Major League Soccer Commissioner Don Garber said Monday that he likes St. Paul’s Midway neighborhood as a potential site for an expansion team but stopped well short of announcing a decision.

Garber said he likes the Metropolitan Council’s former “bus barn” property in St. Paul’s Midway neighborhood as the site for a soccer-specific, outdoor stadium but stopped short of announcing a deal.

“We still have a lot of work to do,” he told a gathering of reporters at Mears Park on Monday evening. “We’ve got to cross the t’s. We’ve got to dot the i’s.”

Garber toured the Midway earlier Monday with Mayor Chris Coleman and said a more solid announcement could be made by December.

“This central location, I just really love. … We are very focused on a Midway site,” said Garber, who also met Monday with Gov. Mark Dayton. “It has an opportunity to be very transformational about bringing these two cities together.”

Garber was also effusive about the Midway’s proximity to major thoroughfares and public transit, but he acknowledged that he hadn’t been to St. Paul since the 1992 Super Bowl and that “we, the league, need to get comfortable with the site.”

Nevertheless, the general market is “filled with millennials,” he said. “It’s got great ethnic energy. And these are the things that have been driving MLS.”

Located at the corner of Snelling and University avenues near Interstate 94, the old “bus barn” site sits a block south of the Green Line, which connects the downtowns of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

Minnesota United FC was awarded an MLS expansion franchise in March with the understanding it would buy a 10-acre parcel of land near the Minneapolis Farmers Market for $30 million and build a $120 million stadium there.

But after United’s request for property tax relief — among other tax concessions — was rebuffed by state lawmakers in May, Coleman stepped into the breach with an aggressive campaign for the Midway site, a vacant, 10-acre lot where Metro Transit once parked its buses.

Garber said Monday that he was not in conversations with Minneapolis, but he said he could not speak for team owner Bill McGuire. The team owner has not responded to media requests for comment since March.

Minneapolis City Councilwoman Barbara Johnson said that a Minneapolis stadium is not dead until MLS and St. Paul “start developing a deal, and we really haven’t seen that.”

Johnson supports a plan presented to MLS by Hennepin County Commissioners Mike Opat and Peter McLaughlin. Under that plan, United would buy the land, build the stadium and then turn it over to the Stadium Authority that runs the Twins’ Target Field.

That way, United would run the stadium but pay no property taxes. In addition, the county would tap into existing Target Field bonds to improve infrastructure around the soccer stadium.

Opat said Monday that he has not talked with United or MLS lately.

“We remain willing to talk. I’m just not hearing from them,” he said. “I made it clear to their representatives recently that we have the superior site.”

Coleman has supported the team’s request for property-tax relief, and the St. Paul City Council and Ramsey County Commissioners each passed a resolution backing the idea.

On Sept. 4, McGuire told a luncheon group that building a stadium in the Midway neighborhood would serve as a catalyst to redevelop the area into a vibrant urban center. That’s what Coleman thinks, too.

“We just think soccer is strong right now, and I can’t think of anything better than to have soccer at the Midway site,” said Coleman, who appeared at the same media event as Garber.

On Monday, the website SportsBusinessDaily.com reported that Minnesota United has hired the banking group Galatioto Sports Partners to raise between $100 million and $150 million in equity funding to finance stadium construction.

The St. Paul City Council has already passed a nonbinding resolution signaling its support for a stadium in St. Paul’s Midway, provided that construction move forward hand-in-hand with redevelopment of the neighboring Midway Shopping Center. The Ramsey County Board recently passed a similar resolution.

Coleman said negotiations with shopping mall owner R.K. Midway and its principal, Rick Birdoff, are a “separate conversation” but “there’s no question that a soccer stadium on that site will help” reinvent the shopping center.

St. Paul would need legislative approval to exempt the site from local property taxes, as well as exemptions for taxes on construction equipment and materials.

State lawmakers last session came within a hair’s breadth of passing legislation that would block any form of tax exemption for a professional soccer stadium in the Twin Cities. Those views may have since softened, and a bill allowing the exemptions could be taken up by the Legislature some time after it reconvenes in March.

The governor recently told reporters he supports St. Paul’s stadium prospects, and he repeated that message Monday, Garber said. House Speaker Kurt Daudt, R-Crown, said last week that he does not think the House’s previous position on soccer would make St. Paul’s legislative desire “dead in the water.”

“I’m not automatically against it,” he said. “I wouldn’t guarantee anything as far as passage.”

Daudt said he is not necessarily a supporter of tax exemptions but is “willing to have that conversation.”

In an interview last week, Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk said he and Mayor Coleman spoke about two weeks ago and came to agreement on soccer.

“He’s pretty excited about the redevelopment that could happen,” said Bakk, a DFLer from Cook.

Bakk said that as long as the city, the county and the local chamber ink their support, it will have his support.

“I’ll advocate for it,” Bakk said, adding, however, that he would not use his leverage to compel the Republican-controlled House to act.

Coleman, who has led efforts to bring a stadium to St. Paul, has received strong backing in his efforts from the St. Paul Area Chamber of Commerce and the St. Paul Port Authority, which is working with the Metropolitan Council on a possible land lease.

The Federal Transit Administration would likely have to sign off on construction, as well, because that agency helped the Met Council acquire the former “bus barn” property for transit-related uses.

Rachel Stassen-Berger and Youssef Rddad contributed to this report. Frederick Melo can be reached at 651-228-2172. Follow him at twitter.com/ FrederickMelo.

St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman and Major League Soccer Commissioner Don Garber appeared at a news conference Monday at Mears Park in St. Paul. Garber expressed the league’s preference for the old Midway “bus barn” for the proposed new Minnesota United FC soccer stadium. Coleman has been making an aggressive pitch to team owner Bill McGuire since May.