Glendale approves Phoenix Coyotes lease deal, paving way to sale

After discussing a reworked deal a week ago, the new agreement that includes incentives and penalties. It also has lower yearly payments in the early years of the 20-year deal, according to AZCentral.com.

Glendale mayor Elaine Scruggs and councilwoman Norma Alvarez voted against the deal, saying the financially-struggling city could not afford the deal. Scruggs went as far as saying she supported police and firefighter uniforms, not that of a hockey team.

If the Coyotes, the city council and Jamison are able to reach an agreement, it could lock in a 20-year lease for the team to remain in the Phoenix area. The proposed deal would pay Jamison and his investors $320 million over the course of the lease. This could be enough for his group to purchase the Coyotes from the NHL.

There are plenty of opponents to keeping the Coyotes in Glendale. Mayor Elaine Scruggs once supported keeping the franchise around, although she is now against the deal due to the budget restrictions facing the city. And with concerns surrounding the team’s profitability, some wonder if they are destined to be relocated down the road.

The NHL and the City of Glendale plan on extending the agreement that sees the league running Jobing.com Arena for 30 more days, as Greg Jamison attempts to purchase the Phoenix Coyotes, the Phoenix Business Journal reported on Monday.

Jamison has been trying to purchase the team from the NHL and keep the team in the Phoenix area. The NHL took over the Phoenix Coyotes after the previous owner Jerry Moyes declared bankruptcy in 2009. The latest 30-day agreement between Glendale and the NHL expired at the end of September.

In late August, the NHL gave Jamison more time to work out a lease agreement and finalize the purchase of the team. It appears Jamison has worked out any issues with the lease, as interim Glendale City Manager Horatio Skeete said he will present the “final agreed-upon restructuring terms” to officials on Tuesday. The City Council will still have to vote to approve the deal.

This is just the latest in what has been a long up-and-down process for Jamison. He agreed to a lease agreement in June, and it was approved by city leaders, but the city council directed Skeete to renegotiate the deal two months later. Jamison has also had financing issues as he tries to securing the funds needed to purchase the team from the NHL.

Scott Burnside’s report has more on lease agreement:

Jamison’s fellow investors haven’t been identified yet, but some are members of the Ice Edge Group, a collection of North American businessmen originally trying to purchase the Coyotes.

Jamison negotiated a 20-year, $324 million deal with the city of Glendale this summer, but now the city is looking to rework the deal. Glendale officials approved a lease on the Jobing.com Arena with Jamison in June, but have been waiting for him to finalize his purchase of the team from the National Hockey League.

Julie Frisoni, a Glendale spokeswoman says the city will not finalize the deal until Jamison purchases the team and some amendments have been made to it.

Officials in the city of Glendale say the deal is on hold until Jamison holds up his end of the agreement by purchasing the Coyotes from the NHL. They already approved the leasing of Jobing.com Arena back in June, though the city was expected to get Jamison an updated draft on the proposal on Wednesday night.

Fox 10 Phoenix reporter Jude LaCava recently caught up with Jamison, asking if all the time and effort to buy the team is worth it. Here is what Jamison had to say:

Jamison already has a deal in place with the city of Glendale, but he is still working to meet the NHL’s asking price of about $170 million.

Now, with the collective-bargaining agreement’s expiration upcoming on Sept. 15th and a lockout seeming more than likely, the Coyotes have two hurdles to cross before solving the Doan issue and becoming active players in free agency.

Phoenix GM Don Maloney has said that the CBA has made the entire league quieter than normal and stated that he “doesn’t foresee a lot happening around here right now.”

The agreement originally expired July 1, 2012, and has been extended for 31 days once already, according to Sportsnet, and will be extended again through Aug. 31. Reports earlier in the week indicated that Jamison was $20 million short of the NHL’s $170 million asking price for the Coyotes. Glendale has already agreed to a lease agreement with Jamison on the city-owned arena in which the team plays its home games, but that agreement cannot go into effect until Jamison finalizes his purchase of the club.

For more on the sale situation in Phoenix, stick with our StoryStream and check in with SB Nation Arizona and Coyotes blog Five For Howling.

According to the Phoenix Business Journal, folks close to the situation in Arizona are becoming increasingly nervous about Jamison’s ability to gather the funds required to purchase the team. The NHL, which has controlled the team since purchasing them out of bankruptcy in 2009, is attempting to sell the club to Jamison for somewhere around $170 million. Jamison has never publicly stated who his partners are in attempting to purchase the Coyotes.

The City of Glendale has approved a lease agreement between Jamison and Jobing.com Arena, the City-owned home of the Coyotes. The deal was challenged by several local residents, but all attempts to push the decision to the fall ballot have failed.

City of Glendale, Ariz., officials argue that the deadline came Monday, 30 days after they approved a lease agreement with Jamison, while the opponents of the deal argue that the deadline is July 16, 30 days after they began their campaign to gather signatures. Phoenix Business Journal and The Arizona Republic report that the city likely has election law on its side and that the deadline has indeed passed, but that a court fight could decide.

Should the referendum hit the ballot, it will drag the Coyotes sale process into the 2012-13 hockey season. It’s also expected that voters would turn down the sale, pushing the NHL back to square one. Should the referendum stop in its tracks, however, the sale to Jamison could be finalized rapidly, a source of optimism for Coyotes fans.

A Glendale law requires citizens to get signatures from 10 percent of the voting public to get a referendum on a general election ballot. Sunnucks wrote on July 6 that Joe Cobb and Ken Jones, organizers from the Phoenix-based Goldwater Institute that is behind the referendum, were told that the 2010 turnout of 11,309 voters meant that they would need to get only 1,131 signatures, down from the 1,800 the city is holding as the correct number. But Jones told Sunnucks on Monday that the magic number may be closer to 1,600.

In any case, it’s unclear how many signatures are still left to collect, and if Cobb and Jones will end up getting them in time. Summer temperatures in Glendale have made the process arduous, and the interpretation of another rule about how soon signatures must be collected after a city council measure passes — it was approved at a meeting on June 8, but may have taken several more days to be legally passed — may close the initiative’s window.

There are still some obstacles that remain with the deal however, as Jess Root of SB Nation Arizona points out:

The NHL still has the matter of officially announcing the approval of Greg Jamison as the new owner as well, since the team is currently run by the league.

Goldwater had hoped to block the vote on the grounds that the City had not provided proper documentation to the public regarding the sale, a contention the City denied. The Court agreed and after a day of deliberations and public questions, the Council will vote on the proposed $325 million lease agreement Friday afternoon.

The agreement is not a deal for the team, rather an agreement between the City and prospective team owner Greg Jamison to operate the City-owned Jobing.com Arena, home of the Coyotes. According to the Arizona Republic, the 20-year lease agreement will pay Jamison’s group $325 million to operate and make improvements on the arena.

“I spoke to Greg Jamison early [Wednesday],” Bettman said. “He continues to do the two things he needs to do to secure the future of the Coyotes where they are in Arizona: One, working to conclude a set of documents with the City of Glendale on the building management situation. And he continues to put his equity together.

“The City of Glendale I believe next week is supposed to vote on the management agreement. Once that’s in place, I think Greg will be able to conclude hopefully the finalization of his equity raise.”

The Associated Press via SI.com reports that the sale is unlikely to be bogged down in red tape and should be completed sooner, rather than later.

Diehard Coyotes fans are sure to be thrilled at new ownership taking over soon and keeping the team in Arizona. The only thing that would make it better would be hoisting a Stanley Cup to go along with it.

For more on the Coyotes, visit Five For Howling and SB Nation Arizona.

Nothing has been finalized yet, but the NHL has reached a tentative deal to sell the Coyotes to a group led by Greg Jamison. The Coyotes are currently losing money in Arizona, but Jamison plans to keep them in their current home and find a way to make them profitable. NHL commissioner Gary Bettman is holding a press conference on Monday, during which he is expected to announce that the league is in final negotiations with Jamison for the team’s sale.

For more on the sale situation in Phoenix, check in with SB Nation Arizona and Coyotes blog Five For Howling.

Glendale owns Phoenix’s home arena, Jobing.com Arena, and has been heavily involved with the Coyotes since the NHL bought the team out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2009. The NHL is seeking $170 million for the Coyotes, though a lower price could be negotiated.

Jamison’s group has been close to finalizing a deal to purchase the Coyotes before, only to lose some investment money prior to the purchase. Local groups helped throw a monkey wrench in the sale of the Coyotes to a Chicago investment executive.

According to Lisa Halverstadt of The Republic, there will be at least one deal up for public review in April. Any potential sale must come soon if the team hopes to remain in Arizona.

According to the NHL, at least two other buyers are interested, although no details are currently available. All interested buyers are reportedly interested in keeping the team in Glendale.

So, has there been any progress in sale negotiations? It doesn’t appear that way, but according to a report in the Arizona Republic, there are at least three groups in the running to purchase the team and keep them in Glendale. Who are they?

It was reported by multiple sources in February that Jamison’s group was close to a deal, but there’s been nothing but curious radio silence on that front since. The recent report in the Republic states that Jamison’s group is also interested in purchasing Jobing.com Arena from the City of Glendale, which likely complicates the deal quite a bit.

The new arena isn’t any indication of the NHL agreeing to put a team in Quebec City, though, according to the report published by TSN on Monday morning.

It’ll be interesting to see where this goes, but $400 million is quite a bit for an arena without a professional sports franchise.

The city of Saskatoon is interested in becoming the next new home of the National Hockey League. Seattle, Quebec City, Kansas City (and perhaps even Houston and Las Vegas) welcome them to the club.

Over at TSN, Bob McKenzie reports that there have been “expressions of interest” from individuals or groups that would like to purchase and relocate an existing NHL franchise to town. A team would play in the Credit Union Centre, the current home of the WHL’s Saskatoon Blades, a building that seats 15,195 for hockey following renovations in 2011.

Via Phoenix Business Journal, reporting essentially the same details that were reported by Dave Zorn of Metro Networks Arizona late last week, the NHL is looking to sell the team to Jamison for somewhere in the ballpark of $170 million, “in part to help the value of other franchises.” The NHL purchased the team out of bankruptcy three years ago for $140 million.

As it stands without a sale, the City of Glendale could be on the hook for a third $25 million payment to the NHL to both cover the Coyotes’ operating losses and operate the City-owned Jobing.com Arena. Or, the NHL could sell the team to one of the many interested buyers that would love to relocate them to another market.