If you build it, they will come...

Mario Lemieux and Pittsburgh Penguins executives made the rounds yesterday (1/4), touring and meeting with representatives from the Sprint Center, a state-of-the-art arena currently under construction in Kansas City, Missouri, followed by an evening meeting with Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell. Kansas City, which has long aspired to bring a major professional hockey or basketball franchise back to the city (the New Jersey Devils NHL franchise left in 1976 first for Colorado, then N.J.; the NBA's Kings moved to Sacramento in 1985), took the somewhat risky strategy in the summer of 2005 of beginning construction on an arena without having any major tenants. This "if you build it, they will come" strategy, while financially risky (imagine the potential losses likely to occur if the building goes a number of years without a major tenant), has been successful in the past. The City of St. Louis built what we now know as the Edward Jones Dome in the early 1990's without a major tenant in an effort to woo an NFL team to the city to replace the former St. Louis Cardinals football team. The Rams moved there in 1995 just as the stadium was nearly completion. Tropicana Field, then the Florida Suncoast Dome, was built in 1986 in an effort to lure an MLB team to the Tampa-St. Petersburg area. After high-profile recruitments of the White Sox, Mariners, and Giants, MLB eventually awarded an expansion francise to the stadium in 1995, nearly ten years after construction.

The Penguins situation appears to be a classic bidding war for the right to house the team with the Sprint Center and Kansas City on one side and Pittsburgh/Allegheny County/Pennsylvania on the other. Mario Lemieux has made it clear that he would prefer to keep the team in Pittsburgh, where attendance has been strong, if a new arena can be built, a position the NHL supports. The Sprint Center reportedly offered free rent and a free ownership stake in the arena during yesterday's meetings. It will be interesting to see in what direction these arena negotiations head over the next few weeks.

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