DECC hockey rink proposal linked to Twins, Vikings stadiums

It’s a perennial struggle Northeastern Minnesota legislators have largely written off as a Twin Cities issue — until this year.

That’s because after years of discussion, plans to build a new, 6,500-seat hockey arena for the University of Minnesota, Duluth (UMD) at the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center (DECC) are gaining steam. A bonding request for $3.3 million to plan the project is making the rounds in the 2004 legislative session. Winning planning money this year would be a foot in the door for an eventual $48.3 million project. It would allow the existing 24,000 square-foot hockey arena to be used nearly full-time for conference and trade shows.

The overall request likely will be tied to those of the Minnesota Twins baseball team and the Minnesota Vikings football team as proponents jockey for funds and taxing authority to build stadiums of their own in the Twin Cities. That would plunge the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center (DECC) into the politics of the long-simmering, occasionally explosive stadium issue for the first time.

One scenario envisioned by Rep. Thomas Huntley, DFL-Duluth, has Northeastern Minnesota legislators going to bat for the DECC when their votes will be needed in April or May to pass stadium measures for the Twins and Vikings.

“We need a two-pronged approach to the DECC planning money issue,” he said. “One is to treat it as a regular bonding item that can stand on its own merits. Then when the discussion turns to stadiums and where they’re going to get votes for them, Duluth legislators will have to say, ‘we’re not going to vote for any stadiums unless there’s a DECC deal.’”

Huntley said he’s skeptical whether the Twins and Vikings will have enough legislative support to get their stadium proposals passed without significant political trade-offs. Making the DECC projects part of the deal would make it more palatable in the northeast region, he said.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty wants to resolve the stadium issue as soon as possible under the right circumstances. Last year he appointed a commission to study the best options for building the two stadiums. In its recommendations unveiled in January, the panel urged no statewide taxes be used, and rejected gambling as a revenue source. It left open the possibility that local governments could use bar and drink taxes as well as levies on car rentals.

Hennepin County and St. Paul have competing proposals for a Twins ballpark, both in the $550 million range, and Anoka County is seeking support for a $600 million domed stadium for the Vikings. All rely on public financing to work.

Pawlenty’s bonding recommendations for this session has just $12 million for projects in Northeastern Minnesota, and the DECC’s $3.3 million is not among them. That was no shock to Dan Russell, the DECC’s executive director.

“We weren’t included in the governor’s bill but we never thought we would be,” Russell said. “We certainly weren’t led on to believe that that would be the case.”

Nevertheless, Russell said a pretty strong case can be made for a new DECC hockey rink, which would house the UMD Bulldogs and lady Bulldogs hockey teams.

“Our building by far is the oldest in the Western Collegiate Hockey Association,” he said. “We’ve kept it up but certainly it isn’t a modern building. We have Americans with Disabilities Act issues; the ice sheet is the smallest in all of college hockey. Our board has had a long-range plan to expand and this (bonding proposal) is kind of the next step.”

Russell believes a stadium deal will be struck. “I think there’s a lot of posturing on everybody’s part, but there’s really no doubt in my mind that’s going to be addressed this session, the governor’s made that clear. Why would you build two new mega-million-dollar facilities in the Cities and forget the rest of the state? I think that will give us a lot of leverage,” he said.

Along with sewer upgrades for the Western Lake Superior Sanitary District, city officials have put the highest priority on getting the planning money for the DECC, said Duluth Mayor Herb Bergson.

“What I fear is the possibility of losing some events to another venue if the DECC can’t provide ice for UMD,” he said. “UMD is going to look for a facility on campus and that would be devastating for our downtown. So we need to work as hard as we can to keep the hockey games downtown and the other events that go with it.”

UMD and the DECC have agreed Bulldogs hockey should remain downtown. If the city ultimately fails to persuade the Legislature to build the new arena, the school could revive earlier aspirations to build a new on-campus hockey rink. That it all may hinge on the Vikings and Twins frustrates the mayor.

“I’d hate to see Duluth’s DECC live or die by whether there’s a new stadium for the Twins or Vikings because it’s going to alienate some people, and I don’t want to see that happen,” he said. “I’d like to stand on our merits. If it happens, it happens. There’s nothing we can do about that. We have a need and we’re just going to pursue it the best we can.

“There’s different ways of making projects pass and I just don’t want to fall victim if that happens and we come up short,” Bergson said.

A new hockey arena would not just be a boon for UMD. It also would allow the DECC to use its 1966-vintage arena — present home to the hockey Bulldogs — as much-needed convention space nearly full time, adding 24,000 square feet of exhibit space to the DECC’s 100,000 square-foot conference center.

Renee Appel, director of sales and operations for the Duluth Convention & Visitors Bureau, said the city already is losing convention business because of the space crunch.

There’s not enough space at the DECC, Appel said.

“(A new hockey rink) would give us the opportunity to focus the existing arena for exhibits during the time of year when it’s now full of ice events,” she said. “Of course that’s what it was built for, to be a hockey arena, not an exhibit floor. But there are times when we’ve had trade shows looking at it, and we haven’t been able to access the whole facility.”

Appel added that expansion is necessary not only to attract new business, but to keep current customers coming back.

“There are some groups that have outgrown Duluth,” she said. “A good example of lost business is the United Hardware Association. We’ve had them in Duluth three times. Their members loved it, their planner loved it, they loved Duluth, but they’ve just plain outgrown us. If we had that space, that’s a group that we could bring back again. We could fill it.”