Prospect of NBA, NHL in S.D. Still Uncertain : Competition From Other Cities, Lack of Arena Are Part of Obstacles Facing Millionaire Cooper

SAN DIEGO —  Early this year, a little-known La Jolla multimillionaire named H. G. (Harry) Cooper seized the attention of the financial, political and sports communities of San Diego with the public announcement of his vision: a 22,900-seat, $120-million, privately funded sports palace that soon would lure the National Basketball Assn. and the National Hockey League here.

In the four months since the announcement, the NHL and, to a lesser extent, the NBA have taken stock of his moves. Cooper’s people have been studying the written and unwritten rules for expansion or relocation of franchises in the two leagues.

San Diego’s chances of getting a professional hockey or basketball team are uncertain at best. Though there appears to be a slim possibility of landing an NHL franchise, the NBA seems a far less likely prospect.

“If I had Harry Cooper’s kind of money, I’d retire and live happily,” said Vin Ciruzzi, president of the Sports Arena and a supporter of Cooper’s efforts. “But, if his plans don’t go through, it won’t be because he didn’t try.”

Public Relations Disaster

Ciruzzi has spent five years trying to repair the public relations disaster caused by Sports Arena tenant wars and the loss to Los Angeles of the NBA’s Clippers on May 15, 1984.

He met with the NHL’s Board of Governors last December and visited privately with John Ziegler, the league’s president.

The meeting was set up by Los Angeles Kings owner Bruce McNall, who would love to see an NHL franchise in San Diego. It would cut down the travel grind for his players and create an instant geographical rivalry.

“The NHL in San Diego has good potential,” McNall said. “But there are a lot of factors involved. A lot will depend on the strength of the offer. The one thing the league does not want to do is expand into a city that may be a problem area.”

At its April meetings, Ziegler announced plans for expansion. He didn’t say when or where or how many teams the 21-franchise NHL figures to add. But the smart money says the league will add either three or four when its Board of Governors meets this December.

One of the things the board is waiting to review is a report from the NHL’s Franchise and Market Analysis Committee, of which McNall is a member.

Two Cities Lead the Pack

At least nine cities have expressed interest in obtaining an expansion franchise. Milwaukee and Hamilton, Ont., are well ahead of a second tier of cities--including San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose and Seattle--in the battle for expansion grants.

Even more than Hamilton, Milwaukee has everything going for it: an on-line new arena, local ownership, lots of money and, in point man Lloyd Pettit, a guy with longtime NHL contacts.

By contrast, San Diego’s arena is still a blueprint. Its ownership hasn’t been identified, though Cooper says a group led by “somebody with semi-deep pockets who we all know in San Diego” will step forth in the next 30 days.

An NHL expansion franchise in San Diego would almost certainly have to play its first year or two in the existing, less-desirable Sports Arena, which seats 13,600 for hockey.

The NHL’s average attendance was up to 87% of capacity this year, from the 1987-1988 season, when its average of 14,425 per game represented 86% of capacity.

A remote alternative is convincing an existing NHL franchise to move to San Diego. But, says Jerry Helper, the league’s director of information: “We have made every effort to dissuade people from relocating. Only under the direst of circumstances do we want to do that.”

Criticized Arena

When Cooper, 56, first announced plans to simultaneously buy the Sports Arena lease and set about finding a site for his “palace”--which would be designed by architect Gino Rossetti and patterned after the Palace in Auburn Hills, Mich., where the Detroit Pistons play--he denigrated the Sports Arena.

“This might sound silly,” Cooper said in February, “but it doesn’t have a winning feel to it. You could move a successful team like the Lakers into that place, and the next year they’d be losers.”

That statement didn’t sit well with the local politicians Cooper was apparently bypassing in his one-man crusade to bring more professional sports to San Diego. Nor was it encouraging to the dogged Ciruzzi, who had spent five years trying to eradicate animosities left behind by predecessor Peter Graham and Clipper owner Donald Sterling, who moved the NBA from here to the Los Angeles Sports Arena.

By last week, Cooper had done an about-face. Sort of.

“If you walk through the Sports Arena,” he said, “it’s clean. It’s more than just fresh paint. Three million dollars in the past three years have been put into that place.”

But moments later he was talking about the dangers of owning the company that runs the Sports Arena in the infant years of the hoped-for NHL team.

Not Just Buying a Lease

“I’m dealing with a company (San Diego Entertainment Inc., which owned the Sports Arena lease) that has had a history of people having trouble that have dealt with it. So I’ve been very cautious about it. You’re buying a company that can have gorillas behind every door. It’s not like you’re just buying that lease.”

Cooper says that, once San Diego gains an NHL franchise, it will be the green light investors need to break ground for his sports palace. Then, it’s just a matter of time. The Pistons were playing in Auburn Hills 26 months after ground was broken there.

“I think we have a good chance of a hockey team playing in the Sports Arena by 1991,” Cooper said.

By most accounts, that’s optimistic, but there have been hints that it is possible.

Cooper recently brought former Montreal Coach Scotty Bowman into San Diego as a consultant. Bowman, the winningest coach in NHL history, professed to be impressed with Cooper and his business partner, Richard Esquinas.

No Secret Formula

“I didn’t realize they had a master plan here,” Bowman told the San Diego Tribune. “And, from what I’ve seen, it’s going to be very tough for the league to turn them down.

“I can’t give them a secret formula, but if they’re aggressive, and they’re dedicated, they’ll succeed. From what I’ve seen, this group really wants an NHL franchise and will go to any end to get one.”

The history of professional hockey in San Diego is strong. From 1966 to 1979, three teams--the Mariners of the World Hockey Assn., the Gulls of the Western Hockey League and the Hawks of the Pacific Hockey League--all thrived by sub-NHL standards. Average attendance ranged from 5,500 to 8,000. What failed were the leagues in which the teams played, not the local support for the teams.

Ciruzzi says many of the NHL people he has talked to remember how well San Diego supported minor league hockey. One is Jim Rutherford, a former NHL goalie and now director of hockey operations for Compuware, a Detroit-based computer software company. Compuware’s publicly expressed desire is to own an NHL franchise. The company is waiting to see where the NHL expands before it swoops in and makes any purchase offers.

But, Rutherford told The Times, “If San Diego was one of those cities, we’d definitely be interested.”

Said Ciruzzi: “He who comes up with the biggest bucks is going to get the team.”

The late Ray Kroc owned the Mariners for a short time. But he got out when the team was caught in the escalating salary war between the NHL and the WHA.

Tough Travel Schedule

In 1981, Ron Ingram, who coached both the Mariners and the Hawks, said, “If Ray Kroc had kept the team, I think San Diego would be in the NHL right now.”

Esquinas, 33, sees new reasons why the NHL belongs in San Diego. He cites what Wayne Gretzky has done for the Kings and hockey in the United States. He points to a Kings travel schedule that is 50 tougher “than for other teams.”

“They (the NHL) owe Bruce (McNall) an expansion team” in Southern California, Esquinas said flatly.

Cooper said that more than 600,000 former Canadian residents live in Southern California.

“But winning is the key,” said Brad Buetow, former hockey coach at United States International University and now coach at Colorado College. USIU last year folded its program, which had been making great strides at the NCAA Division I level, because of budget problems, the same day Buetow announced his resignation.

“San Diego doesn’t have a hockey tradition,” he said. “But it’s a great sports town.”

Announcement Alienated Some

It’s also a town where the sports establishment has been firmly in place for a long time. And that’s why the sudden flurry caused by Cooper’s surprise announcement alienated certain members of that establishment.

“I don’t agree with the way Cooper started,” local sports promoter Irv Grossman said at the time. “You don’t call a press conference, turn on a flashlight, then go out and begin gathering information. You get the facts first.”

Said Cooper: “We didn’t intend to make that kind of splash. I didn’t know that us buying the Sports Arena (lease) would be news.”

“We didn’t design the splash,” Esquinas said. “We just wanted to make an announcement.”

“We understand now we have to be a little more quiet about all this, and that we have to have substance to it,” Cooper said. “We threw it out and made it look like it was a little premature.”

There was nothing premature about Cooper’s decision to found General Computing in 1965. He sold the company at a huge profit several years later. It is a corporation that today boasts annual sales of more than $840 million.

Esquinas, a 1978 graduate of Ohio State University who has worked in the direct-mail marketing industry, is Cooper’s partner (33%) in the arena venture.

No Regrets

“We don’t regret anything we did,” Esquinas said. “But now we’re walking a little more cautious. We’re trying to be a little more methodical and thorough.”

The NHL and potential investors are watching closely.

“The investors want to know if there is support from the mayor, the City Council and the local sports associations,” Ciruzzi said. “If not, why should they put their money at risk?

“The city has to show it wants a franchise. How do you think the league people react when they read that city won’t support it? That the press won’t support it? We’ve just got to get ourselves in a positive mind set.

“It’s getting down to the Cooper organization and the city working together,” Ciruzzi said. “Without those seats (the new arena) in escrow, the NHL and the NBA will look askance at their proposal. The crucial thing for both leagues will be the commitment that the new arena is coming on line.”

Somebody has to budge first. Cooper says ground breaking will start once San Diego gets a franchise. Ciruzzi says the NHL and the NBA want ground broken before committing themselves to a franchise.

Local Control Sought

Much will depend on the financing, the organization and the reputation of the leader of the local hockey group Cooper insists is about to surface.

“He doesn’t want to be the deep-pocket owner even though he’s pretty deep-pocket,” Cooper said. “But he wants to see a team here, and he’s willing to head it up. He’s also willing to turn it over to anyone else that steps up that would like to take majority ownership.”

Could that mean Compuware?

“We’re trying to keep as much of the ownership local as possible,” Cooper said. “Whether or not we accomplish that is another thing. Local ownership keeps the community involved and the team rooted.”

Local ownership, say most NHL experts, will also have to be prepared to lose $5 million a year for the first five years.

Cooper hates to hear that kind of talk. He is a gentle man who speaks in the easy rhythms of his native Mississippi. And he recently implored a reporter to accentuate the positive things he’s trying to accomplish.

Not an Avid Sports Fan

“Hopefully, by December we will have presented to the NHL a very strong story about San Diego,” Esquinas said. “And hopefully we will have the financing in order for the team and the story about the financing and plans for the arena to take to the NHL. You’ve got to have an arena that’s as nice as many and nicer than a lot of the NHL houses across the league.”

Cooper is not particularly athletic or an especially avid sports fan. He has lived quietly in La Jolla since the early ‘70s. But he has come out of semi-retirement for this project.

He finds himself going to meetings early in the morning for the first time in years. And he says he is perfectly willing to accommodate the city’s wishes for a downtown arena if that’s what the city wants. Originally he wanted it on a 38-acre tract he owns in Sorrento Valley’s Golden Triangle.

“I want to go where the energy is,” he said. “This (San Diego) is home for me.”