By ANDREA POTEET
Sunday Times Newspapers
ALLEN PARK – A California-based entertainment company could run the city’s community center.
Temple Entertainment Group met with city council members in a study session Tuesday to discuss the possibility of the company running the community center.
A special meeting to consider the company’s proposal is scheduled for 7 p.m. Tuesday.
Mayor William Matakas said the company would operate under “very similar circumstances” to a request for proposals sent to several organizations earlier this year. Wayne-based The Senior Alliance responded to the RFP and was to run the center at no cost to the city and with additional senior programs, but they pulled out of the deal. Temple Entertainment was not one of the three companies to respond to the original RFP in May.
The center runs at an approximate $400,000 loss each year and exists monthly on fees paid from skating and hockey programs. Without an agency to run it at little or no cost to the struggling city, some councilors have voiced support of shuttering the building, for which taxpayers are still paying an improvement millage.
Others, like Councilman Bob Keenan, have voiced their belief that the center should stay open to house city hockey programs, like the Allen Park Hockey Association, which, facing uncertainty about its former home’s future, has contracted ice time with rinks in Lincoln Park and Melvindale.
It may be too late for the APHA this season, but Matakas said that if the deal is made with the company, the
high school hockey team would benefit immediately.
“If the council went forward with what they were suggesting, ice would be put down Nov. 1,” he said. “The high school would be skating on it.”