For Minnesota Thunder fans, hope springs eternal

A couple weeks ago, I planned to write a post about one of the Minnesota Thunder’s new owners. It wasn’t going to be a terribly original post; I was just going to link to an interesting article in the St. Paul Pioneer Press about Dean Johnson and his ambition to do some major (non-soccer) development in sleepy downtown St. Paul.

It seems that city councilman (and strangely-popular jackass), Dave Thune doesn’t care much for Mr. Johnson or his plans. Of course, because the PiPress is, well, the PiPress, they don’t keep stories online for more than about 5 seconds (because, you know, it hurts the environment to keep something online. Update: thanks to uhclem for providing an alternate link. Note to PiPress: It’s too bad that I have to link to a content scraper instead of you). The point is that I didn’t recall the details of the story well enough to write anything about it.

Today, though, there is a bit of Thunder news to report. ThroughBall.com favorite, Brian Quarstad has written a piece on BlueSkySoccer that outlines some of the teams plans for the 2008 season.

The first thing, while disappointing, is not a huge surprise: the team will stay at James Griffin Stadium. That’s kind of a downer but it sounds like they are going to make the best of it:

In making all these improvements [(new scoreboard, new press box, etc)], the Thunder hope to be able to negotiate with St. Paul Public Schools to allow them to upgrade the concessions. The General Manager said he feels that the fans certainly want more than “hot dogs and greasy hamburgers.” All the improvements to the stadium would be a donation to the school district. He hopes the school district will reciprocate and allow the team more control over concessions that are sold at games.

And my favorite part (if you’ve been here awhile, you know why), is that the new owners want to—gasp!—engage in marketing. In fact, they’ve increased the marketing budget from a paltry $20,000 to a more respectable $150,000, which will help cover the cost of a marketing director and a rebranding project:

Along with rebranding will come a new logo. The logo has not been confirmed yet but will most likely be more like the shield the team is currently using on their uniforms. “The logo got changed 6 years ago to what we have currently, and quite frankly, no one in the organization likes it”, Bucholz said. The team has secured a marketing and design firm to give the team several options. They hope to have the new design finished within 6 weeks. He also said, “We are looking for a more European look.”

And would you believe “[t]he team has also partnered with TV, radio and print media organizations”?

My goodness, winter lasts too long…