The Glendale City Council voted to accept a $180-million deal with the Phoenix Coyotes that will bring the team a 17,500-seat arena and add a three-million-sf commercial complex to the southwest corner of this Phoenix suburb. The city will contribute up to $180 million for the construction of the arena and, in exchange, will own it and receive all sales tax generated from the arena and other developments on the site, parking revenues and a split with the team of revenues on non-hockey events after the first 50. The team will lease the arena from the city for 30 years, but will receive free rent for the first decade and then pay about $1 million a year afterwards.

"This will truly become a crown jewel of Glendale," Ellman says. "We will build a showcase for you that is something to be proud of."

Ellman is buying 220 acres of vacant land on the southeast corner of Glendale Avenue and Loop 101 for roughly $13 million, but will pay another $4 million to home builder Roston Co. for the land option. Ellman says he plans to ultimately build a three-million-sf commercial complex around the arena that would include hotels, a movie theater and office space. Construction on the ice hockey arena for the Coyotes will begin this summer, he says.

As part of the deal, Ellman will pay the city $11 million for the Manistee Town Center, a defunct shopping mall at the 59th and Northern avenues. Ellman says he plans to develop the property into a possible training facility for the team.

Meanwhile, Ellman must determine just what to do with the 42 acres he owns in Scottsdale at the southeast corner of Scottsdale and McDowell Roads, the site of the former Los Arcos Mall, where he had originally planned to locate the arena and $585-million entertainment/retail complex. The former mall is in the process of being razed, the land may sit vacant for some time while Ellman determines just what to do with it.

"We are going to work with the city the best way we can," he says. "We've got three years of our life ad $45 million invested in Los Arcos. It just didn't work out."

Ellman says he went with the Glendale deal and rejected Scottsdale because it appeared that the issue would have gone before the public for a third time, and because the two sides couldn't reach an agreement on what the development could include and how to share the revenues.

Ellman says the land in south Scottsdale isn't for sale and that once he fulfills his obligation to clear the parcel that "it could stay that way for years."