Wild, City of St. Paul scale back renovation project involving Xcel Energy Center complex
KARE 11
[{'start': '0.159', 'end': '0.920', 'text': "As we speak, hockey fans are flooding into the XL Energy Center for Game 6 between the Minnesota Wild and the Vegas Golden Knights. It is a win or stay home situation for the wild, who are trying to move ahead in the Stanley Cup playoffs. Before we get to the game, however, we're going to focus on the venue. The X is due for renovations, and right now those plans for renovations are getting scaled back. Gordon Severson joins us live with details. Gordon. Yeah, the Xcel Energy Center has been around for nearly 25 years. The city of St. Paul and the team argue they believe that it's due for an upgrade, and to make that happen, they released a new plan today that calls on the state to chip in $50 million which is significantly lower than the nearly $400 million they were asking for just a few weeks ago. The original plan was to spend nearly $770 million to renovate the XL Energy Center, the River Center, and Roy Wilkins Auditorium with the state paying for. We recognize this is a tough year. Wild owner Craig Leopold says the team and the city heard loud and clear from state lawmakers that amount of money wasn't going to work. They're now proposing a $488 million renovation on just the Xcel Energy Center, and they're asking the state to cover about 10% of the funding, around $50 million. We're going to concentrate on the arena. We're going to step up in a, in a bigger way -- and in hopes that we can get this funded -- this year. Along with the smaller price tag, both the wild and the city of Saint Paul are chipping in more funding to get the project going. -- It's -- an urgent ask, which is why we made such a large, uh, shift in the way that we that we're approaching the, the, the proposal. We are hoping. -- For an investment this -- year. The timing, it just isn't right for us. Senator Sandy Pappas represents St. Paul at the state Capitol. She says even $50 million is a tall order with only 3 weeks left in the session. -- It's -- highly unlikely. I think this new proposal is better. It's shaved down. It's probably more realistic, and I wish that they had come to that in January. When we asked Leopold and Mayor Melvin Carter about their Plan B if the funding doesn't come through, they both said right now they're only focusing on this new proposal, hoping it will work out. I don't know. -- I hope we don't have to get to Plan -- B. We don't have a solution for it, and rather than waste valuable time to figure out what is Plan B, we got to get Plan A passed. Now the renovation here at the X would include bigger walkways, so it's easier to get around. It would also include a second escalator and bigger security checkpoints so fans can get into the arena more quickly. Also, when it comes to the River Center and the Roy Wilkins Auditorium, those projects I'm told, are on hold at least for the next year."}]