Outside Glens Falls city hall Thursday afternoon, Dan Burke, president of the Adirondack Civic Center Coalition, presented Mayor Dan Hall with a $50,000 check.
“It is with great pleasure on behalf of the board of the Coalition that we make this final lease payment, according to the terms of the agreement, to the City of Glens Falls for the Cool Insuring Arena,” said Burke.
The Coalition, a group of local business people, operates the arena under a $600,000 lease-purchase agreement first approved in 2014. The lease will continue through 2019.
Mayor Hall, a Democrat, served as councilor-at-large at the time the agreement was approved.
He said the idea to keep the arena functioning as a public space and hockey arena has been realized.
“It was big debate on which way to go with that, so it today it comes to fruition and we’re very excited about it. And hopefully the Coalition will continue doing what they’re doing with the hockey and the events. So we feel that it was the right decision, obviously,” said Hall.
The keys to the arena were awarded to the Coalition after a bidding process that drew interest from several parties. The city remained adamant, however, that the arena would be home to a regional hockey team.
In 2014, AHL hockey returned to the Civic Center with the Adirondack Flames. Affiliated with the NHL’s Calgary Flames, in 2015, the team moved west in a league realignment. Calgary then brought in a new team and kept the front-of-house staff to form the ECHL Adirondack Thunder.
In 2017, after Calgary fulfilled its three-year agreement, the Coalition purchased the hockey team and secured a new team affiliation with the New Jersey Devils.
The Devils’ move into Glens Falls came after they moved their AHL Albany Devils team to Binghamton. In their first year under the Devils, the Thunder made it to the Kelly Cup playoffs.
Cool Insuring Arena general manager Jeff Mead said attendance was up this year, too.
“About 35,000 came to a Thunder game this year than last year so that’s the reason for the big increase. Attendance was up this dramatically this year, 2017-18, so that’s the biggest reason for more people coming into the building,” said Mead.
After years in the red, in 2017 the arena operated in the black with the assistance of revenues from Warren County.
Under the Coalition, the building has seen several improvements, including new lighting, a video board, and marquee outside. But there are several things yet to tackle on the Coalition’s list.
Burke said those improvements will help bring more events to the arena.
“For example, we have one more locker room we need to finish up so we can have the most complete bid for the New York State Public High School basketball tournament. So the list goes on. But yeah, there’s a bunch of things. And we have a committee that works with the hockey team and says ‘what’s the priority here?’ Sometimes it’s not curb appeal, sexy stuff. Sometimes you just got to replace a boiler because you need a boiler,” said Burke.
A longtime winter event, the New York State Public High School Athletic Association boys’ basketball tournament left Glens Falls for Binghamton in 2017. City leaders, including Mayor Hall, want to see it return.
As the city, a winner of a $10 million Downtown Revitalization Initiative grant from New York state, invests in its downtown, the upkeep up the arena is central to the city’s economic development effort.
“It’s a building in Glens Falls that brings people here and it’s a great thing for us to expose people to our area. They come to the arena, but then they also come to the restaurants, experience the Queensbury Hotel, experience downtown Glens Falls, which we’re very proud of,” said Hall.
