So the Arizona Coyotes play their first game Friday at their teeny-weeny temporary (?) home arena, and team execs and their developer partners took the opportunity on Saturday to talk about their plans for a new less-teeny-weeny arena in Tempe for the first time since June. Let’s see what they had to say!
(Yes, the Tennessee Titans and Nashville Mayor John Cooper are also holding a press conference today at 2 pm ET to talk about progress in their own stadium plans. Let’s cover the news once it’s actually happened, shall we?)
Damn parenthetical got in the way of my narrative flow there — anyway, let’s see what Coyotes officials had to say at their “neighborhood meeting,” according to ABC15 Arizona:
“We are still in the negotiation phase with the city of Tempe,” said Marina Carpenter, the team’s general counsel.
Sure, okay. This is less “news” than “no news,” but it’s factual. What else you got?
“The aviation component is probably the most muddied situation so my hope is that learning that our building heights are only 120 feet, we’re not impacting flight paths, will give them some ease about the project,” Carpenter added.
This has to do with complaints that the Coyotes’ proposed arena would sit in a flight path to Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport and might require flight patterns to be shifted to over residential neighborhoods. I can’t immediately find confirmation whether 120 feet is shorter than the initial arena plans, but given that airport officials were worrying that 400 feet from roof to plane wouldn’t be enough clearance, trimming off a few feet is probably not going to make a huge difference, but we’ll see.
The team is hoping Tempe will approve the project later this year.
Hope is a wonderful thing.
They also hope to pay for the entertainment district using some of the sales tax generated in the area and by saving money by not paying property taxes.
This is an actual detail! Not a new detail, mind you, as we’ve known about the sales and property tax kickbacks for over a year now. Presumably it’s still in the “negotiation phase.”
And that’s it. I guess it’s good that only one Arizona news outlet seems to have dignified this meeting with an article, but didn’t any of the ABC15 reporters — or any other reporters who showed up and then decided it wasn’t worth writing up — think to ask any followup questions? Like “How much sales and property taxes?” or “Have you made any progress in the last year?” or “Is the height of a 12-story-building really low enough to be okay to put in a flight path?” Should you have checked in with airport and Tempe city officials to see if they’ll comment? Shown how Coyotes officials responded to any questions from the audience? Explained what exactly is happening in this rendering where everyone seems to be standing at an angle? I know it was the weekend, Patrick Hayes, but you updated this story at 1:24 am on Sunday, it’s not like you scribbled some notes at the press conference, slammed them into your CMS, and hit “publish”?
So I guess I retract the bit about only reporting the news once it’s happened, at least unless we redefine “news” as “some higher-up with a major corporation opened their mouth briefly.” (Which does seem to be many news outlets’ criterion most days.) Here’s hoping Cooper and the Titans execs have something more substantive to say, or this is going to be one sad news week around here.
See, the thing is, TV news outlets only really care about two things: filling the available time, by whatever means necessary, and getting clicks.
As long as content is on the television and the time is filled, great. And once you have clicked, the fact there is nothing there of substance is on you, news consumer. You clicked, too bad.
When it comes to sports teams, and local government issues, the lack of hard-hitting, in-depth reporting disappears.
I fully expect the Tempe council will completely and utterly ignore past transgressions, and approve this debacle of a development, in a recessionary environment.
Does Tempe have it’s own newspaper? That’s who should be covering this. But alas, the economics for those kinds of papers are not favorable.
I can see why news outlets that cover all of Phoenix or all of Arizona don’t really care about this. It’s clear that the market overall doesn’t care much about the Coyotes and the problems of one of the many suburbs in the region don’t really amount to a hill of beans.
The coverage of the new arena from ASU’s perspective has been nothing but gushing. I suppose it should be, given that they got more than what they even wanted out of all of this.
And of course, everyone always has to mention Auston Matthews, as if his existence justifies the existence of a money pit franchise in the desert. (Spoiler, it doesn’t).
Until they fix that gravitational anomaly that causes everyone to lean left, the flight path is going to be the least of their worries.
Maybe it was intended as a subtle political comment on the ‘state of the state of Arizona’?
ESPN is reporting that “they have a deal” in Tennessee (not them, obviously. The Titans owners and several government agencies have reached an agreement to give $2Bn or $20Bn or maybe $200Bn to Titans ownership to make everything wonderful and have it rain $100 bills on every single Tennessee resident etc). Details were sketchy, as ever.
Nice, that rain of $100 bills. Here in AZ it will probably rain quarters. Or hockey pucks. Don’t look up!
So … with the Phoenix Suns ownership likely changing, wouldn’t that eliminate a huge hurdle to the Coyotes returning to the downtown Phoenix arena? Wouldn’t that make more sense for nearly everyone involved (except for Coyotes’ ownership)?
Nope.
The Suns arena was recently renovated and the configuration is not conducive for hockey.
That occurred to me too, but I guess that ship has sailed. They’d have to renovate it again and I can’t see why the new Suns ownership would want to do that unless they also owned the Coyotes.
Analysis: Arizona’s first year of sports betting exceeds all expectations
“Of all the sportsbook companies operating in the state, three stood above the rest in getting a piece of the action. DraftKings, FanDuel and BetMGM all took in more than $1 billion in bets in the first 12 months of legalized event wagering in Arizona. DraftKings, which has market access through TPC Scottsdale, the PGA Tour and the WM Phoenix Open, was the most popular app with just under $1.7 billion bet on its platform in Arizona. FanDuel had $1.5 billion bet and BetMGM had $1.1 billion.
SaharaBets, the mobile betting platform connected with the Arizona Coyotes and owned by Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo, took in the least amount of money wagered out of all mobile sportsbooks with just over $461,000. SaharaBets is only operating in Arizona and didn’t start up until January 2022.”
https://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/news/2022/10/20/arizona-sports-betting-grows-quickly.html
I hear Calgary and the Flames are talking new arena again. The Flames are a strong contender for the Cup. This could be a fait accompli with a great season by Flames.
A New Era for Tempe and the Coyotes?
https://www.azcentral.com/story/sports/2022/10/24/coyotes-prepare-tempe-debut-what-know-new-arena-plans/10536129002/
Thanks for that linke. That’s a good overview of the situation.
The airport thing does seem a little dubious, but that doesn’t mean it won’t successfully derail the project.