PHOENIX -- The city's western suburbs took a giant step toward economic parity with their rivals to the east when the state Tourism and Sports Authority agreed Thursday that Glendale is the best site to provide a home for the Arizona Cardinals and the Fiesta Bowl.

The board voted 7-1 to make Glendale the preferred site for a $350 million, air-conditioned football stadium capable of hosting political conventions, Super Bowls, NCAA Final Fours, trade shows and concerts. That design capability hurt Mesa's once-preferred bid, because nearby residents feared the noise and activity would degrade their quality of life.

Glendale's site is rural, although proponents predict enormous growth around a sports complex of the football stadium and a new hockey arena for the Phoenix Coyotes.

"Looking down the road 10 years, this site is going to be the center of the Valley,'' board member C.A. Howlett said.

The TSA unanimously approved Mesa as a backup site -- a hedge in its late rush to get a deal done.

The authority has until Sept. 12 to deliver binding documents to the governor and attorney general showing that it has completed its two-year mission of finding a place to build the stadium.

The site is just off the Loop 101 freeway south of where the Coyotes' arena is rising from the earth.

The Coyotes hope to move out of the America West Arena in downtown Phoenix and occupy their building in late 2003. The Cardinals, who have played in college-owned Sun Devil Stadium since their move from St. Louis in 1988, hope to kick off the 2005 season in a building of their own.

The decision was foreshadowed two weeks ago, when TSA president Ted Ferris said the Glendale site had unparalleled advantages.

This week, the Fiesta Bowl and Cardinals, both headquartered in Tempe on the east side, threw their backing behind Glendale.

Cardinals vice president and general counsel Michael Bidwill, the team's point man in the search for a new home, was touched by a standing ovation Wednesday night at a meeting in Glendale, but said the Cardinals were swayed by the site's potential, not emotion.

"There were no contingencies. The Mesa site had a lot of contingencies,'' Bidwill said.

Fiesta Bowl director John Junker alluded to reports that staying in Sun Devil Stadium might hurt his bowl's chances of remaining on the top tier of the Bowl Championship Series. This season's BCS title game will be played in Tempe on Jan. 3.

"This is life and death to the Fiesta Bowl,'' Junker told the board.

The plan calls for the Cardinals to buy 180 acres of land from two longtime Glendale families for $18.5 million.

Twenty-eight acres -- the stadium's "footprint'' -- will go to the TSA, and the other 152 to a city Community Facilities District with the authority to sell bonds and use them to pay for infrastructure. The district would collect a $4-per-ticket parking fee, plus sales taxes generated onsite, to retire the bonds and repay the Cardinals for the land.

The stadium itself is to be funded primarily from a hotel-motel tax and rental car surcharge in Maricopa County approved by voters in November 2000.

A ticket surcharge was an integral part of Tempe's second attempt to land the stadium, a late bid that emerged July 29. But supporters couldn't get past concerns about a lack of parking spaces and traffic congestion, and the Tempe City Council backed out of the running Aug. 16.

Glendale's site is the third to wear the official seal of the TSA, which opted first for a Tempe proposal it had to abandon because of proximity to Phoenix's Sky Harbor International Airport.

After another call for proposals, the TSA awarded exclusive bargaining rights to Mesa's site on April 30. The exclusivity lasted until June, when two groups delivered enough signatures to force a public vote Sept. 10, two days before the TSA's Legislature-set drop-dead date.

Mesa councilman Mike Whalen acknowledged that citizen opposition hurt his city's chances.

"Glendale, what you've put together has been our dream, but we were not able to do that,'' Whalen said. "We met with controversy from day one.''

Had the TSA failed to come up with a viable site, voters would have been asked in November whether to disband it and give up on the idea of a publicly funded stadium.