>I don't know what happens to the Dome if the Vikings get a new
>stadium on a different site. Once they move in, I imagine they
>take the high school football championships with it. People
>still use the dome during the week to go running in the
>concourses for $1. The stadium has more than paid for itself
>at this point.

Which is why I loved it so dearly - a public stadium for the public. I when a broke college student who hadn't paid attention to baseball in awhile was told by friends that he could catch a major league game for six dollars. That student... was ... me.

>And they're not (publicly) complaining about not being able to
>develop the Dome area as much as they are talking about the
>money they'd have to spend putting heating coils at TCF,
>expanding parking in that area and the loss in revenue (TCF
>only seats 50,000.) But that's definitely a reason they don't
>like the Dome site.

I see. Thanks.

>Well, everyone seems to think they could still keep the
>basilica structure intact, although it's old enough that I
>wouldn't be shocked if it took some major damage with heavy
>construction in the area.

I'm willing to defer to architects on this issue. My concern is with the parish, which large, growing, and full of young Catholic families. That's not common in the US right now.

>How old is your wife's church? Was it built after the
>stadium?

Weirdly enough, they're almost identical ages as my wife's church was almost fully destroyed by a tornado in 1998 and rebuilt. The analogy doesn't hold when it comes to possible architectural effects of stadium construction, since it's still about three blocks away from LP Field.