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Glendale approves Reinsdorf’s proposal for Coyotes arena

Image (1) Reinsdorf-thumb-200x300-9148.jpg for post 831

Late last night news came down that the Glendale City Council unanimously approved the arena lease proposal of Glendale Hockey, LLC, the group led by Jerry Reinsdorf. Per Rebekah L. Sanders of The Arizona Republic:

The decision means that Reinsdorf, a Chicago sports mogul, and his group of investors will work with the city to hammer out the details of the lease and that Ice Edge Holdings is essentially out of the running.

It also means that Reinsdorf is on track to owning the team, pending the approval of the NHL.

This is a very quick turn of events for the sale of the Coyotes franchise, as Ice Edge Holdings continued to insist they were inching closer to getting a deal done. It’s likely that Glendale voted on the Reinsdorf proposal based on reports that Ice Edge would be unable to come up with the funding necessary to purchase the team.

Yet there could still be some issues. Local watchdog group Goldwater stated last week that they would likely sue the City of Glendale if they went with the Reinsdorf proposal. The issue at hand is how with the Reinsdorf proposal the city would take on much higher financial risk than if Ice Edge purchased the team.

There’s also been reports that negotiations between Glendale and Ice Edge had broken down over recent weeks after the city wanted to change conditions of the initial proposal.

At this point, you have to think that Glendale was forced to go with the group that had a legitimate shot of actually purchasing the team; if Ice Edge failed to secure funding then the franchise could likely be sold by the NHL this summer and moved elsewhere.

(H/t to Kukla’s)