside for the moment.

What follows is really the lede:

While the Vikings have insisted for nearly a year that they want to build in Arden Hills, team spokesman Lester Bagley acknowledged Thursday that others will influence the decision.

"If the public is going to put in approximately 60 percent of the deal, the public's going to have a fair amount to say about the site," he said, reacting to supporters of a site in Minneapolis. "Who chooses? Do we choose? Who chooses?"

Is it possible, at long last, that the Vikings are backing away from their dream, their awesome dream, of having a suburban Xanadu with a magnificent stadium and even more magnificent parking? Maybe. It could also be that they've talked with the folks from L.A. and the deal they'd get there isn't as attractive as they'd hoped.

Do we really take the deadline seriously, though? I can think of at least 3 previous deadlines that have come and gone in the last year, a fact that Dayton had to acknowledge:

Acknowledging that previous deadlines had come and gone, Dayton said the ongoing stadium debate has been stuck in a "semi-Twilight Zone, where we know some of the facts, we don't know all of them, and some people [are] showing cards, and some people [are] not showing cards."

What does that even mean? This isn't a poker game, it's an attempt to wrest millions, maybe even a billion dollars, from the public fisc. Dayton is always delighted to spend other people's money, but his own political needs require him to appear as something other than befuddled, so he imposes yet another deadline.

Meanwhile, our man Tony Bennett is getting frustrated:

Ramsey County Commissioner Tony Bennett expressed frustration Thursday, wondering whether the latest timetable was "the last hoop" in his efforts to bring a $1.1 billion stadium to suburban Arden Hills.

"We've walked so many different aisles with the governor and the Legislature. I don't know if the janitor and the night sweepers have checked us out yet, but everybody else has," said Bennett, who said he did not expect the county to markedly change its proposal.

Bennett wouldn't want the "night sweepers" to check his proposal out, of course. Night sweepers recognize garbage when the see it and deal with it accordingly.