Earlier this evening, a possible name as a potential new owner for AC St Louis of the USSF Division-2 (NASL Conference) was seemingly prematurely released by Inside Minnesota Soccer. A post on the blog site was apparently created featuring the identity of a replacement owner as local real estate venture partner Ryan Woods, but has since been removed.
An accompanying tweet via the site's Twitter account @MinnesotaSoccer has also since been removed from the web, but traces of the blog post can be found in a Google search. Both are available below.
Woods heads Gateway Real Estate Partners and is with Lee & Associates Property Management. He is currently in the midst of brokering a large real estate development project in the area that has been slow to get off the ground due to financial and legal hurdles. Part of the project is reliant on the condemnation of, ironically, a construction company in the area, but the ownership of the business won a court order in January preventing the St. Louis County Circuit Court from utilizing a condemnation action against Waterhout Construction Co. As reported by the St Louis Business Journal... "Bell, who owns Waterhout, requested the appellate court action Dec. 22, claiming Richmond Heights no longer has the right to take the property for redevelopment since the city no longer has a valid redevelopment proposal, a statutory requirement of the Tax Increment Financing (TIF) Act [Full article]."
In June, the St Louis Business Journal, updating several projects in the region, referred to the Gateway project, which was slated to begin in June according to its plans a year prior, as "progressing slowly" and stated that... "Randy Lipton, president of the Lipton Group, a real estate, investment arm of the site's owner Lipton Realty Inc., 'could not comment on any of the buyer's potential development plans' and that Woods did not return calls for a comment [Full article]. "
Another update in August reported that Woods was partnering with Chris Dornfield in relation to the project [article]. The article states that Dornfield was an employee of Go Fig, Inc., a company that built nearly 20 Lipodissolve centers across the country, but declared bankruptcy and left contruction debts unpaid. [article].
In addition to the bankruptcy issues, Lipodissolve was accused of posting fake reviews of its product/service on RealSelf.com, a site devoted to the discussion of cosmetic treatments. A post on the site regarding the accusation stated that Dornfield, the head of business development, did not follow through on a conference call just prior to the company declaring bankruptcy in which the allegedly fake reviews were going to be discussed.
Returning to Woods, an August 2009 post on the WVHooligan.com blog site discusses a report from St Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Tim Logan that features the discussion of two different stadium projects, one by Woods and the other headed by Jeff Cooper, the first and reportedly current owner of the AC St Louis team. The original Logan report is no longer available online, but excerpts are available in the blog post. Among the excerpts is a quote from Cooper in which he says that Woods had approached him regarding his Hadley Township plan, but said he preferred to remain with the project in Collinsville.
As it appears Woods, and Dornfield, are middle men brokering the real estate venture, it is unclear if either or both of them are capable of meeting the recent financial standards set by the US Soccer Federation for a division two league.
More Gateway Real Estate Partners articles by the St Louis Business Journal [+]
Inside Minnesota's Report Remnants...
Google Search:
News for ryan woods st louis
Ryan Woods Making Bid to Purchase AC St. Louis - 1 hour ago
by Brian Quarstad IMS has confirmed with numerous reputable sources that St. Louis resident Ryan Woods is making a bid to purchase the USSF D2 Pro League ...
Inside Minnesota Soccer (blog)
Ryan Woods Making Bid to Purchase AC St. Louis
Inside Minnesota ...
Sep 10, 2010 ... IMS has confirmed with numerous reputable sources that St. Louis resident Ryan Woods is making a bid to purchase the USSF D2 Pro League team ...
www.insidemnsoccer.com/.../ryan-woods-making-bid-to-purchase-ac-st-louis/
Twitter Post:
MinnesotaSoccer 8:44pm via TweetMeme IMS has confirmed that St. Louis resident Ryan Woods is making bid to purchase AC St. Louis from Jeff Cooper. http://bit.ly/dp53U4
A bid to purchase what? What is he actually buying? A team with no future? Obviously, this guy isn't a smart businessman. Another bad owner for the NASL.
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