Tom Hicks, vice Chairman of the NHL
For the bullet summary, please go here.
Power! It’s a wonderful thing. How do you get it? Why not ask former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney?
Tom Hicks is the vice-chairman of the National Hockey League’s Board of Governors. He is also the owner of the Texas Rangers Baseball Club.
Tom Hicks and Jerry Reinsdorf share interest in Major League Baseball, and they also own teams. At least, Hicks still technically has a hold of the Texas Rangers.
You see, Hicks’ sports holding company, Hicks Sports Group is in default.
Where Major League Baseball will likely play by fair rules and strip ownership, the story in the NHL office is a little different.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the NHL is protecting Hicks’ interest in the Stars, where the MLB isn’t:
That won’t happen for at least 180 days, however, as lenders have agreed to National Hockey League provisions that prevent immediate foreclosure. Major League Baseball’s rules for such situations are more fluid, though if Hicks Sports Group can’t satisfy lenders, the lenders can eventually force an MLB-sanctioned sale of the Rangers.
You see, when you are the Vice-Chairman of the NHL, I suppose like an American Express card, that kind of stature ‘has it’s priviledges’.
Unlike Jerry Moyes, Tom Hicks has been in trouble for months, but you don’t see the NHL handing over proxies to strip him of any control, do you? Oh contraire, quite the opposite is occuring it would seem.
And the WSJ adds just how far ‘to bat’ the NHL will go on this one for Hicks:
A spokesman for NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman declined to comment. Bob DuPuy, chief operating officer of Major League Baseball, also declined to comment.
Relations between the Hicks Sports Group lenders and the NHL have grown increasingly testy of late, with the NHL threatening to do all it could to block a forced sale of the Stars, according to people involved in the matter.
Will Gary Bettman spare Tom Hicks from ‘embarassment’ as he professed to do for Jerry Moyes?
It would seem there are different sets of rules depending on who you are. At least baseball doesn’t have the same bias.
Well, let’s have a look, shall we.
Remember, Jerry Reinsdorf was approved by Hicks as a good choice of owner. Would Hicks know Reinsdorf having shared owning positions in the MLB? Probably.
Would Hicks have known Reinsdorf when they fundraised for John McCain in the 2008 Presidential Campaign? Good chance.
And, isn’t it a coincidence that Tom Hicks is also a land developer? My word!
Yes, according to the Dallas Stars website on Hicks:
An Empty Victory: When urban planning fails to live up to expectations
Hicks Holdings is a partner with Hillwood Development Company in the Victory Park project in downtown Dallas. Hicks Holdings is a developer of a 75-acre urban town center /multi-use development on the land adjacent to the Rangers Ballpark in Arlington; and of Champions Park, a 40-acre office/retail development in Frisco, Texas
And, if we look at the reasons that Dallas originally decided on the Victory Park project, check out the similarity in thinking to that of Glendale. Downright scary:
Having for a long time failed to populate its dowtown with any residents, the city made a concerted effort (i.e. gave lots of tax incentives) to refurbish and even repurpose vacant office buildings into top-of-the-line apartments and condominiums. It even subsidized a neighborhood grocery store to get residents to stay. Yet these efforts were modest compared to one of the largest new mixed-use developments just outside the central business district Victory Park.
Well, how did Victory Park do? Probably best described by the same blogger:
Now, only a few years later, Victory Park seems to embody at the local level the wreckage of the global real-estate bust. The trendy restaurants have been shutting down one by one, the public plaza feels like a ghost town when basketball and hockey games are not taking place at the arena. Most of the shops have closed their doors and many residential units remains unsold. Another major hotel flag backed out of the project, leaving a large parcel at the center of the development undevelopped, undermining viability of the planned street blocks. The local television newscast still broadcasts from Victory, but struggles to show an outdoor shot for a constant lack of pedestrians. Despite civic groups’ efforts to stage rallies, awards ceremonies, film festivals and new year’s parties, Victory continues to fail as a favorite place to congregate.of t
Sounds a lot like the thinking of Glendale. Any coincidence that sports ownership and land development goes hand in hand in places outside of Glendale?
Any coincindence that there could be strong support by the vice-Chairman of the NHL to a man like Jerry Reinsdorf, with likely relationship formed over several years?
What chance would a man like Jim Balsillie have? Does he own an MLB team? Did he fundraise for John McCain? Is he involved in land or sports arena development?
For that matter, what chance did Jerry Moyes have? He wasn’t in the same kind of ventures some others in sports are.
Where Hicks gets six months reprieve from the NHL, Jerry Moyes got six months of takeover planning behind his back. Where Hicks gets 180 days to find more investors, Jerry Moyes got to sign proxies giving up his rights. At least, that’s what Gary Bettman thought.
But, don’t feel sorry for Hicks. He is looking to make an acquisition in the $billions for a packaging company. It would seem he has decided to stop flooding his wealth into the hockey and baseball teams to bail them out, and didn’t pay his $10 million payment.
When you have lots of wealth and power, you can pick and choose, and make some people wait.
And, it would appear Gary Bettman wants to continue to be accomodating to Hicks, because after all, Hicks could likely have pull enough to control the fate of Bettman in the NHL office . No wonder Mr. B is so helpful and supportive.
Ah, power! Ain’t it grande?
So, when we ask ourselves if the vote for Reinsdorf and the overwhelming denial of Jim Balsillie was fair, we only need to look at the relationships and the associated ‘treatment’ a friend gets, and the poor treatment one not as connected receives.
How are things in the back pocket of Mr.Hicks, Gary?
Fair for Moyes or Balsillie? Please!
he global real-estate bust. The trendy restaurants have been shutting down one by one, the public plaza when basketball and hockey games are not taking place at the arena. Most of the shops have closed their doors and many residential units remains unsold. Another major hotel flag backed out of the project, leaving a large parcel at the center of the development undevelopped, undermining viability of the planned street blocks. The local television newscast still broadcasts from Victory, but struggles to show an outdoor shot for a constant lack of pedestrians. Despite civic groups’ efforts to stage rallies, awards ceremonies, film festivals and new year’s parties, Victory continues to fail as a favorite place to congregate.
oOn a Saturday in January, a little after midnight, there are only a few people milling about Perot’s district. Most of them are headed to the Ghostbar, one of the few places that hasn’t shut down for the night. At the AT&T Plaza, the heart of Victory Park that fronts the southern edge of AAC, two mammoth super screens blare a series of artsy images to a crowd of, well, no one. Billed as “one of the largest outdoor digital mediums in the world,” the screens were supposed to be a landmark attraction in the glamorous development. Now they just seem a once-coveted Christmas gift tossed awkwardly aside.ry Pa The brainchild of Ross Perot Jr. (the son of the former presidential candidate), Victory was advertised as the the premier masterplanned urban community, designed for the on-the-go single professional who desired place to live, work, shop and play. Anchored by a state-of-the-art basketball arena and a luxury condo-hotel, Victory was going to be a district defined by high-rise apartments, fashionable street retail, trendy restaurants, and a public plaza surrounded by gigantic and moving digital projections. Apparently, what Dallas needed was an instant Times Square, complete with a glassed-in television studio at the corner to highlight the crowded pedestrian-filled sidewalks that are common in the city (…uh huh). After an early flirtation with a low-rise, historicist architectural theme, it was decided for this district to appear distincitively contemporary, with multiple glass skyscrapers of at least 25 stories, bamboo landscaping and reflecting pools with clean edges.
Victory ParThe brainchild of Ross Perot Jr. (the son of the former presidential candidate), Victory was advertised as the the premier masterplanned urban community, designed for the on-the-go single professional who desired place to live, work, shop and play. Anchored by a state-of-the-art basketball arena and a luxury condo-hotel, Victory was going to be a district defined by high-rise apartments, fashionable street retail, trendy restaurants, and a public plaza surrounded by gigantic and moving digital projections. Apparently, what Dallas needed was an instant Times Square, complete with a glassed-in television studio at the corner to highlight the crowded pedestrian-filled sidewalks that are common in the city (…uh huh). After an early flirtation with a low-rise, historicist architectural theme, it was decided for this district to appear distincitively contemporary, with multiple glass skyscrapers of at least 25 stories, bamboo landscaping and reflecting pools with clean edges.
