Tempe city council will hold a vote at the end of November on the Arizona Coyotes' proposed $2 billion arena and entertainment district project, but Craig Morgan of PHNX Sports reports that that vote will "likely" send the fate of the project to a public referendum.
"While the vote on Nov. 29 will provide clarity on council’s opinion of the Coyotes’ proposal — on the entitlements and on the general plan amendment — a referendum would be the ultimate vote in determining whether the project begins," Morgan wrote Sunday, citing sources. "That vote would be held in 2023 at a date yet to be determined."
The Coyotes are looking to build an arena after they were evicted from their previous home — Gila River Arena in Glendale — following last season. While waiting for their new home, the team is sharing a 5,000-seat rink with Arizona State University on a three-year contract with the possibility of a fourth.
The team is proposing to build an arena on a 46-acre site in Tempe, a suburb of Phoenix, with hotels, retail stores, restaurants and apartments as part of the plan. In June, Tempe council awarded the Coyotes the exclusive right to negotiate a project on the piece of land — which is currently a city dump — and the progress of those negotiations will be on the table before council at the end of next month.
Morgan reports that two polls have shown that there appears to be sufficient public support for the project and local business leaders are also on board.
"As a board, we are in support of the Coyotes in this process, as well as the city’s due diligence to the process," Colin Diaz, the Tempe Chamber of Commerce president and CEO, told Morgan. "We know that there’s still work to be done and there’s community meetings, but as a whole, looking at the economic impact and looking at what it will mean for the city as a whole, from a tax perspective, from job creation to a lot of the programming that they’re going to be supporting, it checks a lot of boxes for us and makes a lot of sense."
For now, the fate of the project continues to hang in the balance.
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