The Sports Xchange/CBSSports.com
All that a new Minnesota Vikings stadium needs now is a shovel in the ground.
The Minneapolis City Council on Friday voted to approve funding for a football / convention center facility, the final hurdle necessary to building a new downtown home for the Vikings.
The final vote was 7-6, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, ending a push for a new stadium that lasted nearly a decade.
Minneapolis will subsidize about $309 million of the stadium with the state and the Vikings paying for the rest. It will cost about $957 million to build. The Minnesota legislature approved state funding earlier this month.
"It's one of those tough decisions that you need every generation or so to keep a city moving forward," Mayor R.T. Rybak told the Star Tribune. "But it's also based on ... something I've had to deal with from the start, which is to clean up the city's finances, and I think we did that."
The stadium is scheduled to be built on the footprint of the Vikings' current home, the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, which is located on the east side of downtown Minneapolis. The vote also approves funds to renovate Target Center, the home of the Minnesota Timberwolves that is located on the west side of downtown Minneapolis.
The city's mayor now must appoint two people to the stadium authority committee.
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