Coralville lands a professional hockey club

The Iowa River Landing in the 1980s was the last place a family wished to stroll through. Located on the southeast corner of the First Avenue exit on Interstate 80, an adult strip joint, a mountain of tires, and abandoned buildings marked the area.

The city hosted focus groups in the 1980s on how to grow the Coralville area. Lundell said the first issue that always came up was about that “unattractive gateway” because residents wanted a better first impression of the city for those departing off I-80.

“So, with the support of the community, the city council worked with consultants to develop a master plan and design what could possibly go down there,” Lundell said.

And 30 years later, he said, it’s come to fruition.

Now, a mixture of locally owned restaurants and bars, hotels, residential structures, retail and office space — along with a UI Health Care facility — call the Iowa River Landing home.

An arena was always in the Iowa River Landing design. Lundell said city administrators wanted a facility that could host indoor sports like basketball, volleyball, and wrestling, but also had the capacity to anchor a concert.

The community expressed interest in hockey — wanting a rink besides the one inside Coralville’s Coral Ridge Mall. So, a standard North American professional rink was inserted into the arena plan, which included the GreenState Family Fieldhouse. The Iowa City Press-Citizen reported in 2018 that the project cost $70 million. Construction started on the facility in May 2018 and was finished by September 2020.

Data visualization by Lillian Poulsen/The Daily Iowan

Coralville’s website states ArenaCo, a nonprofit communication development corporation, was formed in 2017 to operate the facility and is separate from the city. The corporation to apply for grants and tax credits.

According to The Des Moines Register, in Nov. 2020, Coralville’s bond rating was damaged because of the $76 million the city spent financing Xtream Arena, GreenState Family Fieldhouse, and the Iowa River Landing.

About 24 percent of Coralville’s tax base is reserved for tax-increment financing projects. The city’s website notes that “all debts will have associated, secured payment sources” and the city will issue general obligation bonds that will get repaid with the cash flow from the payment sources.

Under Lundell’s leadership, Coralville set out to find a hockey team that would call Xtream Arena home. They first thought about adding a United States Hockey League (USHL) organization, which is an amateur junior hockey circuit that includes teams from Cedar Rapids, Waterloo, Dubuque, and Urbandale.

With four USHL members in Iowa, Coralville decided not to go in that direction and instead looked at the ECHL, a minor professional league serving as the “AA” affiliate of the NHL and which had no clubs in the Hawkeye State.

Heartlanders President and CEO Brian McKenna was born in Prince Edward Island, Canada. He said moving to Iowa is like returning to his roots.

“So, corn versus potatoes, but still that same sort of environment,” McKenna said. “I like small towns, and I like friendly environments, so it’s been comfortable for me here.”

When McKenna was commissioner of the ECHL in 2018, he visited the site of Xtream Arena soon after it had broken ground. Lundell recalls McKenna’s positive impression of the Iowa River Landing and the commitment of Coralville, which led to McKenna suggesting the city needed to vie for an ECHL team.

At the 2020 ECHL All-Star Game in Wichita, Kansas, Lundell, Coralville City Administrator Kelly Hayworth, and Think Iowa City President Josh Schamberger met with Deacon Sports and Entertainment administrators, who McKenna had introduced them to, and the league.

From that point on, the city administrators decided an ECHL franchise would be the best fit, and an expansion team for Coralville was approved in January 2021, with Deacon Sports and Entertainment as its owner.

McKenna, who retired as ECHL commissioner in 2018, was named the head of the new organization’s front office two months later. In summer 2021, the NHL’s Minnesota Wild and AHL’s Iowa Wild announced their affiliation with the Heartlanders.

“I don’t think everyone thought we were crazy,” Lundell said of putting a professional sports team in an area dominated by Hawkeye Athletics. “They admired our dedication and perseverance to make it happen. It is a relatively small market, but it’s not just Coralville, you got to practically include all of Johnson County, certainly Iowa City and North Liberty as well.

“We knew with a good professional team, we would draw a much larger distance geographically.”