(Carl Cronan is editor of Real EstateFlorida.)
TAMPA, FL-Craig Sher, executive chairman of the Sembler Co., was introduced Monday as one of eight new co-owners of the National Hockey League's Tampa Bay Lightning. Sembler is a major regional retail development firm based in St. Petersburg.
"I've been a hockey fan since I was a kid growing up in Minnesota," Sher tells GlobeSt.com. "I think it would be fun to do. It's not something I'd want to do otherwise."
Sher has a detailed list of business and civic credentials, serving on several boards of directors including Sabal Trust Co., the St. Petersburg Downtown Partnership and the University of Florida Center for Real Estate Studies. Before joining Sembler in 1984, he was vice president of finance and headed the office building division of Rutenberg Corp. in Clearwater.
The group expects to close on its purchase of the Lightning from Detroit-based Palace Sports & Entertainment in the coming week. The $200-million deal includes leasehold rights to the St. Pete Times Forum arena in Downtown Tampa, along with development rights to 5.5 acres of adjacent land in the city's Channel District.
The Lightning's new owners will be led by Oren Koules, a movie and television producer best known for the successful "Saw" horror films and the CBS hit comedy series "Two and a Half Men." The Chicago native played minor-league hockey and was a commodities trader before starting his film career in the mid-1990s.
Koules describes Sher as a "voice of reason" among the Lightning's new owners who helped him through the ups and downs of acquiring the team over much of the past year. "We have an ownership group that have all won in their respective jobs and their respective lives, and we want to take that and push forward on that here," Koules said during a news conference Monday at the Forum.
Sher says Koules and Len Barrie, a former NHL player who now heads Bear Mountain Resort in Victoria, BC, will be the Lightning's majority owners. "We'll leave the hockey stuff to them and help out wherever they need us," he says, including consulting on potential development of the Forum's adjacent land.
Others in the ownership group include Mark Burg, co-founder with Koules of Twisted Pictures; Russell Belinsky, senior managing director of Chanin Capital Partners; Jordan Zimmerman, a Fort Lauderdale advertising executive; Dr. Richard C. Lehman, an orthopedic surgeon and sports medicine specialist from St. Louis; and Irwin Novack, CEO of Kane Furniture Corp. Zimmerman and Lehman also own a minority stake in the NHL's Florida Panthers.
The Lightning finished last in the NHL last season, four years after winning the Stanley Cup championship. The team chose Steven Stamkos with the first pick of the league's draft over the weekend, and reportedly seeks to hire Barry Melrose, a former NHL coach now working for ESPN, to lead the Bolts this coming season.
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