A proposal to provide state funds to help pay for a minor league soccer team's downtown Milwaukee stadium is dead.

Gov. Tony Evers' 2023-'25 state budget proposal included $9.3 million for the $45 million stadium.

But a new list of statewide construction projects recommended for funding over the next two years by the Legislature's Joint Finance Committee doesn't include the stadium.

Republicans who control the Legislature have vowed to reduce the proposed spending by Evers, a Democrat. Both chambers of the Legislature are to vote on the budget in June.

“While we are disappointed in the decision, we’re committed to working with the state on future funding opportunities to bring USL Championship soccer to Wisconsin for the 2025 season," said S.R. Mills, chief executive officer of Kenosha-based Bear Development LLC, which is leading the effort.

A spokesman for Mills declined to elaborate on those "future funding opportunities."

The 8,000-seat stadium would be part of the Iron District, a development that initially included an indoor concert venue and hotel on 11 acres west of North Sixth Street and south of West Michigan Street.

But plans for the 3,500-seat concert venue have been changed, with Bear Development instead pitching a smaller events facility.

The stadium would house a professional soccer team that Kacmarcik Enterprises owner Jim Kacmarcik plans to bring to Milwaukee.

The team would play in the second-tier USL Championship League, which Kamarcik hopes to have operating by the 2025 season.

Indeed, Milwaukee Pro Soccer LLC, Kacmarcik's company that would own the team, in May launched a contest involving the public voting on potential team names.

The stadium also would host Marquette University's men’s and women’s soccer and lacrosse teams as well as community events, recreational programs and other athletic uses. Those Marquette teams now play at the university's Valley Fields facility, where they would continue to practice.

In addition, the facility would host "community programming for both youths and adults, and possibly professional women's soccer at a future date," according to the Evers budget proposal.

The stadium would host more than 20 home professional soccer matches, and other events, with an estimated 35% of visitors coming from outside Milwaukee and 10% of visitors coming from outside Wisconsin, the proposal said.

That proposal said the stadium would generate spending by tourists as well as hotel room and sales tax revenues − without specifying those estimated benefits. It also said the project's construction would create hundreds of jobs.

The professional team would create an estimated 50 full-time and 250 part-time jobs, the proposal claims, with additional jobs created if Milwaukee also lands a women's professional soccer team.

Kacmarcik, president of Kapco Inc., a Grafton-based metal fabricating and stamping company, has invested in other sports and entertainment businesses, including serving as lead owner of Forward Madison FC, Madison’s USL League One franchise.

Meanwhile, Bear Development has started work on another part of the Iron District: the 99-unit Michigan Street Commons affordable apartments at the southwest corner of West Michigan and North Ninth streets.

The development site includes an underused office building at 801 W. Michigan St.; another office building that houses Marquette University's Social Skills Assessment Intervention and Learning Center at 525 N. Sixth St., and several vacant lots − including the site of a recently demolished former Ramada Hotel.

Tom Daykin can be emailed at tdaykin@jrn.com and followed on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee's soccer stadium won't be getting $9 million in state cash