Whitney: The year Sioux Falls almost stole the Vikings

This summer marks the 50th consecutive year that the Minnesota Vikings have held their NFL training camp in Mankato, one of the longest such relationships in the league.

The arrangement is filled with nostalgia at a time when many teams choose to keep preseason training within their own headquarters, away from prying eyes and small-town idolatry. As Adrian Peterson, Teddy Bridgewater and the Vikings toil away at Minnesota State University, there will be feel-good stories about economic impact and the unique connection between players and the community.

In Sioux Falls, we'll just roll our eyes and wonder what could have been.

We'll think back to four whirlwind months in 2003, when South Dakota came this close to luring the Vikings' training camp with a sweetheart deal spearheaded by then-Gov. Mike Rounds and hospital executive Kelby Krabbenhoft, whose growing health system at that time was still known as Sioux Valley.

"I think about it all the time, especially this time of year," says Krabbenhoft, the Sanford Health CEO who grew up in Mankato and was once a ballboy at the preseason camp. "It captured the imagination of a lot of people, and it became very, very real. It was a legitimate proposition all the way to the end."

Despite coming up short, the ambitious effort struck a progressive chord for Sioux Falls, paving the way for public-private successes such as the Summit League basketball tournament, the Denny Sanford Premier Center and the Sanford Sports Complex, not to mention a much-needed feeling of self-worth.

"I never got any negative backlash from the work we put in to get the Vikings," says Krabbenhoft, who chaired the steering committee and placed the projected annual economic impact of the camp at around $3 million. "In retrospect, I believe it planted a seed or added another dose of adrenaline to a community that needed to believe in itself and say, 'Yes we can.'"

Setting the stage

The drama started when Rounds learned that the Vikings' contract with Mankato as training camp host had expired. At the behest of owner Red McCombs, team officials sought bids to increase the appeal and profitability of the three-week camp, which typically draws 50,000 fans a summer.

The governor initially touted his alma mater of South Dakota State before being told that Sioux Falls was a more realistic option. He tabbed Krabbenhoft to lead the charge and a plan was hatched to lure the camp to Howard Wood Field, which hosted the Vikings' inaugural exhibition game against the Dallas Cowboys on Aug. 5, 1961.

"There's some history here," Sioux Falls businessman and committee member Ron Williamson said at the time. "My personal concern is that we understand completely what the Vikings are looking for and make sure it is not merely an attempt to put us in a bidding war."

That was an understandable concern, especially because the primary appeal of the Sioux Falls bid was financial. The initial proposal included about $7.5 million of city, state and school board money to refurbish Howard Wood Field – owned by the Sioux Falls School District – by adding at least two synthetic turf practice fields and constructing a 30,000-square foot fieldhouse with locker rooms, weight rooms and a training facility.

The parking area on the east side of the facility would be used as a "Vikingland" fan area featuring interactive exhibits and vending and merchandise booths.

This was pre-Sanford Health days, so billionaire philanthropist and University of Minnesota graduate T. Denny Sanford wasn't part of the conversation for naming rights or other contributions.

"That was a big gun that I hadn't met yet that might have had something to say about it," recalls Krabbenhoft.

Plan takes shape

After meeting with a paid consultant, the committee decided to scrap a plan to put a cover over Howard Wood, which would have pushed the proposal’s facilities price tag to more than $15 million.

Still, the athletic complex originally constructed in 1960 created challenges with regard to space and team security. Players and staff would have stayed at the adjacent Sheraton Hotel, while meeting rooms and offices were slated for the Sioux Falls Convention Center. In case of inclement weather, workouts would be held in the grand ballroom of the convention center, with artificial turf laid down.

When Vikings executive vice president Mike Kelly and his staff toured the site, they were not overwhelmed by the essence and allure of Howard Wood Field.

"I don't know that we overwhelmed them," recalled Mark Meile, who supervises the facility for the school district. "If I was trying to sell my house and got that sort of reaction, I would probably say they weren't very interested."

But money talks, and McCombs was listening. The Sioux Falls bid went from pretender to contender in a matter of weeks by enlisting the consulting firm and offering perks such as the use of a team plane belonging to Mark Cuban, owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks.

Kelly had told Krabbenhoft that out-of-state bids would have to be “demonstrably better” than others to lure the team, and that’s where private funds came in. Operational costs for the camp, including lodging and meals, were expected to be about $1 million a year. Those expenses were to be handled by corporate dollars, with only minimal help from the Vikings.

"They have paid $500,000 in the past for operational costs in Mankato," Krabbenhoft said at the time. "Our goal is to reduce that or make it disappear."

Process heats up

Sioux Falls was named a finalist along with Mankato, Duluth and Fargo, with Kelly proclaiming that South Dakota would require less team expense than any other site. Statements like that, plus Krabbenhoft's aggressive approach, caused Mankato folks to be more proprietary about a community tradition that had been around since 1964.

"It's the Minnesota Vikings, not the South Dakota Vikings," grumbled chamber of commerce president Dave Schoop. "We feel like the training camp is synonymous with Mankato."

Louise Dickmeyer, a Mankato-based consultant who attended elementary school with Krabbenhoft, was half-joking when she added: "Tell Kelby he's not welcome back here anymore."

There was also friction in South Dakota, where critics questioned whether state funds should be spent to potentially make Sioux Falls more prosperous. With Rounds not totally forthcoming about how much the state would contribute and the Vikings sketchy on some aspects of the proposed four-year deal, tensions rose as the late October bid deadline approached.

"A lot of this is based on emotion," said city council member Kermit Staggers. "But the question that needs to be asked is, 'Do we really want to subsidize a football team with city tax money, especially when that football team has hundreds of millions of dollars?'"

The proposal's price tag dropped to $6.3 million at a joint meeting of the school board and city council as the school district agreed to pay for $1.2 million in facility improvements at Howard Wood, many of which would have been made anyway.

A few days later, the city council met again and the cost to taxpayers continued to drop, with the council voting to pay $2 million of a $5.6 million price tag, adding a revenue-sharing clause to the plan at the last minute. It wasn't always pretty, but Sioux Falls had emerged from a frenzied timetable with a unified proposal that it could take to the NFL team.

"The only thing we've underestimated so far is the growth and opportunity upside of this," Krabbenhoft told the media. "This has been an adventure for all of us, and we're one of the finalists in a very competitive professional sports environment. That should be a source of pride for everyone involved."

Visit to Winter Park

The Sioux Falls committee made its formal proposal to the Vikings on the afternoon of Oct. 31 at the team's Winter Park headquarters in Eden Prairie. It was a surreal scene as Rounds pulled up in a limousine to join Krabbenhoft, Mayor Dave Munson and attorney Dave Knudson for a presentation that lasted 90 minutes.

By all accounts, Kelly and his executive staff were pleased by what they heard. But political pressure was starting to take hold.

Sensing the momentum of the Sioux Falls bid, Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty suggested the day before the proposal that moving the camp to South Dakota could seriously jeopardize the team's chances of public financing for a new football stadium.

Kelly responded by saying that no stadium support had been offered at that point anyway and that all options were still on the table.

"We are not talking about the potential of moving games or headquarters to Sioux Falls," he said. "We are talking about the potential to go for three or four weeks where we have a significant number of fans who have been underserved."

The Vikings said they expected to make a decision by Thanksgiving, but that didn't happen. Instead, the team allowed time for the Mankato group to make modifications to its bid, including provisions for a public-private corporation to be established to run the camp.

That fueled speculation that Sioux Falls was merely being used as leverage, not to mention a resource for new revenue strategies. But the out-of-state proposal remained very much alive.

The Vikings' executive committee narrowed the finalists to Mankato and Sioux Falls and actually voted 3-1 in favor of moving camp to South Dakota. When McCombs, the San Antonio-based billionaire, made a phone call to Rounds in early December to discuss the sensitive nature of the decision politically, Krabbenhoft was ready to declare victory.

"People should not be surprised if the Vikings decide that South Dakota is a good place to spend the next four years," he said. "I'm as optimistic as I've ever been about this."

Reality takes hold

That optimism started to wane as the Vikings continued to delay an announcement, especially since Sioux Falls needed to start construction as soon as possible at Howard Wood Field.

Krabbenhoft called it "unsettling" when McCombs said the decision wouldn't be made until after that 2003 NFL season, which could have stretched into January. The Twin Cities media focused on the stadium issue and downplayed the South Dakota bid, with veteran sports columnist Sid Hartman saying that such a radical training camp move would "never happen."

As it turned out, he was right. McCombs placed a phone call to Krabbenhoft on Jan. 12 and informed him that the Vikings would sign a four-deal to stay in Mankato, with the understanding that the longtime training camp site would make facility and operational improvements.

"I'm really sorry to make this phone call," he told Krabbenhoft. "You guys gave us a plan and vision that we know you would deliver on, but there are other forces at work here that came into play."

If the Vikings hadn't been in the market for a new stadium, which will finally be unveiled in 2016, who knows what would have happened? The concept of Vikings fans flooding into Sioux Falls from all over the Upper Midwest for three weeks each summer is a tantalizing vision, but that's all it is.

Current Vikings owner Zygi Wilf briefly considered Sioux Falls again in 2006 after relations with Mankato went sour, but the stadium issue loomed large and training camp stayed in Minnesota.

"We won the bid but lost the politics," said Krabbenhoft after the 2003 effort fell short. "When in the order of things did that become the right way to go?"

Soon, disappointment was replaced by the realization that a new era had dawned. With public-private partnerships, rising health care and banking industries and NCAA Division I plans already in place, this was no longer a rural state relegated to the background.

Corporate and taxpayer support for sports facilities and events became the norm, with Sioux Falls luring the Summit League basketball tournament to set a trend of NCAA basketball and other sports coming to the Premier Center and Sanford Pentagon.

Sioux Falls didn't stagger the NFL world by securing a training camp, but we impressed ourselves with how close we actually came.

"As a community, we learned a lot," says Krabbenhoft. "In a weird way, I'm thankful to the Vikings for giving us that chance."

Argus Leader Media city columnist Stu Whitney can be reached at swhitney@argusleader.com. Follow him on Twitter @stuwhitney