NBA team considers St. Louis

ST. LOUIS -- The Charlotte Hornets are looking for a new home, and Savvis Center owner Bill Laurie apparently is looking into the possibility of bringing them here.

At Laurie's invitation, Hornets co-owner Ray Wooldridge visited last week to discuss the possibility of moving to St. Louis. But it's not clear if Laurie, who also owns the NHL's St. Louis Blues, would allow an NBA team to play at Savvis unless he owns the team.

Wooldridge and Laurie held a "preliminary meeting" to discuss the possible move, said Mark Sauer, president and CEO of the Blues and the Savvis Center.

"Both parties will continue to examine the possibility of moving the franchise to St. Louis," Sauer said Wednesday in a prepared statement. "It is important to remember that the Hornets have many other options."

Those options appear moving to include Louisville, Ky., and Norfolk, Va. Wooldridge recently visited both those cities, and an architect with the arena design firm Ellerbe Becket also visited.

Tuesday, Wooldridge told a committee of NBA owners that he sees little hope of an arena deal that could keep the team in Charlotte, which rejected a new arena in a June referendum.

Laurie, husband of Wal-Mart heir Nancy Walton Laurie, has flirted with the NBA before.

In 1999, he was interested in buying the Grizzlies and moving the team to St. Louis. That deal fell through. Then in March, Grizzlies majority owner Michael Heisley announced plans to move the team, but wanted to remain the majority owner, and the team moved to Memphis instead.

Wooldridge told The Courier-Journal of Louisville that he's "very interested" in pursuing moving the Hornets there as long as the city commits to building a new arena.

"I think Louisville is a very attractive place, and the state of Kentucky is very attractive," said Wooldridge, who owns 35 percent of the team.

Wooldridge said the Hornets would need three basic commitments before proposing a move to the NBA: a commitment on an arena, an agreed site on which to build the arena and the support of local business and political leaders.

Wooldridge and George Shinn own the Hornets and the WNBA's Charlotte Sting. Wooldridge told the newspaper that the Sting could move to Louisville with the Hornets.

Laurie, Sauer and Wooldridge did not return phone calls from The Associated Press on Wednesday. Blues spokesman Jim Woodcock said Laurie and Sauer were out of town and not available for comment.