Developers’ Group Buys Sports Arena

Developers Ronald E. Hahn and C. Samuel Marasco finalized the purchase of the Sports Arena Thursday after 19 months of legal wrangling, and plans for a downtown sports palace are expected to move forward, Hahn said.

But Hahn said he will not proceed with a new arena downtown without assurances about a franchise from the National Basketball Assn. or the National Hockey League.

“This is not going to be the ‘Field of Dreams,’ ” he said. “It’s not going to be, ‘If you build it, they will come.’ We will not build it that way.”

Hahn and Marasco head a team of seven partners in Arena Group 2000 that bought that San Diego Arena Corp. from Harry Cooper and Richard Esquinas. The new group immediately assumed operation of the 25-year-old building and named Jeff Quinn general manager and director of development.

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed, and Cooper and Esquinas could not be reached for comment.

When the Hahn group originally agreed to a purchase agreement on May 10, 1991, it was with the intention of erecting a new, state-of-the-art sports complex downtown while chasing franchises from both the NBA and the NHL.

Hahn said the legal maneuvering derailed his group’s efforts to lure professional sports franchises, but he hopes to get talks underway again.

“We’re back,” he said. “And we’re going full steam ahead. But it will take some time. The city is extremely supportive, (but) this is not the best of times to be building major projects or to be moving professional teams.”

While the legal jousting continued here, a new sports arena was built in Anaheim. On schedule to open in June, that building sits in direct competition with this city for professional franchises.

Anaheim also has a financial stake in luring both the NBA and NHL. If it does not, it is liable for annual payments of $2.5 million for eight years.

Barry Lorge, a spokesman for Arena Group 2000, downplayed the possibility of Anaheim out-bidding any local effort to buy a sports franchise.

“Anaheim doesn’t have a team yet,” Lorge pointed out. “Plus, it might have some territorial problems being so close to Los Angeles.”

The transfer of ownership is not expected to have any immediate impact on the Sports Arena’s two tenants, the Sockers, who have played there since 1980, and the International Hockey League Gulls, currently in their third season.

Gulls owner Fred Comrie, however, said that there could be a conflict if Hahn’s original plans, which call for Laker owner Jerry Buss to place an NHL team in San Diego, are followed.

Comrie’s long range plans are to bring the Gulls into the NHL.

“And the NHL would love to have us,” he said. “But they have questions of how well San Diego can draw. Right now we’re just trying to build hockey here. You have to take things one step at a time.”

Lorge agreed and said that if the NHL were to expand to San Diego or allow an existing team to move here, it would prefer for that team to play in the existing, 13,000-seat facility in the Midway District.

“The leagues have made it clear that it is not necessary to have a new arena immediately.” Lorge said. “In the case of the NHL, they would rather work on selling out the old building first, and then move up.”

Plans for the new arena call for a capacity of at least 18,000.

Lorge also said there should be no conflict between potential owners.

“Arena Group 2000 is interested in anyone who can deliver a team,” he said.

There are 11 potential sites in three downtown neighborhoods under consideration for the new arena. Under terms of a memorandum of understanding granted by the city to Hahn on March 30, the site was to have been chosen by June 30, 1993. That date likely will be pushed back, Lorge said, because of the legal delays.

Hahn’s group includes local entrepreneurs Ballard Smith, Scott Jones and Michael Martella, and John R. Queen of Palo Alto.

Cooper had purchased the lease to the city-owned arena from Graymont Ltd. of Canada in the spring of 1989 with similar intentions of building a modern palace elsewhere in the city. Lacking political clout, he decided to sell in 1991.

Hahn’s takeover comes in two phases. His partnership immediately acquires 50% of the stock of San Diego Arena Corp., leaseholder of the city-owned arena, with an option to buy the remaining stock in the near future.