If there was any doubt about Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton really wanting to build a new arena for the Suns and Coyotes after the last time he said his city needed one to keep its teams (and also, weirdly, to get the Harlem Globetrotters to appear), it should be dispelled once Stanton gives a speech today about doing just that:
According to sources who have reviewed the mayor’s planned remarks, Stanton will outline his vision for building a new taxpayer-funded arena during his fifth State of the City speech. The mayor is scheduled to speak before a crowd of hundreds of business and political leaders at the Sheraton Grand Phoenix hotel in downtown about noon.
Stanton will use his most visible stage of the year to make it clear that he prefers the arena be a joint-use facility shared by the National Basketball Association and National Hockey League teams, those sources said.
The Arizona Republic’s sources didn’t specify how Stanton would begin to pay for this, though they did indicate that the mayor would promise not to raise taxes to do it. Using existing taxes, such as the hotel and car rental tax that is currently paying off the Suns’ current arena, is another story — as, presumably, would be asking for state sales tax kickbacks to pay for arena construction.
As to whether this will be Coyotes CEO Anthony LeBlanc’s promised arena announcement to come by the end of the month, that’s anybody’s guess, though it sure sounds like he’s still trying to see who’ll provide the most lucrative bid:
At the same event, LeBlanc told The Republic that the deal would have to allow for equally shared revenues, in which each team would keep the revenue they generated and that both franchises would share non-event revenues, such as naming rights and advertising. The Suns currently have control over revenue at Talking Stick Arena.
“The Coyotes have had multiple conversations with the city of Phoenix and we continue to have detailed discussions,” LeBlanc said in an earlier statement. “However, as we’ve consistently stated, we also continue to have discussions with other Valley locations. It would be premature at this point to indicate a selection has been finalized.”
LeBlanc also trotted out the standard talking points from the new-arena playbook to practice them on the assembled pols:
The trick for the Coyotes, of course, is to come up with an arena plan that isn’t just lucrative, but is more lucrative than the deal in Glendale where they were getting a mostly free arena plus more than $6 million a year in operating subsidies to boot. It’s possible, just maybe, if taxpayers handle the construction costs and there are enough new revenues to split with the Suns, that it could work out to the Coyotes’ benefit. But you can see why they’re busily playing three different sites off against each other to get the best deal — when “we need a new arena and for somebody to cover all our operating losses because nobody comes to our games because we’re a hockey team in the freaking desert” is the agenda, you need all the leverage you can get.
So I wouldn’t expect a Coyotes announcement in the next two weeks, really, not when there’s still more hardball to be played. Talking about it incessantly to get people all excited about where an arena will go instead of why the Phoenix area should be building its third arena in 25 years, though? That’ll definitely happen.
