As an earlier post says, St. Louis and the Edward Jones Dome made the latest cut as U.S. Soccer determines potential venues for its 2018 and 2022 World Cup bid. From the start, I’ve considered St. Louis a longshot on this. There are a lot of big American cities with big stadiums that could hold the event, and unless U.S. Soccer is prepared to not use places like Boston or San Francisco or state-of-the-art facilities like Phoenix, the venue list fills up pretty fast.

I spoke today with Kitty Ratcliffe, president of the Convention and Visitors Commission, which pursues these kinds of things, what the situation looked like.

Q: Where does the situation stand?

A: They’ve trimmed the list a couple times, we’ve submitted several different proposals, and then they’ll organize site visits to take a look. We have to really step it up. We’ve provided them with a good deal of information on the facility and other things important in terms of execution, like hotel rooms and air traffic, the commponents of a city you need to pull it off.

It’s a tremendously complicated bid that involves every aspect of the community. We bid on things all the time and we’ve been very successful on things as a community. We’ve pulled off large events, like the All-Star GAme and the Fanfest, or large conventions, which we do several times a year. There are some things we need to demonstrate to them, but I don’t see we have a challenge in that regard. We’ve got very capable people in the community, at the airport, in the city.

Q: Do you think St. Louis stacks up well against other Midwest cities, and other cities with more modern stadiums, like Indianapolis?

A: Indianapolis specifically, there are some things we can do better. We have better air service. They’ve got quite a variety of different types of cities and facilities on the list. There’s a range of facilities in terms of capacity, with stadiums as small as 50,000 and some over 100,000. We’re in the middle. They’ll look at everything from the capacity of hotels, and we have a pretty strong hotel package, to the ability to move people in and out of community. I think we stack up well compared to other places. We have four interstates that intersect in the middle of downtown. It’s easy for a lot of people to drive here. We’ve got air service, which is pretty equal between American and Southwest. When you start to look at other cities, I think we can hold our own.

Q: By 2018, the Dome will be a pretty old building.

A: Nobody knows in any community what a building will be like in 10 or 14 years. Today it’s a great building. We just put $30 million into it and our first preseason game is coming up. It’s never looked better in that regard. We’re head to head against facilities that are brand new and others that are a lot older than ours. One disadvantage for us, as it relates to the facility, is it’s a dome, we don’t have natural grass. I’m sure that will play into that. There are other stadiums with an artificial turf surface, some with natural grass. I know their preference is for natural grass, but we’re still on the list.

Q: Is it good to have made it this far?

A: They started out with 58 facilities, dropped to 45, and we expectd to stay on at 45 and now 27 cities, 32 stadiums. It’s a great feeling actually. In the end, whether we win or lose, we’re putting our name out there to the people responsible for producing large sporting events.

Q: Could you put real grass into the Dome, like they did in Detroit in 1994?

A: There’s no drainage for natural grass. It wasn’t designed for natural grass. You have to have a drainage system. We haven’t proposed a facility with natural turf. They may have ideas or suggestions on what can be done.

Q: What’s next?

A: There’s a lot to be done. We need to involve everyone in the community as part of the site visit. We’ll spend time talking with everyone at the airport, meeting with city departments that have certain responsibilities for things like street permits. There’s a lot to be done.