There is a lot going on right now with Arizona Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo’s campaign to win approval of a $2 billion arena project (and $500 million-ish in tax kickbacks) from voters of Tempe, Arizona. Can I explain it all? Probably not to either your or my satisfaction. Can I provide links to it, accompanied by some half-assed analysis and snarky remarks? Now you’re talkin’!
- The city of Phoenix is suing Tempe over its arena development plans, on the grounds that it violates the contract between Tempe and Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, by … something about building residential units under a noisy flight path. But, I hear you asking, after searching this site to refresh your memory like I just did, wasn’t it just back in December that the airport said it was dropping its opposition and wasn’t planning to sue? Joke’s on you, I guess! Or on Meruelo. Anyway, game on!
- The city of Tempe has, in addition to its planned special election on May 16 to approve three ballot measures needed to approve the arena, apparently added a special election on August 1st to … vote on the exact same three things, what? The city of Tempe website is all “Tempe Town Lake now open for boating” and just whistles and looks away when asked about the two identical elections, so your guess is as good as mine.
If you are interested in some extreme tea-leaf reading, it’s possible that Tempe, spooked by the lawsuit and the level of opposition by rich-guy cosplayers, have a backup plan in case the May vote loses or is invalidated for some reason. Or the two could have nothing to do with each other. It’s 5 am in Arizona right now, so it’s going to be a bit before anyone wakes up and checks their emails to respond to me, so feel free to go crazy with the guesses in comments in the meantime!
Update: Just got word that the second election in August was placed on the ballot by a citizens’ group that wanted to be sure locals would get to vote even if the Coyotes ownership failed to make the deadline for the May vote. Now they’re both on the ballot, but presumably the second vote will be pulled off of it once the first vote is complete. Presumably, anyway — I have no idea what plot twists J.J. Abrams has cooked up for this one.
Phoenix sues Tempe to stop Arizona Coyotes development deal
“Phoenix’s objections had ended abruptly late last year before Tempe decided to send the deal to voters. The short-lived peace was mainly driven by the last-minute inclusion of an “indemnification” promise in the Coyotes’ proposal, according to Sky Harbor official Chad Makovsky.
It essentially required the NHL franchise to defend the airport in court against any excessive plane noise lawsuits filed by new residents on the site. At the time, Makovsky said the airport would no longer “wholeheartedly” oppose the Coyotes deal as long as those promises were kept.
“As it goes to the vote, we’re going to work with both the developer and with the City of Tempe to make sure that the commitments that were made actually come to fruition,” he said in December. “Provided they do, we don’t intend to wholeheartedly oppose this development.”
Makovsky wrote in a news release on Tuesday that “we felt we were very close to a reasonable resolution,” but the negotiations eventually went sour. The reasons weren’t immediately clear.
“After more than a year of meetings and negotiations, we are disappointed that these efforts did not resolve the dispute,” Makovsky said. “We are now left with no other option than to put this in the hands of a judge.””
www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/tempe/2023/03/28/phoenix-sues-tempe-to-stop-arizona-coyotes-development-deal/70058407007/
“…but negotiations went sour…”
Hmmmn. This could be the franchise’s tagline. Or that of it’s perpetually-defending-litigation owner.
After nearly 30 years in the desert they have (almost) built a fan base that will just about fill a 4600 seat arena.
I am quite confused as to why Makovsky (or his superiors) would have even considered entering into any sort of agreement (particularly something open ended like ‘indemnification” – in this case a type of insurance policy in which you have to pay the lifetime premiums in full up front before the insurer agrees to ‘cover’ something. Maybe) with this franchise.
Surely the Phoenix politicians and civil servants cannot be unaware of the catastrophic fate that meets landlords, suppliers, tax collectors, contractors, former players, coaches, sports leagues, concession workers, parking attendants, other elected officials etc etc when dealing with this organization?
This is, of course, the organization that (among a great many others) stiffed Gretzky.
For as intensely unlikeable as he is, Bettman has been far more successful than he’s given credit. But Arizona will linger as a stain on his legacy. A total embarrassment for going on 15 years, bankruptcy, getting evicted (and almost in the middle of a season, for not paying rent) for the simple reason that it’s a better deal for Glendale to do other things there than have subsidized hockey games (creating the risk that other cities will catch on), playing in a college rink, now facing the real possibility that their new one gets voted down and/or stopped by the courts because, again, they have a grifter owner that won’t come through with his promised deal. Oh and the Scottsdale arena was shot down about 20 years ago too. Move this team. Quebec, Houston, Saskatoon, Yellowknife, Mexico City, Brisbane, anywhere.
Ehhhhh no he hasn’t. He’s overseen two completely preventable work stoppages, tv ratings remain weak, they just signed a jersey deal with a company that struggles to print mistake-free t shirts, their tv deal doesn’t even include all games in each team’s home market. There’s about to be a huge disagreement between how revenue is divided and player escrow. The league survives in spite of him, not because of him.
True, so true.
Fair enough, you’re clearly paying more attention to these details. I based my “successful” assertion on the southern/western US expansion being more successful in the long run than it was initially perceived (not universally, obviously Atlanta failed and Arizona has been in a perpetual state of failure for well over a decade) and that he would appear to be making his bosses money (which is a useless metric to us as fans) but I’m more than fine with your overall assessment.
Bettman’s legacy is the NFL doesn’t consider the NHL serious competition. Between the NBA and March Madness the NHL is invisible. Bettman is out of his mind, Wichita? What possible benefit is there to playing an NHL game in the middle of Kansas. Then Bettman ignores Quebec and Halifax.
Is this Tempe Wins tweet, playing the victim card?
Don’t Let Phoenix Bully Tempe!
No matter your position on turning a landfill into a landmark next to Tempe Town Lake, voting no on the three propositions on Tempe’s May 16th ballot sets a dangerous precedent. It supports Phoenix’s hypocrisy of building baseball, basketball and soccer stadiums next to Sky Harbor Airport, along with big residential buildings and other uses – but they say Tempe can’t safely do the same?! Phoenix leaders even tried to recruit the Arizona Coyotes to a site on 7th Street next to the airport. But when the Coyotes said they wanted to be in Tempe, officials at Sky Harbor got angry. We all know what this is. Stop Tempe to protect downtown Phoenix and use the nonsense of the airport to do its dirty work. Enough is enough. Unlike other stadium deals and developments in other cities that are taxpayer funded and receive property tax abatements in the form of GPLETs in perpetuity, including in Phoenix, the Tempe proposal costs taxpayers nothing. Indeed, it results in thousands of new permanent jobs, and hundreds of millions of dollars in new revenues and net benefits for taxpayers.
Don’t support bullies and meritless lawsuits from Phoenix rather than economic and environmental opportunities that can help Tempe fund quality of life services and stop more pollution from a dangerous, unlined landfill on the banks of Tempe Town Lake.
https://twitter.com/Tempe_Wins/status/1641101879085240320
Quebec (city) has:
An arena ready to go.
More than enough fans to fill a building every night.
A rich hockey tradition.
It’s time!
Like all commissioners, Bettman is a mixed bag. He seems a lot better than Manfred. I think it’s silly to get too bogged down in “tv ratings dropping” cuz that’s true across the board. He got them back on espn and good deal with Turner. No sane commissioner is going to grant an expansion team to Quebec City, there’s just no corporate money there. His southern strategy has mostly been successful.
Hopefully Tempe residents vote this stupid arena deal down, I think the brand is so damaged in the valley that nothing can save them there. Let the team move to Houston or maybe Meruelo sells to an Al Davis type who forces his way into the Toronto metro area.
Tempe’s plan for the Arizona Coyotes will be nothing but trouble for Sky Harbor Airport
https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/2022/06/01/tempe-plan-arizona-coyotes-spells-trouble-sky-harbor-airport/9996700002/
People in the valley love complaining about air traffic already. Whenever PHX changes departure/arrival procedures there’s a freak out. Plus there’s this goofball up at SDL
https://www.scottsdale.org/city_news/scottsdale-man-files-over-21k-airport-noise-complaints/article_d753fd76-23c7-11ec-b73a-f784fc623cff.html
It does seem to be a slightly odd hill to die on. But I live in a city that once canceled an entire (mostly dumb) highway because of a fish, so I know that projects can end up getting killed for weird reasons.