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Legacy Sports and Entertainment will not get the contract to operate Hyde Park Ice Rink. Niagara Sports Tournaments, which has run the rink under the leadership of Mike Carella for 14 years.
Carella has not had a contract for 4 ½ years and is using the rink on an as-needed basis with temporary access granted for previously scheduled tournaments.
The Legacy Sports contract failed 3-2 with Brian Archie, Donta Myles and David Zajac voting no and Jim Perry and Traci Bax voted yes.
The Niagara Sports Tournament temporary access agreement ends September 30. After that, the arena may go dark at the discretion of Mayor Robert Restaino.
The administration’s supporting documents for the meeting showed more than $1 million in unpaid utility bills. Carella said the numbers were cooked and he owed nothing.
He also said the paper trail might be hard to follow because his tenure has stretched across two administrations and multiple city corporation counsels and comptrollers. The comptroller position is currently vacant.
Perry, at one point, tried to explain to the angry mob that reality is a vote against the new contract was not a vote to keep NST in place but he abandoned his attempt because he was shouted down by angry jeers.
The council was being asked to vote on bids for hockey rink operations, not on whether Carella was a good guy or the proposed new operator received poor reviews from employees. In terms of dollars and cents and fiscal responsibility, Legacy’s bid was superior.
The council voted but reality is the sound of those angry parents and hockey players will ring in the ears of the Mayor like a phone in a courtroom with one big difference. Rather than being locked up, they will be locked out. Its Bob's way or the highway.
Here are the nuts and bolts of the two bids as laid out by Rick Pfeiffer in today’s Gazette:
"NST proposed to pay the city a $4,000/month ($48,000/year) operations fee, pay all of the ice rink’s utility costs (estimated at $12,000/month) and invest $10,000/year ($30,000 total) in capital improvements under its 3-year contract proposal. It would also pay the city 20%, less sales commissions and other costs, of advertising generated from ads on the rink’s dasher board.
"Under NST’s 5-year contract option, the operations fee drops to $2,000/month ($24,000/year), with the full payment of utilities and an investment of $10,000/year ($50,000 total) in capital improvements. The dasher board ad terms also remain the same as the 3-year contract.
"Legacy, which had previously been a consultant to the operation of the outdoor skating rink at Canalside in Buffalo, proposed a 3-year contract that would pay the city $102,000/year (paid in quarterly installments of $25,500 to 25,625), a capital investment commitment of between $75,000 to $100,000 over the term of the contract, the payment of all utilities and payment of 20% of all dasher board ad revenue with no reductions for commissions or other costs."
