(Photos courtesy of Arizona Coyotes)
By Paulina Pineda | Arizona Republic
The Arizona Coyotes are proposing a $1.7 billion development in Tempe with a hockey arena, hotels, apartments and shops that the team says would be financed by private investors, although it wants to use a portion of city sales tax revenues generated on the site to help pay for $200 million in additional costs.
A large portion of the additional expenses are for infrastructure work and remediation of the 46 acres on the south bank of the Salt River that previously were used as a sand and gravel mining operation and a dump.
Despite the proposed injection of taxpayer dollars to prepare the site, team officials bill the project as a first-of-its-kind in Arizona, bucking the trend of publicly funded sports venues. The arena itself would be built and operated by the National Hockey League team.
Team representatives acknowledged the appetite for paying for sports arenas with public money isn’t there, and that the project reflects that.
