Charlotte’s window for acquiring a Major League Soccer expansion franchise is closing.

Since submitting a club bid in January, the MLS4CLT camp has been quite quiet—until today. Late this morning the organization announced the launch of MLS4CLT.com, a space designed to encourage community support for professional soccer in Charlotte.

“It’s a platform to let people see kind of what we’re doing, tell the story, and give them a chance to reach out to elected officials and let them know that they want to bring Major League Soccer to Charlotte,” MLS4CLT’s Chief Strategy Officer Mike Burch said. “As we’ve been working through this process, kind of going back to January when City Council asked us for more time, we have had periodic meetings since then, and the timeline that we’ve been working on is once the city was able to address the budget and get that approved, there may be a window for us to start looking at a stadium, and it’s importance for the bid process. That’s a prerequisite for MLS granting a franchise. Once the budget got approved, we started meeting with city council people, and they let us know that one of the big things they wanted to hear is what the public thought about this.”

City Council deferred a vote on providing $43.75 million to repurpose the American Legion Memorial Stadium site after Mecklenburg County commissioners voted 5-3 in favor of funding. Commissioner Dumont Clarke motioned earlier this month to defer the vote from the county’s $1.7 billion budget.

“We’re doing all of this against the backdrop of 11 other cities [including Raleigh/Durham] who are also trying to win one of these Major League Soccer Franchises,” Burch said.

City Council is expected to revisit the matter on July 20—despite indicating earlier this year they would not revisit the subject until at least September—and the commissioners will vote on Aug. 2 regarding funding.

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