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WILKES-BARRE TWP. — The new contract to extend the lease with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins should be completed soon, the head of the Luzerne County Convention Center Authority told board members Wednesday.
Both sides have been fine tuning the contract, board chairman Gary Zingaretti said.
“We should be sending back a revised version probably early next week,” Zingaretti said at the board’s monthly meeting. “So hopefully we’ll have that wrapped up by the time we get together in September.”
The next regularly scheduled public meeting is Sept. 11 at the Mohegan Sun Arena at Casey Plaza.
The authority in May approved a 10-year lease extension for the hockey team that has been the anchor tenant since the arena opened in 1999. To keep the American Hockey League team here, the authority agreed to make a number of capital improvements including LED (light emitting diode) lights in the facility.
Donna Cupinski, chairwoman of the authority’s Capital Improvements & Strategic Planning Committee, said the Request for Proposals for that project is going out shortly. But it likely won’t be finished this year, she said.
“We’re going to ask them to get started on it as soon as they can once they choose the supplier,” Cupinski said.
The other major project to improve the WiFi for the facility is out for bid. That too will be delayed in order to allow for extra time to prepare the bid packages, Cupinski said. The bid openings will be on Sept. 4 at the arena.
The board approved two other smaller projects.
It received a quote of $5,000 for 12 televisions through the Sourcewell cooperative purchasing program. But Tony Ryba, chairman of the Finance Committee, asked for permission for the arena to buy the televisions locally at a combined cost not to exceed $5,000.
Ryba also said that the federal Department of Homeland Security advised installing a barrier of some sort near the East Gate and the creation of a bus lane. The cost of the enhancements is not to exceed $20,000, Ryba said.
Neither of them are federally mandated, however.
Zingaretti added that it falls under a best practices safety measure for the area where people congregate by the box office outside the East Gate.