Saginaw Sting will return for 2012

[Banana Cat]

www.mlive.com/sports/saginaw/index.ssf/2011/06/despite_a_tough_year_financial.html

Despite "a tough year" financially, Saginaw Sting owner Mike Esposito says team will return next season

June 20, 2011
Kyle Austin | The Saginaw News

SAGINAW — The Saginaw Sting finished their inaugural Ultimate Indoor Football League season by raising a trophy on The Dow Event Center turf Friday, June 10.

But off the turf, team owner Mike Esposito acknowledged the Sting struggled to get out of the shadow of the original Saginaw Sting — who closed up shop after two seasons — and to bring fans out to The Dow.

“This was a tough year,” Esposito said. “Everywhere we went we got compared to the old organization. They told us when we came out that was going to happen. I think that’s what scared a lot of people away from taking Saginaw over from that first ownership group.”

Esposito bought the team in mid-December after the original ownership group backed out. That left just over two months to get the word out before the new season kicked off.

The team announced attendances of more than 2,000 for its first three home games, but attendance fell off to around 500 people by the first playoff game. For the league title game they drew an announced 2,300 fans.

So after paying to get a new team in a new league going, then drawing low attendance numbers, there weren’t any profits to be had.

“We didn’t make any money,” Esposito said. “Any time you go into an arena market or any minor league sports market you’ve got some startup fees. Those aren’t going to come back to you in the first year. They get paid in dividends over four, five, maybe six years.”

But Esposito insists the Sting will be returning next year. And the first step in preparing for next season, Esposito said, is hiring a permanent head coach.

Interim coach Vince Leveille took over after three games, when the team fired coach John Mize, and went 9-4 in the rest of the regular season and playoffs.

While Leveille, a Vassar native, wil be considered for the permanent job, Esposito said he will also be looking at outside candidates.

“He did a decent job,” Esposito said of Leveille. “We’ll give him every chance to interview for it. We’re definitely going to open it up to arena guys as well.”

The biggest change for the Sting between year one and year two is the UIFL, which has already undergone multiple changes in the week since the season ended.

The Northern Kentucky River Monsters, Saginaw’s first-round playoff opponent, left the league days after their playoff elimination. The league has also announced four expansion teams, in Tupelo, Miss., Danville, Ill., Estero, Fla. and Rome, Ga., and a plan to split the league into North and South divisions next season with 12-16 teams.

League ownership also announced last week that the league has been acquired by Assured Equities IV.

Esposito said he considers the league to be stable. The UIFL plans to hold its owners meeting in August, when schedules will be made and the Sting will learn how many road trips they will have to make.

But what might be more important are the home games, and how many people come to each of them.

“We rolled our sleeves up and put a pretty good product out,” Esposito said. “Would we like to have 5,000 people there per night? Yeah. I think we’ll build to that number. We’ve got to kind of crawl before we can walk.”

[Banana Cat]

If Esposito is the owner as surmised months ago, then not being able to fully pay hotel employees before shutting down is a bad sign as far as his financials go and could affect the future stability of the Sting.

www.mlive.com/news/saginaw/index.ssf/2011/08/doors_locked_at_saginaw_plaza.html

Doors locked at Saginaw Plaza Hotel on Wednesday, no word on when or if it will reopen

August 10, 2011
Tom Gilchrist | The Saginaw News

SAGINAW — The Saginaw Plaza Hotel & Convention Center was closed Wednesday night, with no doors open and no employees in sight.

And the father of one of the hotel’s workers said his daughter informed him Tuesday that the 170-room hotel across from The Dow Event Center has shut down.

Carlos Cisneros, 54, of Saginaw Township said his 17-year-old daughter was shorted when she received her pay Tuesday — in an envelope containing cash.

“My daughter said there was a sign at the hotel when she got there on Tuesday that said the place was closed,” Cisneros said. “She went to retrieve her check and get her pay, and a co-worker handed her an envelope with cash in it, and there wasn’t enough money for all the hours that she worked.”

No "Closed" signs were visible Wednesday at the hotel, 400 Johnson, when a Saginaw News reporter arrived to find all doors locked.

The doors to The Crowne Pub, a tavern inside the hotel, were locked, and the hotel’s automated front doors didn’t open, either. No worker was visible inside the lobby or elsewhere at the facility.

In March, a hotel employee told The News that Mike Esposito, general manager of the Saginaw Sting football team, owns the hotel. The News could not reach Esposito by telephone Wednesday night.

Cisneros declined to name his daughter, who has worked at the hotel for about six weeks this summer, he said.

He said his daughter told him other workers at the hotel also didn’t receive the proper amount of pay they had coming from the hotel, which has fallen under seven different managers since 1980.

Cisneros said his daughter “told us a lot of other people got shorted a lot more money than she did, and these are people who are grown, and who probably have rent, car payments, heat and electricity bills and everything else.”

Esposito told a News reporter in March that he was unable to talk about any ownership of the hotel. The hotel’s previous owner, Satish Shethi, also did not return phone calls then.

Shethi’s Chicago-based investment team took over managing the hotel in May 2009 when the group re-opened the former Howard Johnson Plaza Hotel and Conference Center after a foreclosure against the previous owner shuttered the complex for three years.

The Saginaw Sting, managed by Esposito, played home football games earlier this year inside The Dow Event Center. The Sting is one of the teams in the Ultimate Indoor Football League.

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I'm not an expert. This seems bad.

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Update:

www.mlive.com/news/saginaw/index.ssf/2011/08/manager_says_saginaw_plaza_hot.html