Updated at 2:40 p.m. with more details of the plan, expanded comments from CVC president Kitty Ratcliffe.
Will be updated.
The St. Louis Convention & Visitors Commission says it sent a new version of a plan to revamp the Edward Jones Dome to the St. Louis Rams.
The plan, which the CVC sent to the Rams on Friday, is the latest salvo in the efforts by the CVC and the Rams to made the Edward Jones Dome a "top-tier" facility - generally thought to mean among the eight best stadiums in the National Football League. Without those upgrades, the Rams can break their lease on the Dome after 2015.
You can view the full proposal for yourself here:
Final - CVC Proposal Design Proposal August 2012
Here's a quick summary of the proposed upgrades:
- 62,000 new feet of space, mostly from an expanded concourse on the east side of the building. It would include dedicated entrances for club seats and suites, new concession stands, restrooms, a team store, and outdoor terraces.
- 3,000 new club seats. About 1,400 of those would come through conversion of existing seats, and the remaining 1,600 would come from eliminating the north and south end zone scoreboards. The CVC would instead install a hanging four-panel scoreboard.
- 30 new dedicated escalators for club and suite patrons.
- Broadway would be blocked off during game day to make a pedestrian plaza, and a courtyard between the Dome and the America's Center would be turned into a party zone.
- Upgrades to suites, concession areas, the kitchen, sound and audio-visual systems, auxiliary locker rooms.
- Expanded team advertising throughout the building. (As Derrick Docket, an assistant commissioner with the Missouri Valley Conference noted on Twitter, the only advertising on one high-traffic stairwell is a helmet)
- 66 additional seats in the press box
- Replacement of the roof and other exterior repairs
CVC president Kitty Ratcliffe says the new plan will be slightly more expensive than the team's $124 million proposal made on Feb. 1 proposal, but cost estimates have not been completed.
"Our preliminary plan to the Rams in terms of the sources of funds remains the same," she said. "And our plan to them, which included their responsibility for a share of that total cost remains the same."
Ratcliffe also pointed out that the commission's upgrades can be done without disrupting business at the Dome.
"Meaning that the Rams can play all of their regular season home games in the Edaward Jones Dome, per their lease," she said. "Their plan does not enable them to do that."
That portion of the lease was central to a recent dispute over the Rams' plans to play home games in London in 2012, 2013 and 2014. The team announced last week that it will play the October 28, 2012 game at Wembly, but will not pursue the 2013 and 2014 games to better focus on the issues with the Dome.
The Rams and the CVC entered arbitration over the Dome on June 15. Ratcliffe says there's no set timeline, but both parties are working to resolve the dispute by the end of December 2012.
The Rams did not immediately return a phone call for comment.
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