Hurricanes caught off guard by paid parking decision

By Al Beeber - Lethbridge Herald on May 5, 2022.

Doug Paisley meets with reporter Wednesday about the City's plan to introduce paid parking at the Enmax Centre in September. The WHL team says no discussions were had with the team about the plan which was approved by city council last week. Herald photo by Al Beeber

LETHBRIDGE HERALDabeeber@lethbridgeherald.com

The Lethbridge Hurricanes say a decision by the City of Lethbridge to launch paid parking in September at the Enmax Centre wasn’t discussed with the club beforehand and has potential to harm revenues.
Team governor and president Doug Paisley discussed the situation with media at the arena on Wednesday.
“The biggest thing for us was just the communication that we heard about on Tuesday night (April 26) that there was a vote. We weren’t aware there was a vote, we weren’t aware it was going to be put in front of council and that caught our attention,” Paisley said of the most recent city council meeting.
“We’ve known about the prospect of paid parking since the KPMG report came out a few years ago. We knew that the city had purchased the kiosks,” he said, adding the club brought that to the attention of shareholders at the AGM last year.
“There was a deferral. Because of the pandemic, there was some challenges there,” he said.
Paisley said in reference to the deferral and whether the team should have a say in paid parking “I think it’s a fair question. I don’t know the answer to that; I can’t speculate on that. At the end of the day for us, we’re all in a predicament coming out of this pandemic. The first year you played in a bit of a quasi bubble and it was an expensive year that cost every franchise probably seven figures roughly and this year with half capacity for more than half the season then finally to get back on track, it’s been challenging,” added Paisley.
Paisley said with inflation the team is concerned about what fans will be willing to pay in the future to attend games, adding the $5 spent on parking could stop them from spending money at the concession stand or buying a 50-50 ticket that raises money for the team’s education fund or helping charitable groups who work with the Hurricanes, with the team generating about $150,000 annually for various organizations.
“Those are all very, very impactful to us, very, very impactful to our community,” he said, adding the KPMG report might be obsolete.
“Our world’s changed immensely, drastically in the last two years,” said Paisley.
“The biggest thing is the lack of communication. Within our lease, there is a piece that states if paid parking is ever implemented at the Enmax, that there will be a negotiation on how revenue will be shared because obviously with the majority of dates and being the anchor tenant in the Enmax Centre, clearly we’re going to be involved in that conversation and negotiation,” Paisley said.
Paisley said with the data the club has and research it’s done along with the knowledge of the league, paid parking doesn’t work in WHL cities.
“You’ve got Calgary and Edmonton but that’s very different, those are professional team owned. That’s a different situation in really big centres.
“So we were nervous about it, we were concerned about it but we were told there would be some negotiations and there would be conversations. And we were caught completely off guard when we heard the vote happened on Tuesday and we were even more caught off when the publication came out on Monday and the note came from the city that season ticket holders wouldn’t be charged for parking.
“Again we weren’t part of the conversation, we didn’t know that was happening so we want to communicate, we want to sit down, we want to talk. That opportunity just hasn’t been presented at this point,” said Paisley.
Paisley said as a partner, the Hurricanes “want to work together to find solutions for revenue generation, expense reduction and again, being the anchor tenant in the Enmax Centre we’ve got some ideas how we could help. We feel we do a very good job on what we control on our events and our game nights.
“And we feel we do a very good job come playoffs. I think we think we do a great job entertaining our fans” and the team feels it is knowledgeable and able to help come up with ideas.
“I find it interesting that the day this came out was 1,150 days from our last playoff game – almost three years plus. And the last playoff game that was played in Lethbridge prior to last week was in Nicholas Sheran because there was a curling event that came to Lethbridge, which is great for Lethbridge.”
It was bad for the Hurricanes, said Paisley, because the team didn’t know in advance about the curling event at the Enmax Centre. It then had to play in the much smaller Nicholas Sheran which impacted revenue.
“So it’s a communications thing,” he said.
Paisley said the parking concern didn’t necessarily come up during discussions about the deferral on the team debenture.
Paisley said when the KPMG report came out, the team saw that “the Enmax was highlighted as a tax burden they wanted to try to reduce and one of the suggestions made was to implement paid parking, and not only at the Enmax but at other facilities in town. But obviously this one directly impacted us and our fans and our stakeholders and knowing full well that it didn’t work in Medicine Hat, it didn’t work in Red Deer, we were very concerned. And we expressed those things” and then the team was surprised to learn of the recent council vote.
“We watched the YouTube clip of the 40 minutes of the debate and discussion on it and I was surprised only one person, Mayor Hyggen, brought up specifically how does this impact the Hurricanes? This is probably going to be detrimental. And none of the other councillors really talked about the Hurricanes at all. As an anchor tenant do we feel slighted? I don’t know, that’s probably too far but it’s a little bit confusing to us how we’re not part of those communications and those discussions. But it sounds like they want to do some in-person things, that’s what I read in the note that came out Monday night, but yet here I am talking to you guys and here we are going back and forth through the media,” Paisley said.

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