Arena upgrades could keep hockey in Bridgeport for decade
City Council taking a closer look at $30 million deal
BRIDGEPORT — Mayor Joe Ganim’s administration hopes to strike a deal with the Bridgeport Islanders — formerly called the Sound Tigers — to keep the American Hockey League team in town for another decade in exchange for the city making $30 million worth of upgrades to the Islanders’ 20-yearold arena home.
The proposal, which would settle the two sides’ lengthy landlord/tenant legal feud and amend/extend the team’s current contract to manage the municipal sports and entertain
ment arena, was this week the focus of two private City Council meetings. A third and possibly final discussion and vote is scheduled for Wednesday.
“Council members just want more information and had further questions ... before they vote,” Council President Aidee Nieves explained about why Monday’s and Wednesday’s behind-closed-doors huddles on the proposed arrangement adjourned without a decision.
“I’m still mulling over some things some people brought to my attention,” Nieves added, though she declined to elaborate.
While the terms of the revised contract, including the 10-year extension and the $30 million venue upgrades, are public and were posted online by the city clerk, the Islanders declined comment, citing the pending litigation.
However when the twodecade-old team in May re-branded itself from the Sound Tigers to Bridgeport Islanders after its National Hockey League affiliate, the New York Islanders, Tigers’ President, Brent Rossi had said, “It shows our dedication and support for the City of Bridgeport. Ultimately, we’re committed to the area. We’re not going anywhere.”
Ganim’s office this week only stated it is “looking forward to a mutually beneficial agreement and solution.”
But the council may first insist on some lease changes, including upping the hockey team’s annual rent from $250,000 to $350,000.
“That’s a sweetheart deal,” Councilwoman M. Evette Brantley said of the $250,000 rent. “It (rent) goes up on everybody else.”
Councilman Matthew McCarthy also thought $350,000 was a fair rate.
“Two-hundred-fiftythousand a year 20 years ago is probably up to $350,000-a-year now,” he said.
Brantley is co-chairman of the council’s economic development committee, and McCarthy of the contracts committee. Rather than send the arena pact through the usual committee reviews — which could in this case have involved the contracts, economic development, miscellaneous matters and budget groups — the decision was made to have the entire 20-person legislative body immediately take up the matter.
McCarthy said the Ganim Administration had wanted a rapid approval.
“My issue is it’s being shoved down our throats and they want an answer yesterday,” he said.
Councilman Scott Burns, who helps run the budget committee, said the council should avoid making a hasty decision.
“We really want to take our time and give it some thought and poke around and make sure we’re getting the best deal for our constituents,” Burns said.
Council members acknowledged the city bears much of the blame for the fight with the Islanders. The public tensions date back to 2016 when Ganim, who ran the city from 1991 until 2003 and was re-elected in 2015, accused the hockey team of owing $750,000 in back rent. The Islanders countered that Bridgeport, per the original contract to operate the 10,000-seat arena, owed the team $837,596 for money it had sunk into repairs and maintenance and took the matter to court.
“We own it. We were ‘slumlords,’” Councilman Ernie Newton, a budget committee co-chairman, said this week.
“We’re fighting over who should fix that building. It’s us,” said Councilwoman Jeanette Herron of the contracts committee. “As a city, that’s our obligation. We are the owners.”
“At the end of the day its our building and it’s been neglected,” McCarthy acknowledged.
The dispute escalated further when the Tigers in 2017 claimed Ganim’s and the council’s partnership with developer Howard Saffan to transform the shuttered minor league baseball stadium adjacent to the arena into a summer concert amphitheater violated a non-competition clause in the contract. Besides athletic events, the arena also hosts musical acts and other entertainment.
The amphitheater, which was originally supposed to open in 2019, held its first concert July 28.
In late 2018, in an effort to resolve the legal fight, the council amended Bridgeport’s capital budget — which mainly funds large, costly infrastructure projects like road paving and school construction — to include $15 million for arena improvements.
According to the pending settlement, the city will move forward with that investment, dubbed Phase 1, and also make its “best efforts” to obtain an additional $15 million for Phase 2 renovations to restore the facility to “like new” condition. In exchange the Islanders, once Bridgeport has expended $27.9 million, will contribute $3 million toward that Phase 2 work — $2.1 million after subtracting the $900,000 the team insisted it was owed for prior upgrades and maintenance.
Councilwoman Maria Pereira in an email to City Hall and her council colleagues this week asked for additional information about whether the city was still paying off funds borrowed in the late 1990s to build the arena, and whether Bridgeport has realized any “pure profit” from the venue over the past five years minus “debt, maintenance (and) litigation costs”
Pereira also insisted on a “specific plan to raise an additional $12.9 million for Phase 2 repairs/renovations without placing the burden on municipal taxpayers.”
Herron and McCarthy share that latter concern. McCarthy said it has been suggested the Ganim Administration could seek state and/or federal aid.
“What happens if the state says ‘no’?” McCarthy asked. “The city’s on the hook.”
But Newton said “the council would never go for” spending another $15 million and it will come from other sources.
Brantley, too has lingering questions about the financial implications of the settlement, but said the worst that could happen would be for the arena to go dark.
“I don’t want to see it just sit there and go to seed,” she said.
Nieves agreed, arguing the facility, combined with the new amphitheater next door, will help Bridgeport “re-brand ourselves as an ‘entertainment city” that offers year round events drawing visitors to downtown.
“And it’s important for the region,” Nieves said.