Town still looking to lease Stoneham Arena
Published on December 19th, 2007
STONEHAM, MA - The Stoneham Board of Selectmen is once again looking at courting an outside leasing/management company to rent and run operations at the Stoneham Arena - a movement that has in the past brought quite a bit of interest from citizens around the town: be they youth hockey parents or staunch rink advocates.
Stoneham's attempt to create an RFP and attract leasing interest may be a little more under-the-radar this time around, as the town's fathers enthusiastically voted to direct Town Administrator Dave Ragucci to put together a committee to seek out leasing possibilites over the next two months.
By doing this, the subcommittee doesn't have to post or publicly announce their meetings and the public is given no official information as to the setting or the subject matter of the meetings - numerous pieces of information that would be of interest to a large number of Stoneham Arena-loving people within the town of Stoneham.
"Since [Ragucci] the person on the RFP the board might wanted to decide to approve the idea and the Town Administrator will be constructing the document, it could be done in a way that, frankly, won't be subject to the Open Meeting Law," said Town Counsel Bill Solomon, who then went through a path of logic for allowing Ragucci to hand pick the members of the committee that will construct the RFP and search for potential lease holders. "Let him make the appointments for the members of the committee, and he can call them in on an hour's notice if he needs input."
According to Ragucci, the 30 plus year old rink is currently netting the town a profit of $80,000 after subtracting the $400,000 in operating costs, and the town could simply cleanse its hands of the costs of running the rink if they turned it over to an independent company.
"Two things I would like to explore is looking at leasing the arena once again and forming a smaller study group than the feasibility group to see what our options are," said Ragucci. "I don't want to go down this path without someone from the Board of Selectmen to help draw up an RFP with myself and Bill Solomon. I would like to put the RFP out as soon as possible which would mean February, while the eventual long term lease would have to go out to Town Meeting."
Obviously the lease would have to bring in at least $80,000 per year to make it worth the town's while to search for and find any leasing company, and Ragucci alluded to the fact that any agreement wouldn't be a 5-10 year lease.
"Right now the rink is running at $400,000 in operating costs with only a net gain of $80,000," said Ragucci. "Finding a leasee would free up $480,000 in tax dollars, and the possible revenue streams from the leasing company can be a significant one to use somewhere else."
Instead Town Meeting approval would be needed as something along the lines of a 20-30 year agreement would be needed to attract lease suitors - an obvious scenario given the amount of capital investment any company would have to make in the arena.
"This has to be a 25-year lease because we would be requiring the leasee to invest money into the Arena," said Ragucci, who felt that taking care of local hockey groups and requiring capital improvements of the new leaseholders would be built within any contract. "Here is a way that we can free up some tax dollars and generate another revenue stream outside the tax base and not impact youth hockey or Stoneham High School hockey."
The Selectmen unanimously voted to endorse the TA in putting together the committee, and Selectmen Chairman George Seibold will sit on the advisory committee along with several to be named citizens.
"We want to make sure this is best for Stoneham and the taxpayers," said Selectmen Chairman George Seibold, who also helped pot together a committee to look into the feasibility of building a second hockey rink in Stoneham.
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