Bloomington arena

[tornado]

The U.S. Cellular Coliseum in Bloomington is struggling financially- and now their top tenent, the Bloomington Prairie Thunder hockey team, could be leaving...

The owner of the hockey team may be backing out of the lease...but the management corporation still has much of a 10-year lease to have hockey and football in the arena...

and city folks are spinning all this positively...

"IRS files lien against Thunder owners; lease with Coliseum set to expire"

The lien.. claims team owners have not paid $23,104 in quarterly payroll
taxes for the period ending June 30, 2010.

Meanwhile, the team’s five-year lease with the city-owned Coliseum expires
after postseason play that begins Saturday in Bloomington.

As part of CIAM’s 10-year deal with the city to operate the Coliseum, CIAM
must have a professional hockey team and an indoor football team as anchor
tenants.

The IRS lien follows an incident last weekend when Leighton and team
co-owner Paula Hardy got into an argument outside the locker room and
traded shoves. They have formally accused each other of battery, although
no legal charges have been filed by the prosecutor’s office."

http://www.pantagraph.com/news/local/article_396a30dc-5b03-11e0-a3c4-001cc4c03286.html

[tornado]

Bloomington's US Cellular Coliseum lost $500,000 last year, and $183,727 the year before.

And in just the 1st quarter this year they've lost $252,465 - on pace for a $1 mil loss this fiscal year.
Then they admit these figures STILL don't even include $1.45 million bond payments & $850,000 depreciation losses, all of which ends up being footed by taxpayers, although they are repeatedly told that the arena does benefit them by helping out businesses - although nothing is mentioned about how most of the businesses are owned by corporations that are outside the area so a huge hunk of any profits made by those businesses do NOT stay in the community.
So, like a whole lot of "community" or "civic" projects like we have seen here, every citizen pays for it but only a far, far smaller handful of business interests actually gain much.

http://www.pantagraph.com/entertainment/despite-rod-alan-coliseum-reports-operating-loss/article_d08e502f-cae4-5e9b-a16c-5eaaa9d0fce6.html

[tornado]

wow - big scandal hitting the Bloomington downtown arena - involving a couple of the owners of the Rivermen

http://www.pjstar.com/news/20170925/pair-of-rivermen-co-owners-charged-in-us-cellular-coliseum-misconduct-case

[tornado]

The five people under 111 indictmenta for "theft, fraud and money laundering...stealing city funds ...wire fraud ..conspiracy, filing false sales tax returns and conspiracy to commit tax evasion" are:

-John Y. Butler, president of Central Illinois Arena Management (CIAM)

-Bart Rogers, CIAM general manager

-and CIAM employees Jay C. Laesch, Paul E. Grazar and Kelly W. Klein

http://www.pantagraph.com/news/local/government-and-politics/ex-arena-officials-face-counts-of-theft-fraud-money-laundering/article_b6d9a99f-6d07-5b58-8341-96f02d80a301.html

Laesch is the Budget Manager at ILLINOIS STATE UNIVERSITY!! They'd better check their budget closely!!!


what's MOST INTERESTING is that all this corruption was exposed and these charges resulted form just ONE PERSON - an independent BLOGGER in Bloomington that vigorously pursued the truth and filed FOIA requests and found out about the fraud, theft & money laundering on her own when other city officials and media ignored it and stonewalled!

http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/illinoisreview/2017/09/concerned-bloomington-citizen-files-foias-on-city-owned-stadium-results-led-to-111-indictments.html

[Disturbed]

John Butler was associate athletic director at Bradley from 2000 to 2008 according to his Linkedin page.

[Da Coach]

John Butler was associate athletic director at Bradley from 2000 to 2008 according to his Linkedin page.

Yes, he worked under Ken Kavanagh, and he was involved in men's basketball and other sports. From my limited interaction with him, he's a great guy and a hard worker. I hope he comes out of this thing OK.

[tornado]

I believe John was hired back in the early 1990's under Ron Ferguson - he later returned to Bradley after a stint with the Rivermen from 1999-2004

http://www.peoriamagazines.com/ibi/2003/aug/40-leaders-under-forty-class-1994

[tornado]

the Bloomington Arena - now named Grossinger Arena - just finished their fiscal year
with another huge loss of revenue...........
this year it was a $665,000 loss.....on top of a $671,000 loss last year

https://www.pantagraph.com/entertainment/deep-in-the-red-bloomington-arena-ends-year-with-another/article_59abe6f6-dd4c-542f-b1f9-50ae937feb19.html

ISU never uses the arena - which seats 7,000 - except for their club hockey team but they do host a USHL hockey team. But the indoor football team, the basketball team and SPHL hockey team that used to be there - do not appear to play there any more.