Who is Shaking Who Down?
It has been nearly a year now and the project manager for the new Evansville Arena and the management of the Evansville IceMen can’t seem to come to terms. Mr. Ron Geary, the owner of both Ellis Park and the Evansville IceMen went public with his plea for an intervention yesterday by the Evansville Redevelopment Commission on the IceMen’s behalf. Mr. Geary went so far as to state that “it seems as though the City of Evansville does not care if the IceMen play in the Arena or notâ€.
John Kish, the project manager for the Arena confirmed Geary’s statement with one of his own in stating that “the Arena will not be hurt by the loss of the IceMenâ€. He went on to state that the City of Evansville will not propose or support hockey if it loses money.
Excuse us, Mr. Kish but didn’t you just manage the investment of the people of Evansville’s $128 Million to build a hockey arena? Roberts Stadium is a basketball arena that is not large enough for hockey so the IceMen have spent their short time in Evansville at Swonder building a solid fan base of about 1,200 people. These fans are accustomed to paying ticket prices that are under $10 with abundant free parking close. This is the experience that this fan base is comfortable with. Changing this dramatically will risk alienating this fan base and blunt the efforts to attract additional fans.
The pro-forma for the new Arena projects 38 hockey games per year with an average attendance of 3,500 people starting from day one. Day one is October 21, 2011, a mere 10 weeks from now. The annual revenue projected from these 38 games is nearly $3 Million. The 38 games make up 28% of the events projected for the new Arena.
Mr. Kish, have you reviewed your own pro-forma lately? Are you seriously expecting the people of Evansville to believe that $3 Million in revenue and 28% of the events in the new Arena can be lost and that the performance will not be hurt? Sir, we may be from Evansville as opposed to Indianapolis but we are not that stupid. Please stop treating us like we are.
The IceMen were chosen as our hockey team. If the IceMen are not profitable we will have no team just as we have no BlueCats and no professional basketball team. If the Arena loses money we still have the Arena as it does not appear to be portable. Please come to your senses and reach an agreement that enables the Evansville IceMen to be financially viable while they continue to build a fan base and hire high quality players.
This is not the time to cripple this team with oppressive rental fees that reportedly are over 5 times what they are paying at Swonder. This is the time to develop an agreement that will incent the IceMen to excel on the ice and to grow their fan base so that Evansville will have a successful hockey franchise long into the future. The position of taking no risk and absorbing no losses on the part of the Arena is neither logical nor financially responsible. We can’t afford to lose this team right now. The Arena that you are responsible for can’t either.
We the people of Evansville just invested $128 Million and counting for a new Arena and we were not given the courtesy of a vote to do so. We were told all about how hockey was the game of the future and have eagerly watched as our HOCKEY ARENA has taken shape under your management.
The Arena is not yet finished. Mr. Kish, you have proven your capability to manage the Arena construction project but your prowess at getting a hotel deal and negotiating a win-win agreement with the IceMen is lacking.
We respectfully request that you concentrate on what you know (construction) with all of your might during the next 10 weeks so that the IceMen’s game on October 21 can actually be in the Arena. We also wish you well in your relocation back to your home in Indianapolis that we are certain will happen within days of the Arena’s opening.
We respectfully recommend and request that you leave further negotiating to someone or some group from Evansville. We have to live with the agreements and we do not wish to be saddled with any more legacy problems that have their origins in Indianapolis. Thank you for managing the Arena construction, now please take your money and go home.
As a request to the Evansville Redevelopment Commission we are begging you to do your jobs and manage the money of the people of Evansville responsibly. We realize that you all have jobs and lives but you did accept this political appointment voluntarily. The time for blindly following pied pipers and dancing when the puppet master pulls your string is behind you. We encourage that you take your appointments seriously and make the decisions that you would if this money were your own or your employers. You members of the ERC are Evansville people. It is time for you to start acting like it.
“The pro-forma for the new Arena projects 38 hockey games per year with an average attendance of 3,500 people starting from day one. Day one is October 21, 2011, a mere 10 weeks from now. The annual revenue projected from these 38 games is nearly $3 Million. The 38 games make up 28% of the events projected for the new Arena.”
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I believe that $3M figure was the tipping point as to whether the arena actually broke even it’s first year….was it not? So without the Icemen we can expect the new arena to be $3M in the hole by November of 2012, yeah that’s doable.
John iIsh need to be body-checked into the boards.
Is this the point where the progressives manufacture the chosen scapegoat, at any costs to the taxpayer, to protect their power?
(See: debt ceiling vote – “destructive Tea Partiers”, obamacare debate – “greedy insurance companies”, dodd frank “greedy wall street types”, sarbanes oxley – “greedy, corrupted public companies”, Aztar shakedown – “greedy ole Mr. William Yung III”, SMG shakeup – “atrocious toilets”, county smoking ban – “our terribly unhealthy workforce”… etc.)
Evansville is not a hockey town. Geary is a crybaby.
Geary is posturing because Kish basically committed the Arena to host hockey events without having a contract in place. Now Kish can either enjoy multi-million dollar ice-rink capabilities with no team, or give in to Geary.
Kish is trying to posture (“fine, we never needed a hockey team anyway!”) but he’s not fooling anybody. Everybody knows how integral the hockey team was to this Arena.
Finally, someone who understands the problem and is speaking accurately!!!!!!! It certainly hasn’t been Kish or VenuWorks. As a ps to this article, The IceMen have been “promised” only 6 home Saturday night games. They are expected to be successful with Sunday games, Tuesday games and Thursday games. The IceMen lost a valuable Saturday night game to Men’s College Wrestling. That will really draw a crowd!!!! Thank you Mr. Kish!!!!!
The IceMen organization is working very hard to create a fun, exciting, entertaining product for their fans. They are developing relationships within the business community. They have brought in 30 or so families who have relocated their lives to this area and have become a part of this community. All they are looking for is a fair deal…a win win. How hard is that to comprehend?
Yes, the issue seems to be the number of Friday night and Saturday games. Geary said he understands that the Icemen would be sharing those dates with UE Basketball, but then he was told that the Arena wasn’t available on other weekend dates due to concerts and other events. If it is a hockey/basketball arena, UE/Icemen should get 1st pick of the prime dates when those activities are in-season and everything else should fill in around them. The rest of the year, fill up every weekend with concerts or whatever else you can get in there. Seems pretty simple to me.
That is the best-written article I have read in many years.
Thank you!
I second that! This articulates the point perfectly.
Gish has to remember that there is a factor for quality of life with this arena that the citizens of this city deserve. Yes, I want to see the arena make a little money, at least be self sufficient. But, there is more to this arena than just the bottom line. If these things were meant to be strictly profit generators, then private enterpise would have done this long ago.
I am also sure if Geary was looking at ways to make a profit, he could find numerous ways to make plenty more than with a minor league hockey team. The guy has taken a financial loss for four years for the opportunity to bring his team into the arena. Now we have an idiot like Gish who wants to squeeze him right out of town.
As stated in the article, the city owes the very taxpayers who funded this arena, every reasonable effort to insure the Icemen are successful for many years to come.
I have been hearing reports that the Evansville Aces do not have a deal done with the arena yet and may be further away than the Icemen are.
Good thing the arena is nice on the outside because the way it’s looking we may never get to see an event inside of it.
I enjoyed reading this article very much, and it reminds me of my hometown of Toledo, Ohio. Toledo hosts the Toledo Walleye who feed into the Blackhawks and Red Wings. They have an arena very similar to the one in question here in Evansville. Between the arena project and the ball park, which hosts the world famous Toledo Mudhens, the downtown arena has been revitalized tremendously. It concerns me that these groups can not think not only for their own ventures but for the city as a whole. In the 7 years I have lived here I have only gone to eat or have a drink a handful of times in the downtown area. Why because there is not much more to do there then in the rest of the city. Now we have a wonderful facility that can bring East-siders and West-siders to the downtown area and support the actual city of Evansville, but instead to big heads have to butt them together. Shame on all three parties for not resolving this in a more timely fashion with some grace and dignity.
Kish is not a construction expert. In fact, he knows little about construction except by association. When he was Project Director for the IND Airport, he was an appointed figure-head who hired every brother and cousin of the City and an astronomical cost to the Airport. Over $1 billion (with a B) bought only 40 gates of a terminal. Compare that to other major recent projects of that $ magnitude. All the money went because he hired multiple design firms to do the same job, multiple construction managers to manage the same thing, and tons of consultants because he couldn’t manage it himself. So when you praise him for knowing construction as his last saving grace…you should check the facts on that one too.
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