The Dome at America's Center
The Dome at America's Center is a multi-purpose stadium used for concerts, major conventions, and sporting events in downtown St. Louis, Missouri, United States. Previously known as the Trans World Dome from 1995 to 2001 and the Edward Jones Dome from 2002 to 2016, it was constructed largely to lure a National Football League team to St. Louis and to serve as a convention space.
The Dome received its initial main tenant with the arrival of the NFL's St. Louis Rams, who relocated to the city in 1995. The Rams spent the next 21 seasons at the Dome, departing after the 2015 NFL season to return to Los Angeles. The St. Louis Battlehawks of the United Football League began playing at the stadium in early 2020, with Battlehawk fans commonly referring to the dome as the BattleDome.
The Dome provides multiple stadium configurations that can seat up to 82,624 people. Seating levels include a private luxury suite level with 120 suites, a private club seat and luxury suite level with 6,400 club seats, a concourse level with 28,352 seats, and a terrace level with 29,400.
The Dome is part of the America's Center convention center. The convention portion has a much bigger footprint and adjoins to the west of the Dome, Cole Street to the north, Broadway to the east, and Convention Plaza to the south. The stadium is serviced by the Convention Center MetroLink rail station.
Architecture
The stadium's exterior facade is clad in brick, limestone, and precast concrete tinted to resemble red sandstone. The intended effect was for the venue to less resemble a stadium, and more resemble the look of public libraries and city school buildings built in the era preceding World War II.History
In 1988, the football Cardinals left St. Louis for Phoenix, Arizona, leaving eastern Missouri without a National Football League team. Looking to re-enter the league, St. Louis proposed building a domed stadium for a team to play in and attaching the Dome to the convention center to expand convention center capacity. The funding for the project was accomplished via public bonds beginning in 1989. In 1991, St. Louis put in for an NFL expansion franchise for 1995 called the St. Louis Stallions and began construction on The Dome in 1992. However, in 1993, the league chose Charlotte, North Carolina, and Jacksonville, Florida, over St. Louis.After St. Louis came up short in its expansion bid, it appeared that the city might land a new team anyway. Advertising executive James Orthwein, a St. Louis native and member of the Busch family, bought the New England Patriots in 1992 from Victor Kiam to resolve a debt between the two men. The Patriots had long been in financial malaise since original owner Billy Sullivan, who was still the team president during Kiam's ownership, had squandered all of his net worth on a series of bad investments in the mid-1980s and was forced to sell the team to Kiam and Foxboro Stadium to Robert Kraft. Immediately upon purchase, Orthwein made it clear that he wanted to relocate the team from Foxborough, Massachusetts to St. Louis and was to leave New England at the end of the 1993 season. Orthwein's plans to move the team however were thwarted when Kraft refused to let Orthwein out of the long-term lease that he had secured from Kiam and Sullivan as part of his purchase of the stadium. Orthwein did not want to own the team if he could not move it, and Kraft initiated a hostile takeover that resulted in his purchase of the Patriots in 1994.
The then under-construction Dome finally received the NFL tenant it was looking for in 1995 when Georgia Frontiere announced she would relocate the Los Angeles Rams to St. Louis for the 1995 season. This move was initially voted down, with 21 opposed, three in favor, and six abstaining. The other owners believed that the Rams' financial problems were caused by Frontiere's mismanagement. When Frontiere expressed a possible lawsuit against the league, commissioner Paul Tagliabue acquiesced to Frontiere's demands. As part of the relocation deal, the city of St. Louis guaranteed that the stadium's amenities would be maintained in the top 25% of all NFL stadiums. After playing their first four home games of the 1995 season at Busch Memorial Stadium because the Dome was not ready, the Rams' first game in the stadium on Sunday, November 12, 1995, was a 28–17 win over the Carolina Panthers.
Renovations
The Dome received a $30 million renovation in 2009, which replaced the scoreboards with LED video displays and LED fascia boards around the bowl of the Dome. The renovations also added new premium areas. Some of the paint work in the Dome was lightened as well and painted in Rams colors. In 2010, the Rams locker room was re-built and switched ends from the north end zone to the south end zone. For 2011, new HD monitors were installed throughout the Dome in place of the older screens at concession stands and other areas.Before the 2010 season, the Dome also received a new permanent turf surface. The surface, manufactured by AstroTurf, is AstroTurf's Magic Carpet II Conversion System, which features its GameDay 3D Synthetic Turf System. This system is similar to the original turf system that was in the Dome from 1995 to 2004 whereas it can be rolled up and stored underground in a pit at the Dome. The Dome used a FieldTurf brand surface from 2005 to 2009.
The loss of the Rams (2012–2016)
The Dome's primary problem throughout the years centered on a lease signed by the Rams when they came to St. Louis in 1995. For the first decade, the Dome was considered an adequate facility, but eventually the Rams and city leaders became concerned with the Dome's long-term viability.The lease and poor rankings
Under the terms of the lease that the Rams signed in 1995, the Dome was required to be ranked in the top quartile of NFL stadiums through 2015, measured at 10 year intervals. This meant the Dome had to have the proper fan amenities and other features found in modern NFL stadiums. If the building was not ranked in the top quartile, the Rams were free to break the lease and either relocate without penalty or continue to lease the Dome on a year-to-year basis.Not helping matters was the Dome's poor reception with NFL fans and the general public as the years went by. Even after the 2010 renovations many websites ranking the 31 NFL stadiums listed the Dome near the bottom of their respective rankings. In 2008, for a Sports Illustrated poll, St. Louis fans ranked it the worst out of any NFL stadium at the time with particularly low marks for tailgating, affordability and atmosphere. Time magazine in May 2012 ranked the Dome as the 7th worst major sports stadium in the United States. The Dome's exterior was regarded as an "urban eyesore from the get-go, an ugly multi-purpose dome that's one defining feature was its inability to fit into any conceivable cityscape... takes up several city blocks but never developed any reasonable interesting business around it: It has always looked like a huge mall from that sad time in recent American history when cities bragged about how big of a mall they could build". Inside, the Dome was "too vast and too cavernous to hold a lot of sound... was the sort of building that felt empty even when it was full", even during the "Greatest Show on Turf" halcyon days of the Rams.
In 2005, the rankings indicated that the Dome was no longer in the top quartile as mandated by the lease, which gave the Rams the right to begin the process of breaking the lease, or reverting to a year-to-year. The Rams, wishing to afford St. Louis ample opportunity to meet the quartile requirement, instead agreed to waive this right for the 2005 checkpoint in return for $30 million of renovations and improvements. However, both the Rams and city leaders realized at this time that long-term, the Dome needed a major overhaul or St. Louis would again risk losing the Rams after 2015. Things were exacerbated further as fan interest began to decline sharply, the mediocrity the team would experience in the waning days of the Greatest Show on Turf contributed heavily to attendance records hitting a new low for the franchise. The Rams placed in the bottom 5 in attendance every season from 2008 to 2015. By 2015, rumors of the team relocating contributed to the Rams finishing dead last in attendance.
Negotiations
With the 2015 deadline looming, the Convention and Visitor Center and the Rams negotiated throughout 2012 on the renovations and agreed to go into arbitration in 2013 if a deal was not worked out in which three arbitrators mutually agreed on from the American Arbitration Association to arbitrate the case in 2013.In January 2012, the CVC proposed $48 million in improvements including a new 947-vehicle garage, all funded publicly, with the Rams keeping the garage game-day revenue.
After the Rams rejected the $48 million deal, the CVC next proposed $124 million in renovations including a new three-story structure on Baer Plaza on the east side facing the Mississippi River for a main entrance as well as new suites. This proposal had the Rams picking up $64 million of that project, the CVC citing an approximate percentage of what other NFL teams had chipped in for on similar renovations.
The Rams countered with a $700 million proposal that called for much of the stadium to be rebuilt including a sliding roof panel and a new four-sided center scoreboard, the Rams asserting that this would satisfy the "first tier" top quartile requirement relative to the current NFL stadium landscape. No details on how to pay for the renovations were made. The sides did not hammer out an agreement in 2012 and the matter went into arbitration hearings in January 2013. Officials noted that even if the arbitrators decided on implementing a more expensive plan and the CVC was unable to fund it the Rams would still be able to break the lease.
With no agreement between both sides in 2013 there was considerable speculation on the future of both the Rams and the stadium with some suggesting the Rams could return to Los Angeles. Further pressure for St. Louis to resolve the issue was that bonds for construction of the Dome were still being paid and would continue to be paid through 2021. Missouri was paying $12 million/year and the City and County of St. Louis were each paying $6 million/year.
On February 1, 2013, the arbitrators ruled in favor of the Rams' $700 million proposal to tear down half the Dome and replace it as the only way among the options presented to bring the Dome up to first-tier status. Various city and county officials said it was unlikely that public funding would be found for such a project. Officials noted that the Rams were contractually obligated to play in the Dome until March 15, 2015, and there was no "buy out" provision to permit the Rams to move before then. City and county officials said they were considering all options including construction of a new stadium elsewhere in the St. Louis area. Rams officials, meanwhile, indicated their preference to stay in St. Louis.
The St. Louis Regional Convention and Sports Complex Authority hired Goldman Sachs in February 2013 "to keep the Rams in the Dome, or, if that's not possible, to maintain a National Football League team in St. Louis." An attorney for St. Louis noted that Goldman had "financed or advised on the financing of every NFL stadium recently built." In April 2013, it was reported by the Wall Street Journal that the arrangement was being scrutinized by the Securities and Exchange Commission as new Dodd–Frank rules restricted firms from offering financial advice to municipalities where it also underwrites its municipal bond transactions. Eventually the hiring fell through and nothing resulted from it.
On July 2, 2013, the CVC announced that they were rejecting the Rams' renovation proposal. Missouri governor Jay Nixon had been negotiating with owner Stan Kroenke since the decision had been made. The earliest the Rams could have broken the lease on the Dome was following the 2014 season, but they chose not to do so in 2014.