Glendale Signs Lease Deal With Renaissance, Will Goldwater Respond To Bad Bonds...? (UPDATED: Goldwater Speaks)

((HT: Sportsnet.ca))

The wanna-be/almost/soon-to-be owners of the Phoenix-slash-Arizona Coyotes have signed their lease agreement for Jobing.com Arena and the city of Glendale, Arizona.

Daryl Jones, one of the partners with Renaissance Sports & Entertainment, tweeted on Monday that the lease agreement with the City of Glendale has been executed.

We have executed the lease for http://Jobing.com Arena in Glendale, Arizona. The long term home of the Coyotes ! Howlllll!

The Glendale City Council approved a 15-year, $225 million arena lease deal with RSE during a special session last week, RSE still has to complete its purchase of the team and get approval from the NHL’s Board of Governors.

Sportsnet's Roger Millions caught up with Renaissance's George Gosbee who thinks the Coyotes can be profitable- even as his own home got wiped out by the floods in Calgary...
 The interesting play in the Millions piece is the possible response from the Goldwater Institute... Here's Carrie Ann Sitren, Goldwater's lead attorney in their original case, from a little over a year ago... Let's just see if some of these same points come up in the near future... ((HT: Goldwater Institute their own selves)) Mike Ozanian, over at Forbes, is also writing that bond holders don't like the deal, either... evidenced by the yield jumping a full percentage point since the restructuring came into play- at the beginning of the calendar year...  The middle paragraph: ...the upside of the deal tilts heavily towards the team’s potential buyers, and the risk towards the city’s taxpayers. Not only does the agreement requires the city to pay $15 million a year to Anthony LeBlanc’s group to manage the city-owned Jobing.com Arena, but RSE is not guaranteeing it will pay the city money it says it will generate from non-NHL events that will reduce the burden on taxpayers, and RSE can bolt Glendale should its losses reach $50 million in five years. Oops... THURSDAY UPDATE: Goldwater spoke... and they okayed it for now... Based on the information available to us at this time, we do not believe that the Glendale arena management deal would be held unconstitutional. Changes made to the agreement during the course of negotiations partially bridged the gap between the market cost of arena management and the amount of the payment to the team owner, thus bringing the deal into conformity with cases interpreting the Gift Clause of the Arizona Constitution. The initial deal proposed several years ago would have included not only a substantial annual arena management fee, but a $100 million up-front payment to subsidize the purchase of the team. We are proud to have played a constructive role in protecting the taxpayers and taking an illegal deal off the table. Glendale’s long and painful experience illustrates why local governments should focus on providing basic and essential public services and avoid the temptation to subsidize private enterprises such as sports teams.