No quick fix to ease arena tension
Anyone hoping for a quick and easy resolution to the conflict between the Niagara IceDogs and SMG, the operators of Meridian Centre, will likely be disappointed.
A Toronto law firm hired by the City of St. Catharines to review the licensing agreement between the municipality and the IceDogs has concluded the document is not as clear and comprehensive as it should be, an assessment that supports SMG’s previously expressed belief.
Compounding the problem is that the IceDogs and SMG have struggled to get along with each other. The poor working relationship has made it extremely difficult for the two sides to resolve disputes, law firm WeirFoulds noted in a confidential report delivered verbally to St. Catharines city council earlier this month.
In light of the agreement’s alleged deficiencies, WeirFoulds said in an ideal world the deal should be completely revised.
But that course of action would likely be contentious and costly.
So, the city should consider hiring a professional mediator to help the involved parties prepare an amendment agreement that would identify issues in dispute and settle them consensually.
Given the animosity between the IceDogs and SMG, the mediation process would be no walk in the park, noted the report. But it still beats the costly and timeconsuming route of formal arbitration or court proceedings.
The report provides advice and makes a number of recommendations to the city. After WeirFoulds’ representatives made their verbal presentation at an in-camera session March 6, council directed city solicitor Heather Salter to review their findings and report back on how to proceed.
While it remains to be seen what positions the city will ultimately take, many of the assessments made by WeirFoulds are unlikely to find favour with the IceDogs.
Last fall, the hockey club aggressively criticized SMG’s operational style, detailing the company’s perceived faults and alleged breaches of the licencing agreement in a series of letters to city council.
It also asserted in a Dec. 19 letter to city council there is “no ambiguity” in the contract it signed with the municipality.
“It is a clearly worded, straightforward document that was painstakingly arrived at with the city’s former chief administrative officer through months of tough, good-faith negotiations,” the letter stated.
Earlier that month, SMG’s Ken Noakes, Meridian Centre’s general manager, had told city council otherwise.
“We have a lease document that needs a lot of clarification,” said Noakes, later adding, “Clarifying that lease will make life a heckuva lot easier for everybody.”
The fact WeirFoulds expressed the same view as Noakes on this matter will alone make blood boil at the IceDogs’ offices.
The law firm also advised the city to notify the IceDogs that SMG has the municipality’s support.
Mind you, it also suggested the city remind SMG that the arena operator is required to work co-operatively with the IceDogs.
In its report, WeirFoulds examines and delivers conclusions on 15 diverse areas of conflict, ranging from Meridian Centre advertising to use of complimentary tickets to adequate promotion of IceDogs games.
But the one that might best encapsulate the parties’ different interpretations of the agreement and the tension between the two sides revolves around use of Meridian Centre by other professional or semi-professional hockey teams.
Nothing in the past year made IceDogs owners Bill and Denise Burke more livid than when SMG booked a Buffalo Sabres/Toronto Maple Leafs alumni game and a Leafs/Sabres exhibition game on the two nights preceding the IceDogs first two home games of the 2016-17 Ontario Hockey League season.
The IceDogs say they weren’t informed about the two Toronto/ Buffalo games until after the OHL schedule was set, even though SMG had booked them months previously. As a result, maintain the Burkes, the local hockey market was saturated that week and their box office suffered.
More to the point, though, according to the Burkes, SMG was violating the IceDogs lease, a section of which states: “The city will not allow the facility to be used by any other hockey tenant or licencee, including any professional or semiprofessional hockey team.”
If such an event were to be contemplated, asserts the club, the city would need to seek a limited waiver from the IceDogs to allow it to happen.
Things don’t get any clearer than that, the IceDogs maintain. Well, apparently they do. The city’s position is that the cited section does not apply to single events. Rather the Section 9.5 wording is intended to prevent a hockey team other than the IceDogs from becoming a tenant or long-term licencee of Meridian Centre.
Given the wording of the section and because the Sabres/Leafs scheduling was an isolated incident, WeirFoulds concluded the wording doesn’t need to be changed. However, it also stated that the hockey team should clearly have been given more notice by SMG about the scheduling. It also advised the city to insist the arena operator be more vigilant in communicating possible scheduling conflicts to the IceDogs.
While a course of action has been laid out for the city in the report, WeirFoulds is ever aware of the animosity between the IceDogs and SMG, and the possible pitfalls it could cause on the road to repairing the relationship.
As such, the report stated it is critical the city be actively and continuously engaged in communicating and resolving issues in dispute.
Since allowing the problems to fester the past two years didn’t work out so well, it’s probably an approach worth taking.