American sports history, says Andrei Markovits, is littered with examples of professional leagues pitting one city against another to get the best stadium deal.

Has St. Paul been drawn into such a scenario with Major League Soccer?

Markovits, an author and professor of political science at the University of Michigan, believes it has.

“The league will use its leverage to taunt and, ultimately — I don’t want to use the word ‘extort,’ but close to it — and go to those cities and say, ‘Hey, if the other guys offer me this, what can you offer?’ It’s standard stuff,” Markovits said.

After Minnesota United FC owner Bill McGuire and partners failed to meet a July 1 deadline to piece together a financing package for a proposed $150 million stadium in downtown Minneapolis, MLS announced via local radio that it has turned its sights to St. Paul.

That might sound familiar to many in St. Paul, which has fought bruising battles both for and against professional sports stadiums.

In 2004, St. Paul Mayor Randy Kelly ignored the city council and proposed taxing food and drinks in St. Paul bars and restaurants to pay for a downtown stadium for the Twins, who were desperately trying to move out of the dated, aging Metrodome.

The effort quickly withered, Kelly lost re-election the following year and the Twins moved into Target Field in Minneapolis in 2010.

In 2011, Vikings owner Zygi Wilf partnered with Ramsey County leaders to bring the team to Arden Hills, which some saw as a bluff intended to speed up negotiations for a new stadium in Minneapolis. The following year, state lawmakers and the Minneapolis City Council approved financing for a stadium scheduled to open in time for the 2016 season.

The money behind United’s bid for an MLS expansion franchise, officially awarded in March, is mostly in Minneapolis.

McGuire, a former UnitedHealth Group executive, has donated tens of millions of dollars to build Gold Medal Park next to the Guthrie Theater and to the Walker Art Center. Partner Glen Taylor owns the Minnesota Timberwolves, which play in the city-owned Target Center in downtown Minneapolis. The Pohlad family owns the Twins, which play at Target Field, and United Properties, a commercial real estate company in Minneapolis.

Meetings between MLS and St. Paul are expected to take place within the next few weeks, deputy MLS commissioner Mark Abbott said Wednesday. Some fear a repeat performance of past stadium drives.

“Now that the mayor is willing to court them, he has given McGuire, Pohlad, Taylor, et al., the perfect opportunity to pit the citizens and politicians of Minneapolis and St. Paul against one another in hopes of persuading one side to up the ante,” Tom Goldstein, an attorney running for city council in the Hamline-Midway neighborhood, said in a recent online post.

VICTIM OF STADIUM FATIGUE

McGuire’s group approached the state Legislature in April with a proposal to privately finance all of a $120 million, open-air stadium, as well as the $30 million parcel of land near Target Field and the $100 million MLS expansion fee.

What United wanted from the state was exemptions on property tax and sales taxes on construction supplies.

Although Gov. Mark Dayton said he was “very, very pleasantly surprised” by United’s plan, it failed to resonate with lawmakers still suffering from “stadium fatigue” after battles with the Vikings and Twins. No legislation was forthcoming, and the MLS deadline of July 1 passed without a deal.

MLS, the top U.S. professional soccer league, has been open about the fact that it has other options for expansion teams. The United group’s bid beat a local bid from the Vikings, as well as bids from groups in Sacramento and Las Vegas.

When Minnesota officially won the bid on March 25, MLS Commissioner Don Garber said that if United didn’t have a solid financing plan in place by July 1, “We would then, as an ownership group, take a step back and decide whether we wanted to come to Minnesota. We have other options around the country, some of which with very detailed soccer-stadium plans.”

Possible stadium locations in St. Paul are the Sears store site near the state Capitol and the long-vacant Metro Transit “bus barn” site by Interstate 94, off Snelling and University avenues. Both sites are located within walking distance of a station for the new Green Line light rail that runs between downtown St. Paul and Minneapolis.

Coleman, who is widely perceived to have gubernatorial aspirations, has pledged to make St. Paul more attractive to millennials and working professionals who want to live virtually car-free. In addition, a soccer stadium along the Green Line could provide a further boost to University Avenue, a weathered commercial corridor where recent economic development has largely come in the form of new residential apartments.

“There’s a significant advantage to that — to think you’re right on a light-rail line midway between both cities’ downtowns, and right on the freeway,” said Matt Kramer, president of the St. Paul Area Chamber of Commerce.

The “bus barn” also is located near Hmong and African immigrant communities, including the Skyline Tower on St. Anthony Avenue, which has a large Somali and East African population.

Peter Xiong, captain of the Hmong soccer team Metro FC, sees soccer amenities as a natural fit, if marketed correctly to the city’s growing immigrant populations.

“Having it in St. Paul, having a more diverse culture around the Snelling and University area, if they get the right people, they could promote the game and have more ethnic fans,” he said. “Last year, I played for the Minnesota United reserve team, and the first few games were all the way in Blaine. It’s not far, but not as many people will drive from the city.”

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION … AND MORE

Talks between St. Paul and United/MLS would be about more than a stadium site. United, which has offered to pay a substantially larger portion of the project than either the Vikings or Twins paid for their stadiums, has said the tax relief is essential to its plan.

The Sears site, for example, currently generates $525,000 in annual taxes and special assessments, according to city record.

Ramsey County Board of Commissioners Chairman Jim McDonough said neither United nor MLS has reached out to the board.

“We are open to having a conversation with the city, and with United Properties, about what the whole project would look like and what our role could potentially be,” McDonough said. “The conversation about the property tax would be a part of it, but there are other components that are a part of it, too.”

Howie Padilla, a spokesman for Metro Transit, said the Metropolitan Council is still a few months away from garnering the results of a feasibility market study to determine what kind of development would best suit the 10-acre bus barn site.

“In general, as far as it pertains to development along the transit ways and the rail, obviously we’re in support of that,” Padilla said. “We want to do what we can to make that happen.”

McDonough said the Ramsey County board could help with environmental cleanup, infrastructure investments and tax-increment financing or abatements.

“The return on investment has to be there at some point,” McDonough said. The board “also understands that return can come in jobs, through economic vitality, and they understand the ‘but-for’ piece that without this investment, other investment might not come.”

United’s proposed 10-acre site for a soccer stadium in Minneapolis was blocks away from Target Field and Target Center.

“(MLS) went to Minneapolis first for a reason,” said Darin White, chairman of the American Marketing Association Sports Marketing Academic Society. “That’s their preference.”

United has been largely mum about this week’s developments, releasing a statement Wednesday saying the club is “pleased that MLS has agreed to meet with officials from St. Paul to learn about the possibility of building a new stadium there as we believe this is an opportunity that deserves to be evaluated further.”

In the end, White said, it’s the soccer league that holds the cards.

“They have options; there is no doubt about it,” he said. “MLS is in the position to be patient and picky and get everything that they want to make sure it can be successful financially.”

Follow Andy Greder at twitter.com/andygreder. Frederick Melo is at twitter.com/FrederickMelo.