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Dark & Stormy for the Knights
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Business New Haven
5/13/2002
By: BNH
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As this edition of BNH went to press, the future didn't look terribly bright for the latest attempt to sustain a minor-league pro hockey franchise at Veterans Memorial Coliseum in New Haven.
The two-year-old team's ownership situation was in turmoil. There was no lease agreement for the 2002-03 season, should the team even continue to exist. And the future of the 30-year-old arena was itself in grave doubt, as engineering estimates of what it would take to rejuvenate it were running as high as $30 million.
It would be easy to pin the blame for much of this on City Hall, which for decades ran the Coliseum as a patronage dump. Even after turning management of the facility over to a private operator, major maintenance issues continued to be deferred, and now the building may have reached the point of no return - both from a physical standpoint as well as its disappearing niche in a Connecticut marketplace increasingly dominated by newer, shinier competitors.
But the Knights themselves must shoulder much of the blame for their predicament. Principal owner Eric Margenau proved himself to be something less than a marketing genius (in two years, for instance, this media outlet never received so much as a phone call from team officials, who presumably might wish to use these pages to make their pitch to the region's business community).
His opening-night decision to turn away paying customers while keeping the upper-tier curtain closed in order to proclaim a “sellout” was characterized by Register sports columnist Dave Solomon (as sympathetic an observer as could be imagined) as “the single most arrogant decision I've seen at any venue.” Ouch.
Most recently, in attempting to sell the team to Danbury mystery man James Galante without a lease commitment. Margenau seems to be executing the classic poker no-no - drawing to an inside straight.
We're as enthusiastic about maintaining a professional sports presence at the Coliseum as the next guy. But it seems to us that the Knights experience has turned into an object lesson in how not to make it work.
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