He says money left over from parking-garage construction could fund an expansion at the Hogle Zoo or a TRAX line to the Salt Lake City International Airport. Curtis said he wants to offset the hit UTA will take if the Legislature removes transit and other so-called "boutique" taxes from food purchases.

He said UTA can make up the lost cash if the Legislature diverts hotel-room taxes from the county to UTA for a TRAX line to the Salt Lake City International Airport.

However, the House has already passed a bill, HB282, but it contains no provisions for compensating local governments for the loss of most taxes — including the $17 million the Utah Transit Authority stands to lose.

House and Senate leadership met briefly Monday morning with the county mayor.

Sen. Lyle Hillyard, R-Logan, said he would be willing to support legislation that would allow Real to play at Rice-Eccles Stadium. For that to happen, the law would have to be changed to allow alcohol sales, and some bonding issues would have to be addressed.

Checketts did make a last-ditch effort to get Corroon to agree to the deal.

He says Corroon told him the only reason he said no to the deal was that there was about a $7 million gap in funding Sandy could not come up with. Then, Checketts said, he offered to come up with another $7 million in equity.

"His response was, 'I have already made my decision and it's too late, I can't discuss it,"' Checketts said. "He said it's my call and I say no. What that told me, frankly, was that he never intended on getting this done."

Corroon said the $7 million gap was a problem, but "it was beyond that."

He said there was only $20 million worth of land and infrastructure to invest in, yet the team wanted $30 million. Corroon insisted that county money not be spent on the stadium — only land and infrastructure.

"If I wanted to kill this project, I would have tried to do it earlier on," Corroon said. "All I tried to do was get it through a process that made sense."

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Contributing: Bob Bernick Jr., Lisa Riley Roche

E-mail: ldethman@desnews.com