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His potentially $23 million "gift to the state" remains on unstable ground. But that didn't stop Real Salt Lake owner Dell Loy Hansen from voicing his take on the current state of the planned minor-league stadium at the Utah State Fairpark Wednesday evening on RSL's flagship radio station, ESPN700.

The Tribune reported on Feb. 12 that the stadium deal agreed upon by Hansen and the Utah State Fairpark board — which remains contingent on the Utah State Legislature extending the non-profit group's lease on the grounds — took a step backward. A Natural Resources budget committee voted down on the proposal last week on the state signing a 50-year lease. Legislation was passed in 2010 to allow up to a 50-year lease extension, however it was never issued. The current lease is set to expire in 2017.

Hansen and the Fairpark need the extension in order to make the deal official and begin construction on the 8,000-seat stadium for RSL's incoming USL club, Real Monarchs. It was expressed last week that some members are worried that a long-term stadium deal could lock the state into higher, more long-term subsidies of the Utah State Fair and its grounds.

RSL's owner, who has been at the forefront of pushing for this new deal since Aug. 2014, said Wednesday that a number of politicians and political leaders have called asking what they can do to help.

His response?

"We're hiring no lobbyists," Hansen said during his interview with Bill Riley and Sean O'Connell. "There's some friction between the house and senate, but we're not lobbying. If they want the gift, we'll move forward."

Hansen has vowed to pay the substantial costs of the potential stadium in their entirety.

"The offer's very good. I've had a lot of feedback from in particular the senate side, being very anxious to see this happen," he said. "The bigger question, though is, you need to support the whole Fair for us to make that kind of investment and build a great stadium and then watch everything around us deteriorate isn't going to make sense, so we're listening very carefully to the legislature and the state to see what commitment they have to making it a viable State Fair. We believe that's very, very possible and it should, but they've got budget constraints, you've got urban, rural, it's the legislature, it's democracy … what'll come out of it, we're going to watch, so we've kept our commitment on the table that we're going to go forward."

If theoretically the State Legislature decides to not extend the Fairpark lease, Hansen said there have always been other options for the future home of the Monarchs.

"And we've got some very good options if this doesn't work," he explained. "It's not a threat, it's not anything other than this is a gift, if they want to move forward … Obviously when this friction came up, we got a lot of phone calls. There were options and there's even more options now … there will be a minor-league stadium, we believe, in the [Salt Lake] valley. Hopefully it's at the Fairpark, that's how we look at it."

Monarchs president Rob Zarkos spoke to the Tribune Wednesday regarding the uncertainty of the Fairpark deal. He echoed Hansen's comments of the club not lobbying or seeking help from any legislators.

"To be fair, we've stood back because we thought it was a very good proposal and we don't want to get involved with politicizing it more than it is," Zarkos said. "We've been called in to talk to a couple committees, we've done that, but we're not engaging any lobbyists, we're not have any legislatures fight on our behalf."

Ideally, he said, a decision will be made soon so, if necessary, other options can start to explored.

"If it's not something that they want right now and they don't know what they're going to do with the Fair, we get it, we just need to know sooner than later what their direction is," Zarkos said. "As Dell Loy has said numerous times, we've had multiple offers from in-state and outside-of-state, we just haven't pursued them because this was the focus and his goal for the Fair. We're still working with those [Fairpark] guys … We're going to keep moving forward until either we can't come to terms that are agreeable or that the state comes back and says it's a no-go right now."

When asked if any specific alternative options have been explored for the minor-league stadium, Zarkos said, "We don't have anything concrete right now. I couldn't even speculate."

With the Fairpark deal hanging in the balance, Hansen said the likely scenario would be — if the lease extension is granted — that the Monarchs play their 2015 season and half of their 2016 season at Rio Tinto Stadium in Sandy before moving into the stadium west of downtown Salt Lake City.

-Chris Kamrani

Twitter: @chriskamrani