Editing Busch Memorial Stadium (section)

===Construction===
The baseball Cardinals had played at [[Sportsman's Park]] since {{baseball year|1920}}, originally as tenants of the [[St. Louis Browns]] of the [[American League]].

The Cardinals had long since passed the Browns as St. Louis' premier team, and chafed at having the Browns as landlords. At least as early as the 1940s, the Cardinals had sought to build their own park. Longtime owner [[Sam Breadon]] had set aside $3 million to build a new park. However, he was unable to find any land to do so, and World War II put those plans on hold. By 1947, Breadon faced the prospect of having to pay a heavy tax bill on his stadium fund. Tax lawyer [[Fred Saigh]] convinced Breadon to sell him the team, arguing this would save the Cardinals from this stiff tax burden.

When this tax dodge came to light in 1953 following an IRS audit, Saigh was subsequently charged with tax evasion, and pleaded no contest. Facing certain banishment from baseball, he put the team up for sale. Ultimately, [[Anheuser-Busch]] bought the Cardinals with the specific goal of keeping them in St. Louis.<ref name="TBT">{{cite book |title=The Team-by-Team Encyclopedia of Major League Baseball |last=Purdy |first=Dennis |year=2006 |publisher=[[Workman Publishing Company|Workman]] |location=New York City |isbn=0-7611-3943-5 }}</ref>

However, the Cardinals would have needed a new park in any event. Sportsman's Park had been built in its final form in 1909, and had not aged well. By 1953, even with the rent from the Cardinals, there was not nearly enough revenue to bring the stadium up to code, with city officials even threatening to have it condemned. With this in mind, soon after Anheuser-Busch bought the Cardinals, Browns owner [[Bill Veeck]] sold the park to the Cardinals, who heavily renovated the park and renamed it Busch Stadium, while Veeck relocated his team to Baltimore (rebranding it the [[Baltimore Orioles|Orioles]]).

By the late 1950s, however, the need for a new park could no longer be staved off. Sportsman's Park/Busch Stadium had almost no parking, and the neighborhood around it had gone to seed.

In 1958, Charles Farris, the city's head of development, proposed a new stadium downtown as the core of a plan to revive a 31-block area of the business district. The original design of the stadium called for a baseball-only format, but after the NFL's Chicago Cardinals moved to St. Louis at the end of the [[1959 Chicago Cardinals season|1959 season]], becoming known as the football Cardinals in St. Louis, the design was altered to accommodate football as well: the football Cardinals would share Sportsman's Park/Busch Stadium with the baseball Cardinals.

With support from the [[St. Louis Regional Chamber|local Chamber of Commerce]], the Civic Center Redevelopment Corporation was established in September 1959, and it was given power of [[eminent domain]], which was used to condemn several areas that were rundown or had gone to seed years before, including [[Chinatown, St. Louis|the small Chinatown district]], the [[Grand Opera House (St. Louis)|Grand Theater]] (a historic opera house that had evolved into a [[burlesque]] strip club),<ref>{{cite book|title=Lost St. Louis|author=Valerie Battle Kienzle|year=2017|publisher=Arcadia Publishing Incorporated|isbn=9781439663738|chapter=Grand Opera House|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=j0kvDwAAQBAJ&dq=%22Grand+Opera+House%22+%221963%22+St.+Louis&pg=PT69}}</ref> and various flophouses and abandoned warehouses.<ref name="alookback"/>

Groundbreaking occurred on May 25, 1964,<ref name=fcruoa/> and construction took just under two years. The plan also included parking garages, a hotel (a [[Stouffer Hotels|Stouffer's hotel]]), and office buildings.<ref name="alookback"/> A few years later, it also became the new home of the Spanish Pavilion from the [[1964 New York World's Fair]].<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.ksdk.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=202891|title=May 24, 1969: Spanish International Pavilion Moves to St. Louis|work=[[KSDK]]|location=St. Louis|date=May 25, 2010|first=Kevin|last=Held|access-date=May 18, 2013|archive-date=November 2, 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111102151253/http://www.ksdk.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=202891|url-status=live}}</ref>

The stadium opened on May 12, [[1966 St. Louis Cardinals season|1966]], one month into the baseball season, as ''Civic Center Busch Memorial Stadium.'' However, the "Civic Center" part was rarely used, and most people called it simply ''Busch Memorial Stadium.''