Recent Forum Topics › Forums › The Rams Huddle › JT & Wagoner: Rams Park will be empty in a week
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March 17, 2016 at 1:07 am #40712
znModeratorAlmost gone: Rams Park will be empty in a week
Jim Thomas
There will be no convoy of moving trucks at the end of this month departing Rams Park in Earth City. The team’s physical departure from St. Louis to Southern California has been going on for most of the past two months — gradually but steadily.
And now, it has reached its final days. By the end of this week, the Rams’ business and scouting departments will be shut down in the building.
Before the end of next week — Thursday, March 24 to be precise — the last vestiges of the Rams in St. Louis will be gone. That’s when football operations shut down; in other words, the coaching staff, athletic trainers, equipment staff and video department.
At that point, the building will be empty, and the Rams officially out of St. Louis and en route to Los Angeles.
On Monday, April 4, the Rams open their temporary headquarters in Oxnard, Calif., about 70 miles northwest of downtown LA. In fact, draft meetings start that day.
The offseason conditioning program starts there April 18, and the team will be at Oxnard through the late spring practices known as OTAs in June. Those are the same practice fields the Rams shared with Dallas for joint practices in August.
The Rams can’t hold training camp at Oxnard because the Cowboys still hold their camp there each summer. Instead, the Rams will gather the last week of July at the University of California-Irvine in Orange County, about 45 miles south of Los Angeles.
After training camp, the Rams are expected to set up shop in the Thousand Oaks area for their practice facility for the next two or three years before they finally move into a permanent facility.
In the meantime, the team has been in a strange kind of limbo in Earth City as the facility — which the team has called home since 1996 — gradually empties.
The pictures are off the walls throughout the building. The two glass trophy cases that line the main lobby of the building are empty. The glimmering Lombardi Trophy, commemorating the team’s Super Bowl victory over Tennessee to cap the 1999 season, had been on display in one of those cases.
The positional meeting rooms on the first floor, where Isaac Bruce once met with the wide receivers and Kurt Warner once met with the quarterbacks, etc., are cleared out.
The locker room has been gutted. Even the locker stalls that lined the walls are gone. Weight training equipment remains, but there’s a sign in the weight room stating it will be shut down as of 1 p.m. March 23.
The media workroom is basically empty. Most of the media relations department space has been cleared out as well.
The near wall in the 80-yard indoor practice field is cluttered with containers to be shipped to the West Coast. “Trainers” reads the small sign over one cluster. “Oxnard ‘AV’ ” reads a sign over another.
Near the elevators that lead to the second floor is a makeshift photo-copied picture of Janoris Jenkins, taped to the wall. A little humor to commemorate the monster $62.5 million free-agent contract Jenkins signed last week with the New York Giants.
Upstairs, the long wood bar in what once was the private suite of late owner Georgia Frontiere is gone. Many desks have been cleaned out already on the second floor, where the coaches have their offices and the “non-football” or business side of the organization has its desks.
Many longtime employees either weren’t invited to LA with the team or decided they wanted to stay in St. Louis. Among those not going to Los Angeles:
• Mike Moyneur, vice president for executive services and special projects, who has been with the team 37 years.
• Bill Consoli, director of information systems, who like Moyneur made the move with the team from Anaheim, Calif., to St. Louis in 1995. He has been with the team 27 years.
• Michael Naughton, vice president of finance, who has been with the team 21 years — or since the Rams’ inaugural season (1995) in St. Louis.
• And in the media relations department, media information manager Casey Pearce is not making the trek to LA. He has been with the team six years.
March 18, 2016 at 11:05 pm #40788znModeratorRams aim to be out of St. Louis by end of next week
Nick Wagoner
EARTH CITY, Mo. — There will be no misdirection, no shroud of secrecy and no cavalcade of trucks leaving Rams Park under the cover of night. No, the Rams’ return to Los Angeles will be far more straightforward.
The Rams officially became property of Los Angeles again when the NFL announced their approval for relocation on Jan. 12. But the team’s business and football operations have remained in St. Louis in the time since. That time is almost up, as the Rams intend to be out of their St. Louis facilities by the end of next week.
The move has already begun. The Rams shut down their business and scouting operations Friday and will close down the football operations next week, which will be the final period any sort of Rams business takes place in St. Louis.
The first moving trucks departed Rams Park on March 7 for the nearly 2,000-mile journey to the greater Los Angeles area. Six more trucks have begun the approximately 28-hour journey since, but that movement is expected to pick up next week. The Lombardi Trophy from the team’s victory in Super Bowl XXXIV is among the items currently en route to Los Angeles.
Bruce Warwick, the Rams’ director of operations, estimates that 30 semitrucks, each carrying between 20,000 and 22,000 pounds of cargo, will be required to complete the move.
“All football operations will be shut down next Friday, so that’s when you are going to really start seeing trucks today, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,” Warwick said Friday. “And it’s just going to be a constant, just load and go.”
That “load and go” process will be the result of tireless work from Warwick, who has spent every week since the move was announced trekking between St. Louis and Los Angeles. He spends most of his weekdays on the West Coast, returning to St. Louis for the weekends before flying back out. Although there’s no definitive number yet, Warwick said the team and the moving company will tag about 25,000 items to be moved via those trucks.
To keep track of everything, the Rams and the moving company built an internal website where they can track and monitor everything that gets moved. Those items are tagged, photographed and cataloged so when they are needed again, the Rams have a database that tells them where an item is and where it needs to go.
For now, most of the trucks to move early are taking the Rams’ items to a warehouse in Anaheim. That’s because most of the items that have already departed are not going to be needed for the team’s offseason program in Oxnard or for training camp, which is expected to take place in Irvine. Rams Park has been mostly cleared out; however, some of the modular furniture like the cubicles in the media room will stay behind.
The last trucks to leave will carry things like weight room equipment, which is still needed in St. Louis for players rehabbing from injury, and it won’t be required in Los Angeles until the offseason program begins in Oxnard on April 18. Other trucks, such as those carrying items for business operations, will be needed sooner. The business side is expected to resume in the Agoura Hills area on a temporary basis while the Rams continue to seek a permanent home.
With the business side expected to make two moves, the football side also has three moves to make, including the initial one to Oxnard, followed by training camp in Irvine and then to the anticipated in-season home in the Thousand Oaks area. Modular trailers will be constructed for the football operations in Thousand Oaks.
All of those moving parts are the most difficult piece of the puzzle, according to Warwick.
“It’s going to be tricky for the football side as we move to three different locations in the next five months,” Warwick said. “It’s not like we’re going for a day or two. We have all of our stuff with us that’s not in the warehouse so we’ve tried to be smart as far as how we pack, what we need, putting things in pods and things like that. We can transport from location to location to location so we’re not unloading, reloading and all that other stuff.”
The moving company is also handling the personal moves for team employees, about 20 to 25 of whom will be heading west to begin business operations April 4.
Part of the team’s timeline included figuring out what to take with them. Warwick has long been a stickler for clearing out clutter and has encouraged employees to go through with a yearly purge of non-essential items. Everyday items are also not part of the move.
“It’s California,” Warwick said. “They sell Gatorade out there. They sell staplers. They sell paper clips. Anything that is not essential stuff, we’ll secure it out there.”
The Rams’ leftover items they aren’t taking have been donated to local charities the team has worked with in the past. That includes everything from office supplies to St. Louis Rams branded apparel.
What becomes of the Rams’ former Earth City headquarters remains to be seen. The building and the three practice fields behind it are controlled by the St. Louis Regional Convention and Sports Complex. Some have mentioned it as a possible home for a future Major League Soccer franchise, but no determination has been made to this point.
Before completely moving out, Warwick said the Rams will do their best to do necessary maintenance to the parts of the building that might be damaged by the move.
“We do have some cleanup to do,” Warwick said. “We do have some repairs to do.”
And after that? Facilities manager Lee Martin will turn out the lights on the Rams’ time in St. Louis.
March 19, 2016 at 8:20 am #40792
wvParticipantWell, i wonder if the moving-issues will
affect the won-loss record?Will it affect the play on the field
of the Rams ?w
vMarch 19, 2016 at 10:35 am #40794znModeratorWell, i wonder if the moving-issues will
affect the won-loss record?Will it affect the play on the field
of the Rams ?w
vAh, I see you’re already breaking out the “moving” excuse.
Shouldn’t you save that until after they pick their traditional first round bust?
March 19, 2016 at 1:27 pm #40799
bnwBlockedSo true. lol
The upside to being a Rams fan is heartbreak.
Sprinkles are for winners.
March 19, 2016 at 8:04 pm #40815znModeratorI see you’re already breaking out the “moving” excuse.
Shouldn’t you save that until after they pick their traditional first round bust?
So true. lol
Well actually I was joking.
My real view is that I don’t see how the Rams can avoid going 16-0.
That’s mostly because I view Case Keenum as a cross between the best traits of Jamie Martin and Kenny Stabler.
To quote Harry Truman, this year when facing the Rams the league may expect a rain of ruin, the like of which has never been seen on this earth.
March 21, 2016 at 9:27 am #40860bnwBlockedWeird you dropped ole Harry. I recently returned from his southern white house in Key West.
The upside to being a Rams fan is heartbreak.
Sprinkles are for winners.
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