August 13, 2007 by Jeff Cooper 

Tonight is the night our group, St. Louis Soccer United, will make our stadium and property development proposal to the city council of Collinsville, Ill.  I have characterized the experience of finally presenting to Mayor Stan Schaeffer and the four Collinsville city council members as both the finish line and the start line. Tonight’s city council meeting will conclude many months of collaboration between our group and the city of Collinsville in the name of putting together a proposal that will not only work, but work extremely well for both parties.  Obviously, that also means it has to work for Major League Soccer, our great soccer fans throughout our region, retailers, developers and much more.  We think our proposal will do that, and it will be an honor to present it this evening. In that regard, the finish line is just ahead.

And once we get to that finish line, our work will basically start anew.  We will spend the next four weeks being as accountable and accessible to the people and leadership of Collinsville as possible.  That won’t be a problem because we truly believe in our plan and the benefits that will result not only for Collinsville, but for citizens and businesses throughout our region.  It’s always important to remember that while our effort is best known so far for targeting an MLS expansion franchise to play in a stadium tailored for MLS, the bigger picture is the economic development this project will generate well beyond soccer.  We look forward to telling our story over the next four weeks and are optimistic for a vote of approval on Sept. 10.  That would result in another start-finish line scenario, but for now our complete focus is on tonight’s city council meeting in Collinsville.  

I will check in later this week but want to first say how grateful all of us are to thousands of visitors to this site, many of whom have shared words of thanks and encouragement as we move our proposal forward.  We’ve only been “live” here on this website for three days and already the feedback has confirmed without a shred of doubt what we've always known: St. Louis and the entire metropolitan area wants Major League Soccer.  We appreciate the thoughts, as well as the suggestions and questions, and I will try to touch on some of those in a posting later this week. Until then, my personal thanks. Stay tuned!