I have sympathy for people with cancer. I have admiration for doctors. I have neither for anyone "grieving" the demise of a sports franchise.
- There was a known fact going into this: Phoenix is not a viable market for the NHL product.
- There is a known fact coming out of this: Phoenix is not a viable market for the NHL product even if you lob $300MM or so in public subsidies into the mix.
I posted
this the other day but I've never been one to shy away from repeating myself: The city has exhausted sole source procurement on the arena. In fact, they stubbornly attempted it again with JIG after it had already failed with IEH and Hulzinger. Any competent legislative/administrative body would explore competitive bidding for managing the arena. That bidding would likely include a paradigm shift away from purely pursuing sports entertainment. M4B posted the agenda earlier. The council is going to an executive session next week on the topic. That makes sense. I would think it's likely to cover the legal mechanics of the bid process for the freshman council members.
From a hockey fan perspective, I can understand that may be disappointing. I'm sure they'd prefer to endlessly try to drive that square peg into the round hole. But from the city's perspective, it is prudent and it is their fiduciary duty to explore options that are, you know, feasible. The city owned arena facility is currently operated on a tolling version of the NHL AMUL which provides no performance standards or incentives for the league to do anything to program the arena. As a result, there are currently only a handful of non-NHL events booked. The city has to bid this out so their arena asset can begin to perform for them instead of being grossly mismanaged by the NHL. The Pollstar data that KDB brought to the forum is a disturbing snapshot of how the NHL derailed the productivity at the arena. By the way, Glendale obligated themselves to $50MM in fees for that lackluster management effort. Posts by BarneyG and OA have illustrated exactly how desperate the fiscal condition is in Glendale. It would be extremely unwise for the city to ignore that reality to play another round of NHL subsidy roulette.
As for Clark/BeavisPAC, its just Dunning-Kruger on crack. They have no idea what they're talking about and they're incapable of perceiving their own ignorance. The mechanics of governance are completely lost on them. The most obvious example was the asinine Phoenix Monarch conspiracy where the covenants of competitive bidding were somehow suspended so a Council member could guide a contract to a preferred vendor. I probably shouldn't find it so amusing but whatever. I think you captured it perfectly in your post: without all of these boogie men to blame it on, the only thing left is the reality that JIG couldn't raise the necessary funds because the market is untenable.
