You have to look at the whole situation.
The City of Glendale spent a lot of money on a new arena purpose built for the Coyotes. The Yotes moved in in 2003, signing a lengthy lease (25 years?). But a mere 6 years later the team went into bankruptcy and the lease was broken. The team then demanded, and was given, $25 million per year over two years in subsidies. Later of course is how they came to move which is what you touched on.
I don't want to say who in this whole mess aagued in good faith or not, but what happened in Glendale was far from what the City expected - and yes probably does make it much more difficult for the team to negotiate with other municipalities (although clearly they still can - they did come to a deal with Tempe).
These were all prior ownership groups though. As it stands, the team itself cannot financially be viable in Glendale(unless the owner also owned Westgate?). What is the new owner supposed to do, just bite the bullet and say "well, to make politicians happy, I guess I just have to keep losing money in Glendale". Or, he can go out on his own, using his own money, and build his own district with an arena so he can make money off of it.
Yes, plenty of people here have the delusion that asking for tax breaks is not using his own money, or the district to repay bonds that were going to be used for the landfill cleanup. But guess what, now the City of Tempe is going to be on the hook for that anyways. And EVERY single new build has some kind of tax break as an incentive to build. You'd be foolish to think not.
But hey, let's go support Utah getting a team, even though their taxpayers are going to be on the hook for $2 billion(regardless of how it's set up, I'm just going to use the same verbiage every other person uses). Disregard the fact that if you don't want interest in the team, don't spend money in the district where the sales taxes will take place that will help pay for the deal. The EXACT SAME setup that AM was proposing in Tempe.
Now...for comparison...
this state land is on the north side of the Loop 101...
to the south...
state land was auctioned and won...
by Mayo Clinic...in the final amount of $139 million...for 228 acres...
And...just a little further east...closer to Scottsdale Rd...
HonorHealth...outbid Banner Health...for state land...
in the final amount of $84 million...for 48 acres...
What were the appraised value of those parcels before the auction/final price?
