Pond Soliciting Bids for Roller Hockey Tenant

The Arrowhead Pond hasn’t completely closed the door on the Anaheim Bullfrogs playing their seventh season of professional roller hockey there this summer, but it is soliciting proposals from at least two other clubs to put a team in the arena.

Pond General Manager Tim Ryan said Thursday he expects to make a decision by Feb. 1.

“We are waiting to get all those applications back,” Ryan said. “We will review each of them internally and discuss the issues with each potential owner. Then we will enter into a period of negotiation, with the goal of having a roller hockey team here this summer.”

Representatives of Major League Roller Hockey and the restructured Roller Hockey International, which plans to return with as many as 12 teams after being idle in 1998, have been asked to make bids.

The Bullfrogs could return, Ryan said, but their owners, the Silver family, would have to pay $80,000 owed in back rent.

“We’d have to look at it as a clean slate,” Ryan said. “Some [problems with] past debt would have to be cured. We need to have financial and legal assurances for the future from them, but certainly, it’s feasible.”

Founder Maury Silver said he is “100% sure” that the Bullfrogs, who are defending MLRH champions, will return to play in the RHI this season, but he has not decided where the team will play. He said he has lost faith in the MLRH and plans to make the decision to return to the RHI official at league meetings next week in Los Angeles.

Silver said he is considering moving the Bullfrogs to the 5,000-seat Ontario Civic Center and is also considering contacting the Anaheim Convention Center if the Pond turns him away.

“We are definitely going to play, 100%, without question,” he said.

The Silvers have had financial problems and personal setbacks lately. Besides owing back rent to the Pond, their corporation that ran the Bullfrogs, Lilypad, Inc., is in bankruptcy with debt in excess of $327,000, according to documents. In August, the City of Fullerton closed the team’s practice facility, Stuart’s Rollerworld, citing noise complaints from police and code violations. And Maury’s youngest son, former Bullfrog General Manager Stuart Silver, is scheduled to go on trial next month on misdemeanor credit card fraud stemming from a youth camp he ran at the Fullerton skating facility.

According to Bill Raue, president of Virginia-based MLRH, his league has paid the Pond a $50,000 deposit toward placing an expansion team, the Anaheim Avengers, there this summer.

Raue said a group of Orange County investors, led by Doug Denhart of the Irvine-based The Foundation Group, plans to operate the Avengers.

They would would be part of a four-team Western Division that would begin play June 5. Raue said teams also would be located in Bakersfield, Denver and San Diego.

He believes the MLRH has an advantage at the Pond, which is operated by Ogden Corporation. Ogden also operates the recently opened 11,000-seat Centennial Gardens, home of the league’s Bakersfield franchise.

Bernie Mullin, president of the RHI, said he has been frustrated by the way the Pond has conducted its bidding process and that the RHI will not make a direct proposal to put another team into the Pond, although individual franchises are welcome to do so. He said officials of the Barracudas, founded by Fullerton businessman Dennis Murphy, have decided not to play in the San Diego Arena and may make a presentation to the Pond. The Barracudas are also talking with Ontario and the Forum, where the RHI had the L.A. Blades for its first five seasons.

Mullin said the Pond has not proven to be a successful venue for niche sport franchises.

“The economics at the Pond are problematic,” he said. “Whether it’s MLRH or RHI, the lease has to be modified from where it’s been in the past. It’s been very hard to make money there in the past. As beautiful a building as it is, it’s an expensive building with very severe restrictions on what advertisers a team can bring in.”

The Bullfrogs paid about $14,000 a game at the Pond. The Pond kept all parking and concessions revenue, as well as a portion of all team novelty and program sales.

The Pond lost $6.2 million last year and $24.7 million in its first five years of operation, according documents filed with the city of Anaheim.

Staff writer Bill Shaikin contributed to this report.