Whereas on Thursday, people said things like this:
"'If he gets the people on board, he can count on my vote,' Councilman Joe Hatch said. 'But I don't know where he's going to get the votes. Rocky's a dollar short and a day late. The time for a deal was three weeks ago.'"
"Still, [RSL owner, Dave Checketts] was not necessarily optimistic. 'It's been rejected by the county twice and that means we're nowhere,' Checketts told the sports radio station 1280 The Zone."
In spite of a headline reading, "Stadium deal clinging to life," Come Friday, things sounded a bit more cheery:
"Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon offered the tottering team a ray of hope. 'I think we can get there.'"
"Exhausted but amiable Thursday night, RSL owner Dave Checketts called the soccer summit 'a really important step' as he leaned against the fence outside the governor's mansion. 'I certainly feel like we'll know by the close of business' today."
As it has in the past, the question of hotel tax dollars, combined with the size of the public contribution from Sandy, Utah, where the proposed stadium would actually be situated, both loomed large and formed the stumbling block. While the county commissioners seem like their standing by a $10 million as their upper limit, something curious seems to be happening with the hotel tax:
"Before the governor's mansion meeting, [Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky] Anderson [a, if not the, leading champion of the last-ditch effort] gathered county and RSL officials at City Hall to crunch numbers and mend feelings. His interest is keeping the team in Utah and preserving the $90 million in hotel taxes - partly for a downtown performing-arts center - that the Legislature could take away if some of it isn't spent on a Sandy stadium."
"'I don't think the public understands the dynamics and what's really at stake for Salt Lake City and the county, as well as the entire state, if we don't find a solution to this challenge,' Anderson said."
The "Friday" article suggests that they've got all the right people in the room, including the Utah House Speaker who seems like a leading player in an effort to spend the hotel tax cash on public transit.
There's a thread up on Big Soccer discussing the ins & outs of all this as well. Some tangential dross about the defensibility of spending public funds on sports stadiums begins the thread - the funding debate suggests this isn't directly zero-sum - but the conversation returns to the specific question after Beau Dure enters the fray; if nothing else, that thread will give some impression of Checketts' popularity with soccer-folk (low). It's all very convoluted, but it seems more plausible today than it did yesterday that we'll all see headlines tomorrow telling us that RSL will stay put.
UPDATE: To say this fight has generated some bad blood understates things just a tad. The latest article in Deseret News (hope I've got the outlet's name correct) contains some positively scathing quotes. A favorite:
"'It seems [Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson's] position was, everything has to be in Salt Lake City or he won't support it. That was certainly his presentation to the County Council. He accused us of making back-room deals that I'm still not pleased about,' [Sandy, Utah, Mayor Tom] Dolan said of Anderson's public accusation. 'He shot himself in the foot. He ruined the arts district and soccer complex for Salt Lake City. And yes, do quote me.'"
There are a couple more in there. Hmmm...with an atmosphere that poisonous, one has to wonder whether the above was too optimistic. Still, the timeline is a bit foggy here; a lot of this seems to have been said prior the true last-ditch meetings in the governor's mansion.
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