The Glendale city council voted 4-2 last night to approve a new 20-year lease deal with the Phoenix Coyotes, finally moving ahead with — wait, what’s that, you say? Didn’t the council just vote on this back in June? No, that was the old new lease deal; this is the new new lease deal, which is pretty much just like the old new lease deal except that Glendale will save about $4 million on the $224 million in operating subsidies that it will give the Coyotes in exchange for them continuing to be the Coyotes.
The big news here is that as it’s still 2012, incoming Coyotes owner Greg Jamison now doesn’t have to worry about dealing with new mayor Jerry “Glendale is not your cash register” Meiers, who’d made noise about undoing the whole deal. (Though interestingly, outgoing mayor Elaine Scruggs cast one of two votes last night against the lease deal.) Now all Jamison has to worry about is coming up with the money to actually buy the team — something that continues to elude him despite the fact that he’d only have to spend $170 million, and would be getting more than $200 million in operating subsidies.
Assuming Jamison can pull that off, though, Glendale will finally be able to breathe easy about the Coyotes staying put, and get down to the business of laying off $20 million worth of city employees over the next five years (according to the estimates of interim city manager Horatio Skeete) in order to afford the annual payments to the team. And then more later, presumably, once the backloaded lease payments in the new deal kick in. Is it too late for Glendale to instead find a sockpuppet to buy the team on its behalf? At least they’d save $30 million…
I can’t imagine anyone, in their wildest drunken fantasies, thinking the Coyotes will be in Glendale for the life of this lease. If they don’t go through bankruptcy again sometime in the next decade, I’ll be astonished.
That assumes it gets this far. Jamison has 62 days to get this deal done with an NHL ownership that is in chaos right now due to the lockout. If he doesn’t the new council won’t be passing an extension (and that assumes the new council doesn’t kill it on their installation on Jan 15). To say nothing of a possible referendum and lawsuits. This is far from the last chapter in this saga despite what the PR machines in Glendale/Phoenix would like you to think.
Neil;
The new council may very well have something to say about this deal when they take office. I’m not clear on Arizona law pertaining to such an undertaking, but it is difficult to see how the present council could justify dallying for five months before signing the deal (ostensibly to ‘tweak’ it, if only very slightly) only to do so about a month before they are out of office. Of course, as they are still the elected representatives, they don’t have to justify their appallingly lax and careless behaviour.
The new council can, as I understand it, immediately put this agreement back under discussion and could easily vote to scrap it. I would assume other interested parties are presently looking at ways to challenge a ‘back door’ deal like this as well.
Dan: the NHL lockout could make the Coyotes more attractive to potential investors… they lose far less money when they aren’t playing… I wonder if prospective investors could make their investment conditional on the team never playing again, and the subsidy being maintained…
I feel sorry for the taxpayers of the tiny city of Glendale. They have been lead by complete idiots for too long. Having said that, the city itself deserves everything it gets for being so stupid… I just wish those in power could be charged and jailed for their gross incompetence.
This is just plain stupid.
How the NHL couldn’t have come forward a long time ago to figure out some way to get out of Glendale and save face and money for the city is beyond me. Get an AHL team in there and run concerts and rodeos to generate some extra revenue. Leave the area, maybe pay the city a small sum from the sale of the franchise for their troubles and move this team to a city where the NHL might actually grow.
Right now as it stands is you have your ardent fans committed to spending $60 for tickets that would start at twice that price in almost any other market. Plus you have fans from across town who will be thrilled to go see hockey when someone good is playing, they have the money to go, can find a sitter, it falls on a weekend, and none of the other teams or entertainment options are tempting their consumer dollars. You also have your indifferent fans who might have been transformed into opponents seeing their local services cut back in the name of funding this fiasco. Regardless, they probably won’t make up much of the fan base. And then you have your ardent dissidents who will swear to the All Mighty that it will be a cold day in hell before they set foot in that arena to watch hockey again.
Solid way to build your sport. But then what do you expect from the same people who lockout their players and turn the media and fans against them every 7 years.
This is one of those news stories that threw one more shovel of dirt on my hope that there can be some salvation for pro sports.
Thanks Glendale City Council.
“This is one of those news stories that threw one more shovel of dirt on my hope that there can be some salvation for pro sports.”
There’s $400bazillion in TV money that says you got that shovel out prematurely. No hope for the end of indefensibly stupid acts of corporate welfare? Maybe.