LEWISTON – Colisee officials are hoping to parlay the naming rights to the ice arena into big bucks.

“If somebody offers something, like $50,000, over the next 10 years, I don’t think that’s going to cut it,” Colisee General Manager Wayne Thornton said Tuesday. “But we’re not talking $30 million a year like Gillette did. Something in between.”

Thornton announced Tuesday that the Colisee is selling the naming rights to the arena. The winning company would put its name in front of the Colisee name.

“They have a good anchor here in the form of the Maineiacs,” Thornton said. “Just from the team itself, it’s a great public-relations advertising tool. Every time the Colisee gets mentioned, so does their name. Every ticket sold, every advertisement.”

The city officially assumed ownership of the former Central Maine Civic Center in February, agreeing to take on $4.2 million in debt and management of the center. That includes day-to-day operations and $1.5 million in repairs.

Thornton said he expects the naming rights to defray a good chunk of those costs, but he wouldn’t speculate on prices. The Colisee will seek a company to buy the name for 10 years or more.

“We want someone for the long haul,” Thornton said. “We don’t want to be changing the name every five years.”

City Councilor Norm Rousseau, chairman of the Colisee Board of Directors, said the arena is starting with local companies.

“But we don’t want to exclude anybody,” Rousseau said. “We’d like to see a local company step forward if it can, but the name isn’t going to go cheap.”

Thornton also unveiled a new strategy for the Colisee’s VIP suite. The plan had been to encourage local companies to rent the entire suite – including food and beverage service – for each game.

“But we realized we don’t have that many companies large enough to fill 35 home games,” Thornton said.

The new plan calls for selling rights to individual tables to companies and investors. Those investors would be guaranteed as many seats as they wanted to buy at all home games.

“We really want to ramp up the jealousy factor,” Thornton said. “It’s going to be an intense, classy experience for those people. I think we can really make people want to belong to that.”