A partnership that includes a downtown developer, who has been trying to bring a National Hockey League team back to Connecticut, was chosen Wednesday to run the Hartford Civic Center.
The board of the Connecticut Development Authority picked the partnership of Lawrence R. Gottesdiener’s Northland Investment Corp. and AEG Worldwide to assume the lease on the building from the city through its expiration in 2013, once a management contract is negotiated.
“Northland is really assuming the lion’s share of the financial risk,” said Chuck Coursey, a Northland spokesman.
The Northland/AEG partnership will take over management of the 16,000-seat Civic Center from Madison Square Garden. MSG also manages the 40,000-seat Rentschler Field in East Hartford where the University of Connecticut plays its home football games. It was unclear if the new deal would affect that arrangement.
Phone messages were left for a CDA spokesman.
AEG is a sports management company that has ownership interests in 11 professional sports teams, including the NHL’s Los Angeles Kings, and the Manchester, N.H. Monarchs of the American Hockey League.
“As the fiduciary and responsible operator of the Hartford Civic Center, CDAs goal was to select the proposal that best identified the financial, economic development, civic and entertainment potential of the facility,” L. Scott Frantz, chairman of CDAs board, said in a statement. “We believe we accomplished that.”
Gottesdiener has said he wants to eventually tear down the Civic Center and build a bigger arena that could host an NHL team, and Coursey said the partnership will move toward that goal.
“It’s still a long shot,” Coursey said. “But this is something that we would want to partner with an AEG to bring NHL Hockey back.”
The Hartford Whalers left for North Carolina in 1997.
Madison Square Garden, which lost its bid to keep the management contract, owns the AHL’s Hartford Wolf Pack, a New York Rangers affiliate.
Coursey said it will be up to Madison Square Garden to decide whether the team returns to the Civic Center next season.
“We’ve met with the AHL and the commissioners office. They like Hartford and we’re confident that if the Wolf Pack isn’t here, we’ll be able to bring an AHL team here,” Coursey said.
A phone call seeking comment from the Civic Center’s MSG management group was transferred to a voice mailbox that was full.
