Big Day for Winnipeg: New Commercial Development and Perhaps The Return of the Jets

Author: Scott Taylor

October 2, 2009

Ever had “one of those days?”  A day when just about everything you touched turned to gold.  Or, at least, something of value you could re-sell on eBay?  That was Winnipeg’s day on Thursday.  It was just one of those great days. 

It actually started a day earlier, when a bankruptcy judge in Phoenix, Ariz. essentially told Winnipeg, “You’re in line to get your old NHL team back,” and then on Thursday morning, one of the city’s most prominent citizens said, “Bear with me and you’ll not only have a new football stadium, a new and well-heeled team owner, but also a commercial development that will be a destination for people coming to the ‘Peg.”

Let’s start with the "Return of the Jets".  As an outsider, and one who is not well-versed in Arizona's bankruptcy laws, it certainly appeared as if Judge Redfield T. Baum got the sale of the Phoenix Coyotes all wrong.  Why would he throw out Jim Balsillie’s $250 million bid “with prejudice,” while tossing out the NHL’s $140 million bid “without prejudice,” and allowing the NHL to amend its offer and try a second time to take control of a hockey team that lost $389 million between 2004 and 2008? Even Baum himself wrote: “Financial statements raise substantial doubt as to the company's ability to continue as a going concern." (Oh, no kidding).

On the surface it appears Baum got it all wrong.  The big bid was tossed while the little bid will get a second hearing.  However, by doing something that didn’t make any sense at all, he gave Winnipeg hockey fans a reason to believe that some day soon, the Coyotes will be brought back to Winnipeg and re-named the Jets.

One of the most important aspects of the NHL’s bid was that the league was prepared to purchase the team and then try to find its own third-party buyer to take over.  We know the NHL wanted no part of Balsillie buying the Coyotes and then moving the team to Hamilton.  If the NHL ever expands, it knows it will get $400 million-plus for a franchise in what is a huge hockey market.  However, the NHL also knows that the Chipman family, with help from the crazy-wealthy Thompson family (Thompson Reuters etc.), has been quietly working behind the scenes to put an NHL team into the MTS Centre.

The NHL is NOT going to continue propping up a team that now averages $73 million in losses every year and despite what the league says, ol’ Red Baum is right: The Coyotes do not have a future as a business.  So by telling the league it still has a chance to take over this dead-fish franchise, Baum also told the league it now has the right to sell the mess back to Winnipeg.  Expect the Jets back in Winnipeg, sooner not later.

And, what the heck, Don Cherry told me last Thursday, live on 92-CITI-FM, that Winnipeg would get a franchise long before Hamilton would ever get one, and if Don Cherry says it, hey, I believe it.

Meanwhile, Winnipeg businessman David Asper told the community on Thursday that if it just stays patient, it will not only have a brand new state-of-the-technology football stadium at the University of Manitoba, it will also have a spectacular commercial development on the site of the current stadium – a stadium that should be torn down as quickly as possible.

Regardless, Asper’s new project will be called The Elms.  It’s 650,000 square feet and he calls it “a destination, not just for Winnipeggers but people from the United States and the rest of Canada.”  A person close to the development said that in the end, The Elms will be more important to more Winnipeggers than the new stadium. 

I wouldn’t argue that, except to say this: Winnipeg is a lot more in need of a new football stadium than it is another shopping mall.  No matter how pretty the artist’s rendering.

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