To no one's surprise, Mayor Bill LaFortune selected SMG to manage both the new downtown sports arena and the convention center.
SMG is a joint venture of the Hyatt Hotel Chain and ARAMARK Corporation. The company manages 156 facilities worldwide, including 63 arenas and 44 convention centers. One of the arenas they manage is the Ford Center in Oklahoma City. So when a major concert tour is going to make one stop in Oklahoma, you won't have a competition between the two cities to get the show -- instead SMG will decide, based on their bottom line.
By the way, Mayor LaFortune said at his re-election announcement that if our arena had been in place, Tulsa might have gotten the refugee New Orleans Hornets instead of Oklahoma City. Remember that Katrina hit less than two months before the first game of the NBA season. There were other venues that competed to be the Hornets temporary home, but Oklahoma City a key advantage -- very few events scheduled over the course of the six-month NBA season. The calendar was already mostly clear; a few minor-league hockey games had to be moved to accommodate the Hornets schedule, which has already been set to synchronize with the rest of the league. So if we want a management company who can keep the arena empty most of the time, ready for when Montréal's dormant volcano erupts and forces the Canadiens to find somewhere else to play hockey, we've got the right team.
Comments (3)
BOK Center name and logo on the outside of the Tulsa arena. Wouldn't all business owners love to pay $11 million over a number of years, get the PUBLICITY for Bank of Oklahoma.
Bank of Oklahoma sues for the $7.5 million debt and wants TULSA TAXPAYERS to help pick up the tab on a bad loan they made for the Great Plains Airlines deal. Chris Medlock, council that is running for Mayor of Tulsa is getting plastered by the Tulsa World for asking for the additional financial records and any other questionable deal making records that go way back to 1996 with DEMOCRATS highly involved in the deal making (for outside readers TULSA WORLD news favors democrats) but Tulsa World won't go to any trouble to get those records Chris Medlock (a republican)is seeking as a responsible City Council member published in the Tulsa World? What's wrong with the REPORTERS FROM THE TULSA WORLD? Tulsa World REPORTERS are nosy enough to give FRONT PAGE PUBLICITY from a
questionable souce of Chris Medlock's confidential university transcript (where the student must approve through a specific process that it is acceptable to release that information and then even if it was for an employer an employer could get sued for giving confidential information away) which it certainly would seem someone from the University of Tulsa connections has violated a privacy act.
Is it right that TULSA TAXPAYERS are paying almost $200 million for the cost of the Arena and then for a minor cost BOK APPEARS TO LOOK FROM THEIR OUTSIDE NAMING RIGHT that they are the ones paying for the Arena? No outside publicty for the ones actually paying for most of the cost like it could have been called the TULSA CENTER? Let's do the math. Trust me, bankers do the math and they are getting a BARGAIN at the expense of Tulsa taxpayers.
Posted by susan | November 5, 2005 8:28 AM
Posted on November 5, 2005 08:28
All I heard on the news the other night was PR on how SMG was going to deliver us THE ROLLING STONES. What a joke even if they do play here. We all know the difficulty the managers will have recruiting talent and booking conventions. This will prove to be a huge boondoggle and costly forever to Tulsa tax payers. Someone better be pretty damn creative to figure out what Tulsa offers over hundreds of other world wide locations. And if our airport defaults, good luck getting any customers or performers.
Posted by Michael Sanditen | November 6, 2005 5:26 PM
Posted on November 6, 2005 17:26
We still have the downtown Bus company ha.ha.
I don't think they have tried to use that yet
as leverage on any loan deals --
How about a free round of golf at "LAFORTUNE PARK"
Posted by susan | November 6, 2005 10:38 PM
Posted on November 6, 2005 22:38