Biography | Stan Kroenke — The Thirty Percent They Announced at America's Center

The room at America's Center was dressed like a pep rally. Blue and gold balloon goalposts framed the dais. Indoor fireworks and streamers went off as civic leaders signed a blown-up relocation agreement. On 17 January 1995 Georgia Frontiere told St. Louis the Los Angeles Rams were coming. She also introduced her new partner. Enos Stanley Kroenke, a Columbia real-estate man, would pay about $60 million for a 30 percent stake and take the title of vice chairman. Same-day wires also printed 40 percent. Later ledgers treat 30 percent as the 1995 figure and put the rise to 40 percent two years later. The deal gave him first refusal if Frontiere sold. It did not, on the day it was announced, give him any other path to majority control. He took the gamble anyway. The convention halls sat next to a dome that was still unfinished. The Rams would open downtown at Busch Stadium and move into the $260 million Trans World Dome later that autumn. The city still had to sell 40,000 personal seat licenses by 10 March, or the Rams could walk. NFL owners still had to vote. They first rejected the move in Phoenix in mid-March. On 12 April in Irving they reversed, 23–6 with the Raiders abstaining, and separately approved the 30 percent sale. The relocation fee settled at $29 million plus $17 million from the PSL pool. Fifteen years later, after Frontiere’s death, her children agreed to sell the remaining 60 percent to Shahid Khan. Kroenke used the matching right in the 1995 partnership paper and closed as sole owner in August 2010 on a valuation near $750 million. A visitor on Convention Plaza is standing at the public hall where St. Louis first heard the Missouri partner’s name. The dome that opened on 12 November 1995 is still attached. It has since been the Edward Jones Dome and The Dome at America's Center. The January room itself was the convention center, not the field. Photo: Michael Barera, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Photo: Fox Sports, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons