Sonics’ Owner Denied Arena Bid Extension

The owner of the Seattle SuperSonics will not be allowed extra time to consider a possible bid on the company holding the lease to the San Diego Sports Arena, the accounting officer handling the sale said Tuesday.

“The deadline (of Monday) will not be extended,” said Jim Wendoll, director of mergers and acquisitions for the Los Angeles office of Coopers & Lybrand. “All interested parties who had been looking at the company (San Diego Entertainment, Inc.) had been given sufficient time to determine whether to bid or not. At this point, the original deadline of Feb. 6 is being lived with.”

Wendoll would not comment on the number of bids received or the identity of the bidders. He also refused to state unequivocally that Ackerley Communications, Inc., which owns the National Basketball Assn.’s SuperSonics, will not be permitted to bid in the future.

“I’m not sure how to answer that,” Wendoll said. “Monday, they made a request for 10 days’ additional evaluation time. They did not say they would be bidding at the end of that time. They just said they needed the extension to give it more thought. On that basis, we decided to deny the request.

“We didn’t think it was fair to the other bidders, who did a ton of work over January. Ackerley’s group was among the original people looking at the building, so it’s not like they didn’t know about the deadline. They made contact with the shareholders prior to the sale being announced. From that standpoint, they should have had a head start. They were provided the same information as everyone else.”

Wendoll said he was free to withhold information about the sale, since San Diego Entertainment, Inc.--whose primary asset is a Sports Arena lease that doesn’t expire until 2015--is a private, not public, company. He said no timetable had been set for announcing the winning bid.

Eric Rubin, general counsel to Ackerley Communications, told The Times last week that his company was interested in the Sports Arena for three reasons--as an investment; as the possible home for a National Hockey League expansion franchise, and as a “safety net” should the SuperSonics’ long-standing arena problems in Seattle not be resolved.

Tuesday, Rubin’s position was that Ackerley is still an interested party and still committed to making a bid, should he see fit.

“We told them that we wanted additional time,” Rubin said. “We found the situation to be complicated. We met last weekend and decided we needed additional time. This San Diego deal is complex, complicated. . . . We felt the time limit was arbitrary to begin with.”

Rubin said that he and Ackerley plan to confer on the matter again this weekend in Houston, site of Sunday’s NBA All-Star game.

Asked if the SuperSonics were leaning toward making a bid or trying to persuade Coopers & Lybrand to accept one, Rubin said, “I don’t want to get into that . . . We’ll do what we’re going to do.”