10 Things We Could Do with $1.1 Billion Other Than Build a New Rams Stadium

So building a new NFL stadium in downtown St. Louis will cost $1.1 billion. Yeah, billion.

With floods devastating much of our area, unforgiving winter weather approaching and regional tensions high, it’s increasingly difficult to see how a new stadium for a failing football team could possibly be any kind of priority.

Not all of that $1.1 billion would be from our tax dollars, of course: the majority of the project wouldn’t be paid for by residents. (Though it’s not like we get a vote in it.)

With all of this money talk floating around, we got to wondering what else St. Louis could do with $1.1 billion. We could renovate what needs renovating. We could preserve what needs preservation. We could donate huge amounts to HeatUpStLouis.org and the thousands of other worthy charities in the area.

But how much is $1.1 billion, anyway? It’s such a big number that it’s hard to get a mental picture of what $1.1 billion could do. We made a list of examples to help us understand.

Here are ten St. Louis-specific things that we could do with $1.1 billion.

1. Pay admission for 92 million visitors to the City Museum

2. Order 11,000 more statues of Chuck Berry that don’t look like Chuck Berry

3. Cover the cost of sending 110 million visitors to the top of the Gateway Arch

4. Buy 367 million people a concrete from Ted Drewes

5. Gift four years of undergrad tuition to 5,813 students at Washington University

6. Pay off more than 74 million City of St. Louis parking tickets

7. Bail out KDHX ... like, at least twice

8. Ship a $50 care package from Imo’s Pizza to 22 million people

9. Purchase 6,419 beers for each of the 19,150 people in attendance at a capacity St. Louis Blues hockey game

10. Blanket every square inch of land in Forest Park with Gooey Butter Cake and still have $443,710,640.00 left over

Lest you doubt our math on that last one, here's how we got there:

a. Forest Park is 1,371 acres. And one acre equals 43,560 square feet. That means Forest Park is 59,720,760 square feet.

b. One gooey butter cake is one square foot. That means it would take 59,720,760 gooey butter cakes to cover Forest Park.

c. The average price of a 12-inch gooey butter cake? $11.

d. The price of 59,720,760 Gooey Butter Cakes at $11 each would be $656,928,360.

e. 1.1 billion minus $656,928,360 = $443,710,640.

Would you rather have that stadium or all of this? Decisions, decisions.