Hopes fading fast in drive to stop stadium

At the earliest, the fat lady won't be singing until the end of the month, but if the bulldozers pushing around huge mounds of sand right now in Sandy are any indication, Real Salt Lake has no real worries that when it really is over the soccer franchise will indeed have public money to help build its new stadium.

Still to be determined is whether the grass-roots coalition "Get Real Utah" managed to collect enough signatures to advance the RSL stadium issue onto a statewide ballot. Officials have until April 30 to determine if petitions circulated around the state during March contain the 91,966 signatures required.

Few believe that Get Real Utah came close to getting that many signatures, including — and this would seem significant — the head of the petition drive, Brad Swedlund.

"If I'm being realistic I don't think we got enough," Swedlund said this week as he took a lunch break from his job as a research scientist at Research Park. "Apparently they (RSL) think we didn't get enough, and they're probably right. But who knows? I don't.

"I do think it's sort of presumptuous on their part if they think we didn't, but I suppose they own the land so they can do what they want with it."

Swedlund's beef never has been about the soccer club anyway.

His annoyance is with Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. and those state legislators who, despite Salt Lake County's rejection of RSL's request for public funds, approved $35 million in public money to help RSL in the construction of its $110 million stadium in west Sandy.

"I couldn't believe the arrogance," said Swedlund. "There was no way the Legislature could have possibly reviewed the finances of the situation in that little time. It was all based on some gut reaction and a directive from people with a lot of money, and I thought that was completely wrong."

"The topper" for Swedlund came on the final day of the legislative session.

"I know they do these joke things on the last day," Swedlund said, "but on that day my representative, Ralph Becker, presented a cake in the shape of a stadium to someone, I think it was Greg Curtis, and they were all joking around about the $35 million check that was the cardboard at the bottom. Apparently they thought it was funny, but I didn't. It drove me over the edge I guess."

The next thing he knew he was taking an unplanned week's vacation and putting 2,000 miles on his car driving around Utah asking people to sign his referendum petition.