Komsa Shoots, He Scores

Even Don Cherry would not get the correct answer.

If I asked you who the best stick-handler in hockey is, would you say Rocket Richard or Gordie Howe or Bobby Orr or Wayne Gretzky? Well if you did, then you would be wrong!

As far as I am concerned, the guy who knows his way around the ice rink the best, is Marty Komsa of the Windsor Family Credit Union. He did a deal with the City of Windsor that is a marvel to behold.

The matter is supposed to be passed by Council "on consent" if you can believe it! That means it is supposed to be non-controversial.

Another black mark for this Arena transaction and another black mark for the way the City negotiates deals. Oh if we only had a few business people on Council who knew what they were doing!

Try and figure out if the Credit Union is actually paying anything for the naming rights or whether the City has again given away the "Barn." Oooops sorry for the bad pun but I just could not resist.

Marty certainly got the hat trick in this transaction in my opinion while Eddie just got butt-ended. Clearly most would have missed it but for the instant replay that you will find outlined in this BLOG.. Let's see what the deal is. You will find that the Star headline of $1.6 million is not quite accurate once you see the terms:

1. City receives $1.62 million over 10 years, payable $40,000 quarterly per year. (If one does a present value calculation that works out to about $1 million)
2. Marty gets the right of first bid to renew the deal for two periods of 10 years each (If that is the right of first refusal, it means that no one will ever bid seriously for the naming rights in the future because Marty can always match or beat their deal)
3. It is not the naming rights just for the building but for a whole bunch of extra places as well (That means that City can't sell those rights to others to earn extra money. One may wonder why Marty was put on committee for other namng rights. Has City Hall just created a possible conflicts issue for Marty that could result in embarrassing him since he is both a naming rights proponent and a naming rights decision-maker?)
4. Use of a private suite and not just for hockey (The Spitfire's VIP suite at the Barn goes for $2000 per game. I do not know what an East End Arena suite goes for. If there are 34 to 40 nights of hockey per year plus who knows how many other events that take place, it means Marty doesn't have to pay a lot of money to get a whole bunch of tickets for the games or other events and the Arena loses money.)
5. Only WFCU ATM machines can be used (Well, the City makes some money from that but we don't know how much or whether others would have paid for the rights)
6. Marty get some kind of a WFCU kiosk in the building, although not quite sure what that means (But, there is no charge for that)

I don't know how you feel about this transaction but it reminds me of some of the other deals that our distinguished Mayor has been involved in:

• Remember Eddie was involved before he was Mayor, with the Mady garage transaction that wound up costing the city several million dollars.
• The settlement of MFP where millions were lost
• The five cent parking at the Keg restaurant, and
• The granting of a 50% interest in the funky bus terminal to Greyhound for effectively no capital cost but merely paying operating costs
• I am not going to talk about the Spitfires deal or the Canderel lease deal since we have not yet seen those details and I don't want to ruin my breakfast.

It was interesting reading the Administration report on this matter. I don't know if anyone else was interested in bidding on the naming rights since no one else's name was mentioned. I didn't see any kind of analysis of the transaction to show whether it was a good one or a bad one for the City. I guess if it was the only one, don't you think someone should have told us. If this is a bad deal, maybe Administration should have advised that the City not enter into it and not do a naming rights deal at this time since the economy is so bad.

Here are some other things that I did not see that are part of the City's policy with respect to naming rights:

• The significance of the contribution made relative to the construction and/or operating costs of the item being named
• The significance of the contribution relative to the market valuation of the naming opportunity
• Results of a value assessment
• The benefits to and obligations of both the purchaser and the City
• Demonstrated public support for the sale of naming rights of the facility

I'll bet that this is been a very interesting time for Marty Komsa. Komsa as Chair of the Board of the University of Windsor tried to convince the University to move its complex downtown. Komsa as head of WFCU has been able to get naming the East end arena in this deal.

Can you imagine if we had a downtown arena AND a new Engineering Complex right across the street from a major Family Destination/Museum complex at the Junction. Why Ward 2 really would be the place to be in Windsor. Instead....you cannot get a garage built in parts of that Ward!