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Thursday, September 25, 1997

Garland makes arena offer to Dallas Mavericks

DALLAS (AP) -- Add another suburb to the Dallas Mavericks' hunt for a new arena.

Officials in suburban Garland have offered to pay half the cost of a new arena for the Dallas Mavericks in the Texas 190 corridor, near the Dallas-Collin county line, The Dallas Morning News reported Wednesday, citing an unidentified source close to the negotiations.

The unidentified source said a document describing the offer did not specify the dollar value of the city's financial commitment nor did it ask the team to repay the city's investment.

"It would not be a loan to the Mavericks," the newspaper quoted its

source as saying.

The offer was made Tuesday, hours after officials in suburban Grand Prairie took a helicopter tour of their city and possible arena sites with team owner Ross Perot Jr.

Grand Prairie officials have submitted a firm offer to the Mavericks.

At least four cities are vying for the new arena and for the hundreds of millions in development that Perot says he'll create along with it.

The Dallas Stars of the National Hockey League are also looking for a new arena. The Stars and Mavericks now play their home games at Reunion Arena in downtown Dallas.

Perot has been talking with suburban cities since breaking off 14 months of exclusive talks with Dallas a month ago.

The Mavericks had asked Dallas for half the cost of a $220 million arena, in exchange for building a half-billion dollar mixed-use development.

Dallas countered with a $70 million offer structured as a low-cost loan, but upped that to $110 million after Perot began meeting with other cities. It is unknown how much of the latest Dallas offer is in the form of a loan.

Dallas officials say they are confident they can make a deal with the National Basketball Association team. Arlington, which Perot also has surveyed, has yet to submit formal offers to the team, officials said.

Tom Luce, the team's negotiator, would not confirm the existence of individual offers or the value of those offers. He also declined to rank the cities' proposals.

But Luce said team officials plan to make a decision about the arena's new location within the next two weeks so that a public referendum can be placed on the January ballot in whichever city it decides to build the new arena.