The Arizona Coyotes are preparing to skate out of town this weekend, less than a week after the team owner tried to sell us a shiny $3 billion hockey entertainment complex in northeast Phoenix. .
The move comes after voters failed to approve a $2 billion hockey and entertainment complex on what is now a Tempe landfill.
And after tying up taxpayers for a hockey facility in Glendale.
The facility was built after fleeing a basketball stadium in downtown Phoenix and trying to win a taxpayer-supported stadium in Scottsdale.
Coyotes' migration to Utah is not surprising
Now the team ends up in Salt Lake City, and all I can think is that they probably could have avoided yet another flashy sales pitch.
Really, how many hockey arenas does a city need?
I don't blame the players or the sport. Hockey has a passionate following here in the desert too.
But in Arizona, this traveling team has been cursed by a series of very bad owners. The threat of secession has been going on for more than a decade.
The team has bounced from one pot to another since being acquired by billionaire Alex Meruelo in 2019, which is never a good thing when you're in the business of ice hockey.
Maybe that's why this week's news isn't quite as chilling…despite the team teasing a possible name change to the Phoenix Coyotes on social media just a week ago is.
Sure, it was great to have all four major professional sports teams in the Valley. But the days of feeling the need to transfer future tax revenue to pay for these palaces are over. Not when you can build something else there and use the tax revenue for actual public purposes.
Glendale is still paying for its last stadium.
I remember the old days when coyotes targeted what was then the old Los Arcos Mall at Scottsdale Road and McDowell Road. How in 1999 Scottsdale city voters gave Ross the green light to negotiate an agreement to build a tax-subsidized sports and entertainment complex at his Alcos Mall.
The then-Phoenix Coyotes balked at immediately proposing a development dramatically larger than what they had proposed to voters and city leaders.
Reasons to vote for Tempe:Shoot down Coyote Arena, Arizona
So the team skated to Glendale, where an enthusiastic city council agreed to borrow $183 million to build an arena in just 22 minutes, and the rest was history.
Except for the tabs, of course. Glendale taxpayers remain guilty of that stupidity.
No one wants to pay for a new NHL stadium.
Meruelo has now struck a deal to sell the team for as little as $1 billion, sending it north to Salt Lake City. He fulfilled his dream of tripling or quadrupling the team's value before knocking it out of the state entirely.
He appears to be the only one continuing with his latest plan to build a shiny new hockey entertainment complex on state-owned land at the northwest corner of Loop 101 and Scottsdale Road.
The NHL seems to have promised that if they can build an arena within five years, they can start a new team.
Does anyone support creating a special taxing district for a hockey entertainment complex that doesn't have a hockey team? What about an owner who offers perks for yet another flip if they acquire another team?
No, I didn't think so.
Contact Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on X (formerly Twitter). @Laurie Roberts.
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