Was Stadium Commission told that roof needed replacing?

AFTERNOON EDITION

Not to play into all the “We Gotta Buy Zygi a New Stadium” talk, but The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has been running info apparently drawn from a blogger, saying that the roof’s manufacturer, Birdair, told the Facilities Commission last summer that the inner membrane had exceeded its 20-year life expectancy and should be replaced. “This part of the Commission report is particularly troubling:
Birdair also noted the inner liner is dirty and has some holes in it. Birdair advocates monitoring the areas with holes to refrain massive tears from enlarging. Birdair rated the inner liners’ condition clean to poor. In addition, Birdair noted some minor areas on the outer membrane that needed repairing. Those areas have been repaired by staff. What this means is, taken as a whole with both inner and outer membrane conditions, the roof was not in good condition, and had ‘large tears’ that could enlarge. Apparently, under the weight of a tremendous snowstorm, they did. Moreover, it’s not clear to what degree the condition was worsening in the time between the inspection in April and the roof collapse of Sunday.”

It’s Norm Coleman on the rebound. The former senator’s name is being bandied about as a possible successor to the gaffe-prone current chairman of the Republican National Committee, Michael Steele. Mike Allen’s story in Politico says: “Friends say Coleman’s big push would be his ability to help the RNC retire its daunting debt: ‘I was the best fundraiser of all the Senate candidates.’ However, committee insiders say Coleman was hurt by leaked news that he had promised Steele he wouldn’t run against him, since many in the GOP are agitating for change.” In fairness, Al Franken might have been the best fund-raiser Norm ever had.

MSNBC’s “First read” blog says: “Norm Coleman would like to run for chairman of the Republican National Committee now that it is becoming clearer Michael Steele probably will not seek another term, but it’s not a done deal, according to a source close to the former Minnesota senator. ‘He wants to run,’ the source said, ‘but is getting more support outside the RNC than inside. If he gets significant signs of inside support he’ll run.’ ” I’m thinking that with the RNC, it’s the “inside” game that matters most.

According to one story, Anne Hatch, the 27-year-old daughter of former Attorney General Mike Hatch committed suicide over the weekend in Chicago. Paul Walsh and Matt McKinney’s Strib story says she “was pronounced dead at 4:52 p.m. Sunday, after being found hanged in her home, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office. Police said Hatch was found in her condo by a building employee who was checking on her welfare, according to WBBM Radio.”

According to the story Fox9 is going with, “Hatch was pronounced dead at 4:52 p.m. Sunday, after being found in her condo on the 500 block of North Michigan Avenue, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office. The report said Anne Hatch’s cause of death was listed as natural, but an exact cause of death has not yet been determined.”

Memories of Chicago Mayor Jane Byrne and her inability to get the streets plowed after a blizzard have to be haunting R. T. Rybak and Chris Coleman as the their two towns still have a long ways to go to restore things to business-as-usual. The Strib story, from Paul Walsh (again), Bill McAuliffe and Chris Havens, says: “Minneapolis officials Monday afternoon declared a second snow emergency, as St. Paul did Sunday. Minneapolis transportation maintenance supervisor Mike Kennedy said one-third of the city’s streets, most of them residential, still hadn’t seen a plow as of Monday morning, technically Day 3 of the current snow emergency.”

And, “St. Paul had 88 plows and 20 salt trucks on the move Monday morning as crews tried to catch up from the heavy weekend snowfall. Many residential streets were still a mess Monday morning. The city had received almost 200 complaints from residents over the weekend and into Monday morning, according to the Department of Safety and Inspections. ‘The city apologizes for any delays, and we are working as hard as we can’, said Keith Hovis, spokesman for Mayor Chris Coleman.” To paraphrase Yoda, “Never mind the apologizing … for now, there is only doing.”

Sun Country has sold four planes full of tickets, 650 passengers, to Detroit for tonight’s Vikings-Giants game. Fox90’s Leif Knutson reports: “The charter flights will take off for Detroit Metropolitan Airport around 2 p.m. Monday and return to MSP International’s Humphrey Terminal after midnight Tuesday. The cost for the charter is approximately $250 per traveler.” Ten hours in Detroit. Now THAT is a special kind of obsession.

The next time the Gophers play the Badgers in football, it’ll be the Legends vs. the Leaders. … The what? According to AP College Football writer Rusty Miller, those are the names of the two divisions within the new Big 10. “With Nebraska becoming the conference’s 12th team next year, the conference created new divisions that it introduced in September. Illinois, Indiana, Ohio State, Penn State, Purdue and Wisconsin will be in the Leaders Division, with Iowa, Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Nebraska and Northwestern in the Legends Division. [Commissioner Jim] Delany said the conference had considered naming the divisions after coaches, players, commissioners and faculty but it was too difficult to single out just two. It also disdained from going with compass points since geography had been only the third consideration when the conference announced the divisional setup three months ago. In order, the main factors were competitive balance, maintaining rivalries, and then geography.”