How Suns arena deal got the votes

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The Phoenix Suns arena renovation deal did not have the votes it needed to pass on Dec. 12 when the Phoenix City Council was initially supposed to vote on the issue.

A month later, the $230 million deal passed easily, with only the council’s two conservatives voting against it.

It was virtually the same deal as the one before the council in December. So why such a turnaround?

The shift was not only on the council but in public opinion as well.

Over the course of a month, the Suns and city management were able to convince residents and politicians alike that the deal wasn’t as bad for taxpayers as they may have initially thought.

And ultimately, the Suns threw in a few sweeteners to seal the deal.

At the December meeting, Councilman Michael Nowakowski insisted the city delay the vote and host at least five public meetings before bringing the deal back to the council.

In an interview Tuesday, he said the scheduled December vote was too rushed. The details of the deal had only been made public a week earlier and the impending holiday break had created a distraction.

Nowakowski said the city needed to get out in the community and share the details of the deal because there was confusion as to how the city would fund the renovations.

The meetings and flashy marketing materials seemed to work.

Mayor Thelda Williams, one of the biggest proponents of the arena deal, said it only took one meeting for the public to calm down.

Once people learned that the renovations would be funded through an existing tourism tax and that the city owns the arena, they were more understanding, she said.

“The attitude they were very said.

In addition to the city’s efforts, the Suns also launched a full-scale public relations campaign to paint the team as a community asset with a heavily involved charity arm.

Suns CEO and President Jason Rowley attended all of the community meetings, along with other team staff members and took questions and criticism in stride.

Non-profits that receive funding from Suns Charities showed up at many of the meetings as well, singing the team’s praises.

At one meeting, some of the team’s star players even made an appearance to plead for support of the deal.

The public shift in opinion made it easier for the council to vote for the deal. But Nowakowski also insisted on a handful of other changes to the deal before throwing his support behind it.

The changes did not actually impact the structure of the deal, but they did address public safety and homelessness — two of the city’s biggest resident complaints — which perhaps made his support of the deal more palatable to his constituents.

During the public meetings in January totally changed and supportive,” Williams about the arena deal, many residents said they felt like more money should go toward the police and fire departments or toward supporting people experiencing homelessness, Nowakowski said.

“That’s why I said there has to be something in this to basically take care of these people’s needs who were concerned that we’re spending $150 million on an arena but not public safety and resources for homeless individuals,” Nowakowski said.

He made the following additions to the deal to try to quell the concerns:

❚ The city will commit the $1.5 million rent increase from the Suns to homeless issues.

❚ 80 percent of any additional revenues generated by the city from the arena will go toward city public-safety costs.

Nowakowski also asked that the city hire someone to oversee Phoenix’s expenditures on the renovations.

Additionally, Nowakowski said he asked Suns owner Robert Sarver if he could look at the team’s financials and independent audits so that he could ensure that the team was accurately accounting its arena management costs.

Nowakowski said Sarver was happy to comply. The team’s financial information and audits are not open to the public.

“(Sarver’s) been very open. Everybody says he’s really rude and tough to deal with but it hasn’t been that way,” Nowakowski said.

The more surprising swing vote came from interim Councilwoman Vania Guevara, who had previously published a blog post outlining her opposition to the deal.

In the end, she voted for it. Guevara, who represents Council District 5, which covers most of west Phoenix including Maryvale and Villa de Paz, did not respond to requests for comment.

But in a blog post published on after the vote, she said she learned in January that the city was facing potential cuts to its Head Start program, which provides free preschool for children in working-class families.

She said she decided then to sit back down with the Suns to see if there was a way to include “additional investments in our residents, our neighborhoods and our future.”

“What if we found a way to invest in our city-owned infrastructure, while at the same time investing in our most valuable resource, our residents? To his credit, Robert Sarver was more than happy to have this discussion, a discussion which finally pushed me to support the deal,” Guevara wrote.

Sarver agreed to make a “$10 million community benefit investment” in 2019, which was added to the deal that the council ultimately passed.

About $2.6 million of that will directly support the Head Start program.

The remainder will be divvied up to other city programs or non-profits across the city.

But Guevara in her post said, “Robert Sarver has committed to me that District 5 will be a top priority for this money, which is to be invested in schools, parks, athletic programs and more throughout the district.”