Minnesota’s Twin Cities Reenter the Arena Game
It is a new year and Minnesota’s twin cities, Minneapolis and St. Paul, are again in the middle of the arena game. The ownership of the National Basketball Association’s Minnesota Timberwolves franchise and the Women’s National Basketball Association’s Minnesota Lynx franchise is looking to build an arena in Minneapolis. Across the river in St. Paul, the owner of the National Hockey League’s Minnesota Wild franchise Craig Leipold is looking for money to upgrade his present home arena or get a new venue entirely. There does not seem to be very much interest in having the two teams play under a new arena’s roof although from a Minnesota taxpayer’s viewpoint that would make sense. But sports owners don’t want to share arena revenue streams, if possible. So the market has two arena issues.
“We are going to stay in St. Paul and they’re going to stay in Minneapolis. Pretty hard to negotiate from that point,” Leipold said. What is probably going to happen is this. Leipold and his lobbyists will meet with state legislators in St. Paul and ask for money to upgrade the present building. The Timberwolves-Lynx ownership will be doing the same thing starting. There is only so much public money to go around considering how much Minnesota lawmakers have spent on a baseball stadium, a football stadium in Minneapolis, along with a college football stadium. What does Leipold want? “In order to survive in the NHL, you not only have to be in a market, a great market, which we are in. We need to be in a really good building that gives us the opportunity and the chance to take advantage of all of the revenue streams that our competitors have in the NHL.” The Minnesota arena game continues.
Evan Weiner’s books are available at iTunes – https://books.apple.com/us/author/evan-weiner/id595575191
Evan can be reached at evan_weiner@hotmail.com
