If St. Louis Rams owner Stan Kroenke wants to move his team to Los Angeles, he now has the land to do it. Kroenke has purchased a 60-acre plot in Inglewood, Calif., according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Walmart sold the land to a New York-based holding company on Jan. 13. The man in charge of selling unwanted real estate for Walmart, Richard Kennard, told the Post-Dispatch that the company generally only sells "to people who are going to develop."
Kroenke's ties to Walmart run deep -- his wife is the daughter of company co-founder Bud Walton and Kroenke also once served on Walmart's company board.
All of this doesn't necessarily mean the Rams will be moving out of St. Louis though. Even if he wanted to move the team, there's a lot of hurdles Kroenke would have to overcome before that could happen. Among those hurdles: Kroenke still would have to file a transfer application with the NFL and he would also have to get 24 owners to approve the move.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said Friday that the league is aware of Kroenke's purchase and that there are not any current plans to develop a stadium.
"Stan is a very large developer on a global basis," Goodell said. "He has kept us informed of it. There's no plans for stadium development."
There don't seem to be any plans for stadium development in St. Louis either, which is why the Rams will be able to move after the 2014 season.
Under terms of the Rams' 30-year lease agreement signed in 1995, the team can get out of the lease 10 years early if the Edward Jones Dome isn't deemed to be in the top 25 percent of NFL stadiums, meaning the Rams would have to have one of the top eight stadiums in the league.
The Rams made a renovation proposal for the dome -- which would have cost at least $700 million, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch -- and that renovation proposal included the installation of a new sliding roof and a glass wall similar to the one the Colts have at Lucas Oil Field.
The company that runs the Edward Jones Dome countered with a proposal that included a new scoreboard, but would have only cost about $124 million. An arbitration panel sided with the Rams, meaning the team can get out of the lease after the 2014 season.
The land that Kroenke purchased is in a prime location -- between Hollywood Park and the Forum -- and there's more than enough acreage to build a stadium. The 49ers new stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., was built on 40 acres; Kroenke has 60 acres.
The Rams have been all over the country in their 76-year existence. The team started in Cleveland in 1937 before moving to Los Angeles following the 1945 season. The Rams were in L.A. until after the 1994 season when the team moved to St. Louis.
