Make L-A into a hockey town

The opening of the Lewiston Maineiacs season this weekend marks what many hope is a new era in this community. After the movements of the last year, many didn't believe this level of hockey would exist here come fall.

As attendance fluttered and money issues came to the forefront near the end of last season, the team sought to move. The city of Lewiston had invested several million dollars into some improvements since the team had come to town and, within the previous year, sold the Androscoggin Bank Colisee to a professional management firm.

To say the first six seasons of the Maineiacs has been a roller-coaster is an understatement. The politics between the city and the original owner of the arena and the public disputes about how to fund its improvements cast a negative light on what should have been seen as an economic opportunity.

And the aggressive push to sell the arena at all costs led to very little of the original investment to be recouped, and a large tract of undeveloped real estate in downtown Lewiston sold with limited or no restrictions.

Now overlay that with the team's success over those six years, with the pinnacle being Lewiston's appearance in the Memorial Cup in 2007 and the placement of this small New England city on the hockey championship map. Around that good year, there were certainly some struggles, and it can be hard to sell tickets to watch a losing team.

If you want analysis of this year's team and its prospects to be great and pack the house, you can easily find that in a different section of this newspaper and the insight of Justin Pelletier. My interest, however, is not so much the play on the ice, as how the team's presence plays in the community.

With the Lewiston Maineiacs here to stay, it is time the community took a strategic approach to leveraging the existence of this franchise and its potential economic impact. And those some with inherently parochial mindsets may shudder at the thought, community includes at the least Lewiston and Auburn.

By quickly looking around the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, and also some small market hockey cities in New England, it is clear that arena location and context is important. If visitors are coming to a city for hockey, can they get there easily, what is the community view that greets them as they arrive, and are there places nearby for them to shop or eat before and after games?

In Saint John, New Brunswick for example, an arena that seats over 6,000 fans rests along the downtown waterfront and is accessible not far from a major highway. Fans have nearby restaurants, shops and other attractions to occupy and encourage them to leave a little bit more money behind on game day.

Our Colisee seats under 4,000 fans, in the heart of an residential neighborhood with only local streets to help fans reach the facility. Should visitors or guests want to grab a bite before or after a game, it's a meandering drive to a handful of restaurant options scattered downtown or shopping options even further away.

This is not intended to be a distress call that Colisee won't cut it. But it is a suggestion that something must be done to make this level of hockey truly part of the future of building a vibrant Lewiston-Auburn and two choices exist to get us there.

The cities would work together to assess a downtown strategy that revisits the type of development that occurs along a corridor from the Colisee and its residential neighbors towards Lisbon Street. It doesn't have to be exclusively stores, restaurants or businesses, but some of all three.

Though previously attempted under the poorly executed "Heritage Initiative," some mix of residential and commercial redevelopment extending from the Southern Gateway is needed. The city cannot afford to maintain a 100 percent residential land use as a buffer from an arena and the commercial downtown.

Our other choice, which I would prefer in the next five years, would be a plan to build a new facility closer to the riverfront. As other sports towns have investigated, arenas paired with some conference or convention space become critical anchors for downtown redevelopment if sited properly.

The politics of that is more challenging and with a new owner of the Colisee in place, how that would play out becomes a little more difficult.

Regardless, we cannot sit back and assume the Maineiacs are here for good. Beyond doing our part as fans, community leaders must begin planning for how to make their home rink a centerpiece of our economic development.

Jonathan LaBonte, of New Auburn, is a columnist for the Sun Journal and an Androscoggin County Commissioner. E-mail: jlabonte08@gmail.com.