Facility Notes

AEG Pumping $300M Into Millennium Dome Renovations

In N.Y., Dicker & Gaskell report New York Gov. George Pataki “vowed to go ahead with tomorrow’s planned vote” by the Public Authorities Control Board on $300M in state financing for the West Side stadium, “despite legislative calls for delay.” Pataki: “It’s important to send a signal to the Olympic Committee, now that they’re less than two months (from) making a determination, that we have overcome the last hurdle, and I have no intention, at this point, of taking it off the agenda” (N.Y. POST, 5/17).

DOME EFFECT: SPORTSBUSINESS JOURNAL’s Don Muret reports AEG will begin work “in the next few weeks” on London’s Millennium Dome, where it is building a $300M, 19,000-seat arena and investing $1B in retail and entertainment development. Icon Group, HOK Sport and Sir Robert McAlpine are handling the transformation (SPORTSBUSINESS JOURNAL, 5/16 issue). In London, Dominic White reported mobile phone company O2 has acquired the naming rights for the arena in a deal that calls for the company’s logo to be added to the dome roof (London TELEGRAPH, 5/12).

NO TELL MOTEL: Suns Owner Robert Sarver said that he and team investors “have paid about $4[M] for the boarded-up Madison Hotel and an adjacent parking lot, located west of America West Arena.” Sarver added that the land “could become a new practice facility for the team and possibly a health club or a supermarket.” Sarver would then turn the practice area in the lower level of America West Arena “into a club for fans seated in the arena’s lower bowl” (Craig Harris, ARIZONA REPUBLIC, 5/17).