Fairpark director has reason to favor soccer field

Rick Frenette, the executive director of the Utah State Fairpark, has good reason to believe that a Real Salt Lake soccer stadium would work well at the fairgrounds.

Frenette was executive director of the Ohio State Fair when major-league soccer team Columbus Crew built its stadium in 1999 on the Ohio fairgrounds, and he thinks that his location now at North Temple and 1000 West is ideal for a soccer stadium-fairground nexus.

Salt Lake Mayor Rocky Anderson pitched his idea Wednesday to reopen talks with the team and Salt Lake County about putting the stadium at the Fairpark. Anderson's plan calls for Salt Lake County to give $17.5 million in hotel taxes, which the team would repay starting in 2012. The city would chip in property and sales taxes on the Fairpark site through a community development area. Anderson also wants the state to lease the Fairpark land to the team for 50 years or sell it with the option of repurchasing the land.

Anderson announced the plan after talks between Salt Lake County and the team stalled over how much county-tax money should go toward the stadium. Sandy — the site the team chose in October — is scheduled to present an alternative funding proposal at a County Council meeting Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Frenette hopes the team will look again at a site within easy access of hotels, fans and the airport.

"I'm saying, 'Hey, this worked at a place where I was before,' " Frenette said. The team is "not going to get all the public dollars they want, and we offer them a solution that has less money to spend on land. Here you are, and if you want to take advantage of that and if you want to work with us to make that happen, great. If not, then that's their decision."

Frenette has spent his life around fairs — his father owned a piece of fairgrounds in Chippewa Falls, Wis. The younger Frenette worked as the finance director at the Minnesota State Fair for eight years before he became the executive director of the Ohio State Fair in 1993. When he left Ohio for Utah in 2003, he took with him firsthand experience of courting a professional soccer team to rejuvenate fair grounds.

He agrees with Anderson's proposal, although Frenette knows that it's ultimately up to the team to make a decision.

"I can't judge if the team's success would be more here or more in Sandy," Frenette said. "That's not my decision to make — that's a thing they have to do with their own research. We're just offering an opportunity in Salt Lake."

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E-mail: kswinyard@desnews.com