WEST VALLEY CITY — At the end of the adding machine tape, this city's Olympic experience wasn't all about making money, though it is about to yield a $7 million payoff.
It was also about missed opportunities.
Canadian brewers of the beer Labatt, not an official Olympic sponsor, were knee deep in talks with the city prior to the 2002 Winter Olympics about setting up a festival area near the E Center that would have been similar to Bud World in downtown Salt Lake City. At one point, city manager John Patterson said, sport-shoe giant Nike was even brought into the loop.
The entire deal could have netted the city $750,000, he said.
No one heard about negotiations at the time because the Salt Lake Organizing Committee stepped in before the idea made it to the public arena.
"It was over before it began," Patterson said.
"In exchange for a noncommercial license to use SLOC trademarks, cities were not allowed to use a third-party mark in conflict with a SLOC sponsor or supplier," said SLOC spokeswoman Shannon McCarthy. In other words, the Budweiser folks would have put a cork in Labatt's plans.
Then there's the E Center's neighbor, the city-owned Hale Centre Theatre.
City leaders, namely Patterson, thought the building would be rented during the Games by the NHL for a hefty $400,000. The NHL, though, said before the Games started they never had a deal.
With the help of SportsMark Management Group, negotiations began anew and the Stanley Cup, along with an NHL hall of fame, eventually set up shop in the theater and hockey fans came by the thousands for a free look. As of this week, however, Patterson said that the city will likely make at the most $5,000 to $10,000 from the deal.
Patterson believes the city could have fared much worse and could have ended up owing money to the tenants who regularly lease the Hale Centre and who were put out during the Games.
"We weren't in it for the money," he said.
Of course, he wasn't referring to the $54.1 million E Center, which is where the tide turns for the city.
West Valley City will receive $7.3 million Monday from SLOC for use of the building as a hockey venue during the Games. Add to that $1.6 million, the city's share of the $59 million in diverted sales tax revenue SLOC repaid to the state.
"It's good we came out whole," Patterson said.
But it gets better than that, if only a little.
The Netherlands-based brewers of Heineken paid the city $180,000 to use the clubhouse at the West Ridge Golf Course as a hospitality center. Some, however, might subtract $120,000, the cost of sending city staffers to the 2000 Sydney Summer Olympics. That trip was billed as a way for the city to establish contacts that might turn into money makers during the Winter Games.
As echoes of Olympic fervor reverberate throughout the corporate world, though, the city still has hopes of making more money from their association with the Games.
The city and the E Center are basking in a post-Olympic glow that Patterson says is a sure bet to lure potential sponsors and their money, which would buy naming rights to the building. West Valley City has already backed away from talks with brewers of the beer Coors for those rights, which could be worth millions.
In the end, still lamenting the unfulfilled Olympic expectations for a few restaurants in the neighborhood of the E Center, Patterson is hanging his fiscal hat on a hook, of sorts, that drew in the city's residents and afforded them opportunities to enjoy Olympic moments of their own. "It was a great experience," Patterson said.
E-MAIL: sspeckman@desnews.com