The Coyotes are bankrupt AP Photo/Paul Connor
Jim Balsillie, co CEO of In Motion the company that makes Blackberry’s, has twice now failed to land an American based NHL team and move them to Canada. He has tried to purchase the Nashville Predators, and the Pittsburgh Penguins to no avail. However he may be bale to finally land a NHL franchise and return a hockey team to his native Canada.
Jerry Moyes, owner of the Phoenix Coyotes, has allowed his team to file for bankruptcy. Once that happened the NHL immediately stripped Moyes of the ability to continue to run his organization. The team will head to bankruptcy court where it will likely be sold to whoever makes the best offer.
It will now be up to NHL Commissioner Gary Betteman and the NHL board of Governors if they will allow the Coyotes to stay in Phoenix, or return to Canada.
Balsillie has plans to move the team to Hamilton, Ontario. Hamilton is a port city roughly located halfway between Buffalo, New York and Toronto, Ontario. It has a population of around 500 thousand people, which is roughly one million less people then in Phoenix, Arizona. However Hamilton is the center of the most highly industrialized part of Canada. This region is known as the Golden Horse Shoe and the regions total population is around 8 million.
Another key factor in this move is that fact that Phoenix isn’t really known as a great sports town, for many years the only pro team there were the NBA’s Phoenix Suns, Hamilton is a known as a great sports town. It is already home to The CFL’s Hamilton Tiger-Cats, and the CFL Hall of Fame.
It seems that Balsillie has a dream of Toronto Maple Leaf fans driving 30 miles south east to watch a new rival play. It would also be a short 30 mile drive for Buffalo Sabers fans to do much the same. Having three teams this close together will build a natural rivalry, and if the NHL were to place these teams in the same division insuring they would play each other often this could be the recipe for success the NHL so desperately needs.
Of course a move like this one would leave the City of Glendale with a huge hole to fill in it’s nearly one billion dollar project centered around the Coyotes home arena. Jobbing.com arena is but a part of this massive project known as Westgate City Center. It is also the home of University of Phoenix Stadium, home to the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals and host of the 2008 Super Bowl.
The project, spearheaded by millionaire New York architect Ron Elsensohn, Westgate is described as a super-regional destination for shopping, entertainment, commercial office and luxury residential. It was set to eventually feature 8,000,000 square feet of retail space, but the project has been marred by several problems.
It seems when there are not sporting events going on the crowds at the center are weak, add to that a December 2008 shooting in the parking lot, and a hike in the rent and many of the center’s tenants are unhappy. Already the Fox Sports Grill is looking to get out of its lease.
According to the Arizona Republic, the main problem with this project seems to be two fold. First the Coyotes have been rather terrible and thus draw smaller crowds, and the economic slowdown has stalled condo sales at the center. These two factors lead to less foot traffic and thus sales are down for all the tenants. Adding to the problem is the center has only been able to sell about half of its office space which has further reduced the foot traffic projections.
The Coyotes themselves were only able to draw an average of 14,875 fans for the past NHL season. So what we have here is a perfect storm of bad economy, bad hockey team, and a failure of this center to draw in foot traffic.
It seems that these conditions and failure of the Coyotes management to build a winner will now force the team back to Canada where Canadian hockey fans will likely welcome them back with open arms.
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