CXLIV - The Tempe era set to begin as ASU opens Mullett Arena

[KevFu]

I understand your point, but your argument is flawed. Half the Valley will still have to travel to games & now the west side fans will get to make the commute & sit in traffic. The notion that more fans live on the east side seems bogus...they're just the ones who bitched the most because the arena was in Glendale. The new location may be a blessing for some fans, but it's not the cure all this market needs.

Not really, though... Glendale to Tempe doesn't create the "same problem just in reverse" because it's not ONE Vally, it's TWO VALLEYS. Tempe is on the east side of "The (West) Valley" that PHX is the center of. The EAST VALLEY is connected to the PHX metro area... VIA TEMPE.

Imagine the two valleys as sides of a bow-tie, and Tempe is the knot.

Because there's mountains northeast and southwest of Tempe, the entire East Valley population has two major routes to get to the West Valley, and like six options to get to the major routes.

North Mesa or West Chandler have to go through one massive interchange where traffic is a cluster F before they can hit I-10 to go to Glendale. But EVERYONE ELSE in the East Valley has two go through TWO interchanges of major highways which are both cluster Fs at rush hour to hit I-10 to go to Glendale.

The West Valley getting to Tempe is cake. Because I-10 goes right there. Tempe is on the West Valley Outer loop. All the cluster F interchanges are EAST or SOUTH of the Coyotes proposed arena and the entire East valley is beyond that for people who live West/North of Tempe.


Phoenix is severely lacking in train/subway mass transit options because they were totally subverted by the auto industry, but the one place Phoenix has a train system is THROUGH TEMPE because of ASU.

I talked about the Uber price because I like to drink (some of my more impassioned/obscene late-night posts make that obvious) and so I want to take a train whenever possible. You can park and ride from Mesa to downtown for D-Backs and Suns games. The entire PHX metro light rail system is based upon Arizona St University, which has 50,000 students and not enough parking spaces! And the new Coyotes arena is a mile from ASU'S campus which has light rail service from Mesa and downtown Phoenix.

It's a fair weather fan-base to begin with & the team has sucked for way too long. I really respect the Yotes fans on these boards & especially the guys in Forum 40. They're loyal, extremely passionate & they deserve to keep their team....the biggest problem is, there's simply not enough of them in the region. 6M people in the metro area, yet they only average 11,000 viewers per game on local TV broadcasts.

And before you tell me I don't understand Phoenix blah blah blah, I lived in Vegas for over a decade & would drive to Phoenix multiple times a year for business. I've been all over the Valley, so I've dealt with the traffic headaches. Plenty of fans from all over the country, including Long Island, travel further than 70 minutes to go see their teams play. I live in Central Connecticut now & it's 125 minutes to MSG or 100 minutes to Boston. I've done both in the past year.

I wouldn't even go so far to call them fair weather. They don't have enough fans. The people who live here, who love hockey... most of us root for someone else. Because the Coyotes gave the market zero reason to switch.

Their baseball team has the exact same problem. It's a road game for the Diamondbacks when the Dodgers, Cubs, Mets, Cardinals come to town. During Interleague series, every transplant from that AL city is in the house. That's going to be a problem for "new markets" when they get teams.

But the way you find yourself rooting for the Coyotes just as much or more than your old team is by going to games, or seeing them do well and take the city by storm. And that simply does not happen when their arena is either an NBA building where half the place can't see one of the goals (when they were downtown), or when they're way the hell out in Glendale and no one can go.

Because the revenue streams from an NBA arena too small for a hockey rink, and "way the F out in Glendale" were so small, they've put a terrible product on the ice. So zero opportunities to win over the market via success.

They've won TWO playoff series, ever, both amid the whole bankruptcy ownership fiasco that's been going on for an eternity. The words "bankruptcy" scares fans away.

NHL franchises do belong where people care about them, and love the sport, and can supported. But the Coyotes have had zero chance in hell of being successful. If they get the arena deal done, they finally have a chance to actually be successful for the first time in their franchise history.

The NHL shouldn't give up on this market. If they get a new arena, and they go to the WCF or SCF and it's still a ghost town, sell 'em and move 'em. But give them that shot first.

 

[KevFu]

Speaking from experience… it will. The I-10 inbound from the west is great until you hit the downtown core. It’s only about 6 miles of outbound traffic to Tempe from that point, and there are options.

Going the other way it’s 15 miles worth of outbound to Glendale.

The worst would be getting there from the Peoria-Surprise area. There’s two options there but the longest route (Loop 101 >> Loop 202) might be the better of the two.

I like visual aides. Articulating what I'm saying is difficult. I hope this helps. Here's the Metro Area. Green and beige are land masses where no one lives. Grey is where people live. The big beige blank space right of center is what creates the "West Valley" and "East Valley" divide. The amount of people living where there's no real winter pushed the market to the southeast: Mesa, Gilbert, Chandler.

You can see the outer loop (101) going around the West Valley. Old Arena at Westgate is right near the Google Maps white box that says "44 min."

The new place is gonna be a mile west of Mullet Arena.

The three red dots I've placed are major interchange traffic cluster F's for the East Valley. The East Valley has expanded further out from downtown Phoenix then the West Valley.

Tempe is the epicenter of the marketplace. The Coyotes proposed arena is ideally situated because it's easily accessible by both valleys.

And FYI, that 202 around the bottom of South Mountain Park and Reserve definitely helps, but opened within the last couple years. It wasn't fully finished when I took to to an Islanders game right before COVID hit.

 

[TheLegend]

I like visual aides. Articulating what I'm saying is difficult. I hope this helps. Here's the Metro Area. Green and beige are land masses where no one lives. Grey is where people live. The big beige blank space right of center is what creates the "West Valley" and "East Valley" divide. The amount of people living where there's no real winter pushed the market to the southeast: Mesa, Gilbert, Chandler.


View attachment 607746


You can see the outer loop (101) going around the West Valley. Old Arena at Westgate is right near the Google Maps white box that says "44 min."

The new place is gonna be a mile west of Mullet Arena.

The three red dots I've placed are major interchange traffic cluster F's for the East Valley. The East Valley has expanded further out from downtown Phoenix then the West Valley.

Tempe is the epicenter of the marketplace. The Coyotes proposed arena is ideally situated because it's easily accessible by both valleys.

And FYI, that 202 around the bottom of South Mountain Park and Reserve definitely helps, but opened within the last couple years. It wasn't fully finished when I took to to an Islanders game right before COVID hit.

Some fans from Gilbert, Chandler and Mesa have said the L202 South Mountain cut the drive to Glendale almost in half. But it was still a 40-45 minute run. IF there weren’t any accidents on the I-10 west of 59th Ave.

 

[Boris Zubov]

Not really, though... Glendale to Tempe doesn't create the "same problem just in reverse" because it's not ONE Vally, it's TWO VALLEYS. Tempe is on the east side of "The (West) Valley" that PHX is the center of. The EAST VALLEY is connected to the PHX metro area... VIA TEMPE.

Imagine the two valleys as sides of a bow-tie, and Tempe is the knot.

Because there's mountains northeast and southwest of Tempe, the entire East Valley population has two major routes to get to the West Valley, and like six options to get to the major routes.

North Mesa or West Chandler have to go through one massive interchange where traffic is a cluster F before they can hit I-10 to go to Glendale. But EVERYONE ELSE in the East Valley has two go through TWO interchanges of major highways which are both cluster Fs at rush hour to hit I-10 to go to Glendale.

The West Valley getting to Tempe is cake. Because I-10 goes right there. Tempe is on the West Valley Outer loop. All the cluster F interchanges are EAST or SOUTH of the Coyotes proposed arena and the entire East valley is beyond that for people who live West/North of Tempe.


Phoenix is severely lacking in train/subway mass transit options because they were totally subverted by the auto industry, but the one place Phoenix has a train system is THROUGH TEMPE because of ASU.

I talked about the Uber price because I like to drink (some of my more impassioned/obscene late-night posts make that obvious) and so I want to take a train whenever possible. You can park and ride from Mesa to downtown for D-Backs and Suns games. The entire PHX metro light rail system is based upon Arizona St University, which has 50,000 students and not enough parking spaces! And the new Coyotes arena is a mile from ASU'S campus which has light rail service from Mesa and downtown Phoenix.




I wouldn't even go so far to call them fair weather. They don't have enough fans. The people who live here, who love hockey... most of us root for someone else. Because the Coyotes gave the market zero reason to switch.

Their baseball team has the exact same problem. It's a road game for the Diamondbacks when the Dodgers, Cubs, Mets, Cardinals come to town. During Interleague series, every transplant from that AL city is in the house. That's going to be a problem for "new markets" when they get teams.

But the way you find yourself rooting for the Coyotes just as much or more than your old team is by going to games, or seeing them do well and take the city by storm. And that simply does not happen when their arena is either an NBA building where half the place can't see one of the goals (when they were downtown), or when they're way the hell out in Glendale and no one can go.

Because the revenue streams from an NBA arena too small for a hockey rink, and "way the F out in Glendale" were so small, they've put a terrible product on the ice. So zero opportunities to win over the market via success.

They've won TWO playoff series, ever, both amid the whole bankruptcy ownership fiasco that's been going on for an eternity. The words "bankruptcy" scares fans away.

NHL franchises do belong where people care about them, and love the sport, and can supported. But the Coyotes have had zero chance in hell of being successful. If they get the arena deal done, they finally have a chance to actually be successful for the first time in their franchise history.

The NHL shouldn't give up on this market. If they get a new arena, and they go to the WCF or SCF and it's still a ghost town, sell 'em and move 'em. But give them that shot first.

Like I said, I don't need a lesson in Phoenix geography or the traffic nightmares the valley presents. I know it's a horror show. However, the building was sold out in Glendale when the Yotes had their run in 2012, so people were willing to travel for a winner.

The Cardinals, D-backs & Suns have proved time & again what a fair weather fanbase they have. I'm not using the term to be offensive, it's just a trait of most cities & fanbases of the Southwest with the exception of the Raiders & the Lakers. The lifestyle out there doesn't have pro sports ingrained like we do on the east coast. Out west, people would much rather be outdoors enjoying the weather, & I don't blame them. Who wants to show up to see a shitty hockey team on a Sunday afternoon when they could go play 18 holes in January? Or go to an Angels game when the beach is calling. As you said, with so many transplants in Phoenix, they didn't grow up with the local teams, so they're not invested & their interest is basically in passing. All of which makes the arena location irrelevant, IMO, if they can't finally build a winner.

To repeat, the fans they do have are extremely passionate & have had more shit dumped on them than anyone should have to endure. It's not a secret why many of them chose to bail over the past decade due to owner incompetence & uncertainty. It's one thing to stop spending your money on tickets or forego the commute to watch the team lose, but when the TV ratings are that weak, it's telling of something much larger. They simply don't have enough fan interest in the metro area. I'm not sure how a new building fixes that without a prolonged run of success.

When the Tempe arena has been open for a few years it will be extremely interesting to finally discover if the location was actually the problem or when the shine wears off, will tickets revert to Glendale level pricing on the secondary market? Only time will tell.

 

[aqib]

To somewhat add to what MNN said…. Minnesota was the original destination.

After the Minnesota plan fell apart the Jets had no place to go. Bettman needed to find a home in short order and he knew Phoenix Suns owner Jerry Colangelo from his days as an assistant commissioner in the NBA.

So it wasn’t a matter opportunity as it was to find a quick solution.

I don't know why Nashville wasn't a consideration at that point. The Nashville Arena was ready in 96. The city offered offered $20 million to the Devils the year before. Considering Burke/Gluckstern paid $68 million, $20 million would have been a nice payday

 

[DaGap]

Never had an issue going from Mesa to Westgate for any hockey game. Still took me 20 minutes less that from Sky Reach to my house not to mention minus 30 and bs snow storms.

 

[WeaponOfChoice]

Never had an issue going from Mesa to Westgate for any hockey game. Still took me 20 minutes less that from Sky Reach to my house not to mention minus 30 and bs snow storms.

bUt yoU Don'T uNDerStaNd!

 

[CHRDANHUTCH]

I don't know why Nashville wasn't a consideration at that point. The Nashville Arena was ready in 96. The city offered offered $20 million to the Devils the year before. Considering Burke/Gluckstern paid $68 million, $20 million would have been a nice payday

because Nashville had already been approved to start the Predators, perhaps.....

 

[TheLegend]

bUt yoU Don'T uNDerStaNd!

What’s to understand? That some people are willing to make a drive like that?

I made that same trip going the opposite direction 5 days a week for 7 years. Happened to be my commute to work.

So?

 

[aqib]

because Nashville had already been approved to start the Predators, perhaps.....

they weren't approved for another year...

 

[WeaponOfChoice]

What’s to understand? That some people are willing to make a drive like that?

I made that same trip going the opposite direction 5 days a week for 7 years. Happened to be my commute to work.

So?

We call those people fans. There isn't enough of them in Phoenix.

 

[AZDesertKnight]

Some fans from Gilbert, Chandler and Mesa have said the L202 South Mountain cut the drive to Glendale almost in half. But it was still a 40-45 minute run. IF there weren’t any accidents on the I-10 west of 59th Ave.

I don't know about that.. the drive is still far as hell but it's an easier far as hell. Not enough for me to bring my kid to a game on a weekday, not even close!

 

[TheLegend]

We call those people fans. There isn't enough of them in Phoenix.

You mean YOU call them fans.

I’m sure there are plenty of others who’d disagree.

 

[Tawnos]

I wouldn't even go so far to call them fair weather. They don't have enough fans. The people who live here, who love hockey... most of us root for someone else. Because the Coyotes gave the market zero reason to switch.

Their baseball team has the exact same problem. It's a road game for the Diamondbacks when the Dodgers, Cubs, Mets, Cardinals come to town. During Interleague series, every transplant from that AL city is in the house. That's going to be a problem for "new markets" when they get teams.

But the way you find yourself rooting for the Coyotes just as much or more than your old team is by going to games, or seeing them do well and take the city by storm. And that simply does not happen when their arena is either an NBA building where half the place can't see one of the goals (when they were downtown), or when they're way the hell out in Glendale and no one can go.

Because the revenue streams from an NBA arena too small for a hockey rink, and "way the F out in Glendale" were so small, they've put a terrible product on the ice. So zero opportunities to win over the market via success.

They've won TWO playoff series, ever, both amid the whole bankruptcy ownership fiasco that's been going on for an eternity. The words "bankruptcy" scares fans away.

NHL franchises do belong where people care about them, and love the sport, and can supported. But the Coyotes have had zero chance in hell of being successful. If they get the arena deal done, they finally have a chance to actually be successful for the first time in their franchise history.

The NHL shouldn't give up on this market. If they get a new arena, and they go to the WCF or SCF and it's still a ghost town, sell 'em and move 'em. But give them that shot first.

This problem really can't be understated. It takes pretty much a whole generation of children turning into adults to establish a fanbase in a city new to the sport in order to create any financial stability in a market. Part of that is having a team those kids' parents want to watch and an arena they want to go to. The Coyotes have rarely offered the former, and pretty much never offered the latter to a large segment of the market.

The Panthers largely have had the same problem.

 

[PredsHead]

Not sure if this detailed view of the plan is new or not, but don't think I had seen it.

https://www.tempe.gov/home/showdocument?id=99171&t=638036868835168703

 

[TheLegend]

Not sure if this detailed view of the plan is new or not, but don't think I had seen it.

https://www.tempe.gov/home/showdocument?id=99171&t=638036868835168703

It’s new. (And thanks for posting the link)

It’s the planning commission report for the required zoning change.

It’s also includes the full proposal outline (with graphics) which makes it 78 pages long so it’s going to require some reading.

 

[CHRDANHUTCH]

they weren't approved for another year...

and what does Nashville have to do with Arizona, aqib......was Nashville a hockey market prior to the Predators arrival other than the entertainment/montage of being "Music City, USA", when in fact, the birthplace of Country, is Bristol, VA/TN, not NASHVILLE

 

[aqib]

and what does Nashville have to do with Arizona, aqib......was Nashville a hockey market prior to the Predators arrival other than the entertainment/montage of being "Music City, USA", when in fact, the birthplace of Country, is Bristol, VA/TN, not NASHVILLE

You could simply scroll up and see how the conversation evolved, but I'll make it simple for you:

TheLegend posted about how the team was heading to Minnesota and that deal fell apart so they needed to find a new city in short order. I wondered out loud why Nashville wasn't a consideration given that they had been close to getting the Devils a year earlier and had an arena ready.

 

[CHRDANHUTCH]

You could simply scroll up and see how the conversation evolved, but I'll make it simple for you:

TheLegend posted about how the team was heading to Minnesota and that deal fell apart so they needed to find a new city in short order. I wondered out loud why Nashville wasn't a consideration given that they had been close to getting the Devils a year earlier and had an arena ready.

Nashville isn't the Jets history, you're the one who brought NASHVILLE into the discussion

 

[TheLegend]

and what does Nashville have to do with Arizona, aqib......was Nashville a hockey market prior to the Predators arrival other than the entertainment/montage of being "Music City, USA", when in fact, the birthplace of Country, is Bristol, VA/TN, not NASHVILLE

He was wondering why they didn’t go the Nashville instead of Phoenix. That’s all.

The theory has been Bettman’s relationship with Jerry Colangelo is why the Jets were steered to Phoenix. Southern market expansion or not.

 

[WeaponOfChoice]

You mean YOU call them fans.

I’m sure there are plenty of others who’d disagree.

People would disagree with the fact that other people driving to games from miles away signifies a fan? Uhh okay.

 

[TheLegend]

People would disagree with the fact that other people driving to games from miles away signifies a fan? Uhh okay.

Um… okay… wanna stop moving goal posts around, or just keep beating this dead horse on your own?

From MY pov I don’t see the travel as the biggest deal breaker (and I’ve always held that position), but that’s only me. And I’m not going to judge another person’s “level of fandom” by it, or their wallet.

 

[WeaponOfChoice]

Um… okay… wanna stop moving goal posts around, or just keep beating this dead horse on your own?

From MY pov I don’t see the travel as the biggest deal breaker (and I’ve always held that position), but that’s only me. And I’m not going to judge another person’s “level of fandom” by it, or their wallet.

What goalposts did I move?

 

[TheLegend]

What goalposts did I move?

What's your definition of a fan?? See how that works??

It boils down to this....

Alex Meruelo is the owner of the Arizona Coyotes. Mr. Meruelo wants to build an entertainment district in Tempe, Arizona that will not just allow him to support his franchise, but profit from it.. And he wants to build it primarily using private financing plus some tax relief and a portion of the new taxes the project would generate.

Why? You'd have to ask him, but right now he's repeatedly said it's because he wants to remain in Arizona. Not Houston..... not Kansas City.... not Quebec City..... Arizona. He has no 7-year "remain where you are" commitment to the league, so there's really nothing forcing him to remain in Arizona. But he obviously sees there's enough reason to remain here or he wouldn't be going through all this. And he's already got $40-50 million of his own sunk into this endeavor that he won't get back.

So rather than perpetuate the 'tit for tat' here about what constitutes your person definition of what a fan is, I'd rather pay more attention to how his proposal is going to fly.

 

[MNNumbers]

When is the next Tempe council meeting, and just what is going to be discussed there? And, when is the actual council vote?

After that comes, and we see the entire agreement, we should give a huge shout out to 1CasualFan.