Mayor MVP, Katz First Star in Arena Project at LinesMaker

Mayor MVP, Katz First Star in Arena Project

In the end, Daryl Katz proved that he’s still Edmonton.

In the end, the Edmon­ton Oil­ers owner stepped up to do what he had to do to move the down­town arena project a large leap for­ward toward real­ity to keep the team here for the next 35 years.

“They moved quite a bit and we moved some,” said mayor Stephen Man­del of what hap­pened in Gary Bettman’s NHL offices in New York this week.

“Mr. Katz was com­mit­ted to mak­ing a deal. They bent. We bent. I think this is a rea­son­ably fair deal.”

Bettman’s off-Broadway show­down will almost cer­tainly go down as a sig­nif­i­cant moment in Edmon­ton his­tory now as the mayor, Katz and Bettman achieved the goal of get­ting the deal not just back on the rails but on a mono­rail to total approval, as was the mayor’s stated goal going in.

It’s not a done deal. But city coun­cil voted to pur­chase the land Katz had under option by Oct. 21 and to vote on the remains of the “subject-to”s on Oct. 26. If approved, the deal won’t be done until the province comes through with the remain­ing $ 100 mil­lion. But both Katz and the city appear con­fi­dent in that conclusion.

The final vote almost cer­tainly, off what we wit­nessed Fri­day in coun­cil cham­bers, will be 8–5 again, as was the case May 18 when it was first approved — per­haps even 9–4 or 10–3 this time.

As first pro­jected by your cor­re­spon­dent from New York, it was a the con­ces­sion by Katz to waive the non-compete clause with North­lands for Rex­all Place which was key to the deal.

To make that work, the city got cre­ative by putting up $ 2 mil­lion a year for 10 years of spon­sor­ship money with the Oil­ers for on-ice adver­tis­ing, board signs, etc. to pro­mote Edmon­ton in a deal sim­i­lar to the pro­mo­tional money involv­ing the Edmon­ton Indy and the National Finals Rodeo.

Play of the day

Clearly, drop­ping the non-compete clause, though, was the play of the day.

“Mr. Katz was very reluc­tant to do that but moved for­ward. He was very reluc­tant to do that, and not just him. It was a big issue, not just for him, but for the com­mis­sioner,” said Mandel.

For a city that has con­sis­tently lacked the vision of Cal­gary, this $ 450-million arena and accom­pa­ny­ing enter­tain­ment dis­trict is going to be a big step, com­bined with the new $ 350-million museum $ 88-million art gallery and $ 125 mil­lion in upgrades to Com­mowealth Sta­dium, to actu­ally give Edmon­ton some­thing to pro­mote with that spon­sor­ship money.

Man­del praised “the courage” of his col­leagues on city coun­cil — well, not you Tony Cata­rina, Linda Sloan or Kerry Diotte, who voted against — “for being being will­ing to build a city.”

“This is big step for the city of Edmon­ton. Not every­one sup­ports what we do, but many peo­ple have the courage to build the city that I think in the past we might not have had.”

There are some other twists and turns from the May 18 frame­work. Instead of Katz putting $ 100 mil­lion up front, Katz will pay $ 5.5 mil­lion a year over 30 years in lease money to cover his $ 100-million con­tri­bu­tion with the Oil­ers, and the team guar­an­teed to remain here over 35 years as pre­vi­ously agreed. And the orig­i­nal ticket tax, which Katz at one point appeared to be pulling off the table, is back in place with an adden­dum that when the new arena opens the city will not sub­si­dize what is now Rex­all Place any fur­ther. The city will also oper­ate the facility’s prac­tice rink as a com­mu­nity arena as part of the plan.

Katz, who agreed to pay for half of the ped­way over 104th avenue and is still in for $ 100 mil­lion of invest­ment in the down­town arena/entertainment dis­trict, stepped up to the point of it being almost dou­ble the con­tri­bu­tion of the Pitts­burgh Pen­guins in their new arena. And there’s no $ 5.5-million gam­ing sub­sidy like True North is get­ting from the Man­i­toba gov­ern­ment for the next 20 years to bring the Win­nipeg Jets back.

Both the city and Katz seem will­ing to wait for a new pre­mier to set­tle in, in hopes that with the rest of the deal done, the province will be there for the cit­i­zens of North­ern Alberta with the remain­ing $ 100 million.

“With about $ 200 bil­lion over five years and we want $ 100 mil­lion, that’s about .0001%. Or is it .00001%,” said the mayor.

It was get­ting past non-compete that’s going to make this com­plete. Our mayor may be Edmonton’s MVP but in this game, Daryl Katz ends up as the first star.

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