Local Group to Meet With NHL Franchise Committee Today

Harry Cooper, the man behind the drive to bring a major league hockey franchise to San Diego, should know more about the city’s chances of landing an NHL expansion team after today’s meeting with a league subcommittee in New York.

Cooper, attorney Scott Wolfe and an undisclosed number of San Diego representatives will meet in an informal question-and-answer session with the league’s Franchise and Market Analysis Committee at NHL headquarters to present their plans to bring an expansion team to San Diego, preferably no sooner than 1996-97, according to Cooper.

“We’ll tell them what we have to offer and what the business community can offer,” Cooper said. “We can’t guarantee that (the awarding of a franchise) will happen (this year), but we’re trying.”

The San Diego Sports Arena is too small for a major league hockey team and part of Cooper’s pitch will be a new 18,000-seat arena that could be operable as early as 1994, but 1996 is a more realistic target date.

“We couldn’t do it by 1992-93,” Cooper said. “We wouldn’t get investors to take that kind of risk.”

Wolfe, the La Jolla attorney who put together the Padre ownership group, said building the arena and bringing a hockey team to San Diego is a joint venture.

“They go hand in hand,” Wolfe said. “The focus is that we need a new major league team to justify the new arena. Then, when plans for the arena are more definitive, we can have a team to move into it.”

NHL spokesman Gerry Helper said the 12-man committee, co-chaired by Chicago Blackhawk owner Bill Wirtz and NHL President John Ziegler, will report details of the session to the league’s governing board, but it won’t make suggestions.

Cooper said he expects today’s 35-40 minute session to be one of several meetings before the board’s Dec. 4-8 meetings in Palm Beach, Fla., where two to six expansion franchises are expected to be awarded.

“Two is a speculative guess,” Helper said, “but there’s always the chance that they could add more.”

The 21-team NHL, which has not expanded since 1979, has set its sights on a 28-team league by 2000. San Jose has already been awarded a franchise and will compete in the 1991-92 season.

Of the original 11 groups that paid a $100,000 application fee--up to $65,000 of it is refundable at the board’s discretion--nine from eight cities remain.

Southern California is considered to have two bids. In addition to the group led by Cooper, Jerry Buss, owner of the Lakers and the former owner of the NHL Kings, has applied for a franchise in an undisclosed Southern California location. Groups representing Houston, Seattle, Miami, St. Petersburg and Tampa, Fla., Ottawa, and Hamilton, Canada, have also applied.

Two International Hockey League cities, Phoenix and Milwaukee, have withdrawn their applications. Phoenix withdrew its bid a week after it filed and Milwaukee, considered to have had a lock on an expansion franchise partly because of its state-of-the-art arena, pulled out last week.

Lloyd Pettit, owner of Milwaukee’s IHL team, and the Bradley Center--where the Bucks play--said the $50 million franchise fee was unrealistic.

“Put yourself into the position of trying to run a major league hockey club on a loss basis for five to 10 years, even if you come up with five or six players who might be considered major league,” Pettit said in announcing his decision.

But the $50 million is only a start. There’s a $5 million line of credit, up to $10 million in start-up costs and the recommended 10,000 season-ticket requirement that applicants must produce.

“We do exceed the $100 million required by the NHL,” said Cooper, who hopes Pettit’s withdrawal would give the remaining applicants some leverage in trying to persuade the NHL to cut its fees for an expansion franchise. “Now’s the time to tell them. Milwaukee saying those things makes it easier for us to say maybe they’re trying to get too much.”

With Seattle’s proximity to Vancouver, San Diego’s to Los Angeles and San Jose in between them all, the West Coast may have the inside track for a new franchise. But Seattle is having trouble finding an ownership group, and has hired the First National Bank of Chicago to find one.

“We want to expand on the West Coast,” one league source said. “I think San Diego has a better chance than a lot of people think.”

As long as it can find the capital. Cooper said a core ownership group of 10 to 12 investors, representing the business, real estate development, banking and political communities of the city, has been identified from an interested group of 20 to 30 businessmen.

“We’ve been working with a cross section of business people,” said Cooper, who will present financial portfolios to the committee. “But no one wants to put their name up for disclosure.”

Cooper has said he would be interested in a negotiable 10% ownership, but he is still looking for a general managing partner. Of the two he has in mind, one has been identified as Howard Baldwin, a sports consultant and movie producer in Beverly Hills.

Baldwin, an alternate on the NHL Board of Governors for Minnesota, is in the process of selling his 24.5% interest in the North Stars.