April 30, 2007 | Sports Business Journal
FOUR SCORES?: A former NBA team president, a former sports agent, the Dallas Mavericks’ all-time leading scorer and a national sports facility designer have formed an alliance to compete for arena and stadium projects that serve as anchors for urban development.
Marshall Glickman, Portland Trail Blazers president from 1994-95 and son of team founder Harry Glickman, has joined forces with former ProServ agent Louis Cunningham, four-time NBA All-Star Rolando Blackman and architect Ron Turner, vice president for urban planner RTKL.
Together, the four consultants are leveraging their experience in sports development to bid for major league projects in Las Vegas and Minneapolis. Officials in those two markets are targeting downtown redevelopment surrounding an arena that could house an NBA or NHL tenant, and, in Minneapolis, a new NFL stadium valued at close to $1 billion.
The group will focus much of its attention on international projects, where collectively or as individuals they have been working on sports facility deals in Barcelona, Moscow and Panama, where Turner and Blackman have teamed for the past year to build an arena in Blackman’s native country.
As one unit, the foursome brings collective disciplines that a building owner would normally have to hire separately, said Glickman, who helped develop the Rose Garden in Portland.
“The uniqueness is the alliance,” Glickman said. “Most owners, in spite of their success in every other endeavor, have never done this before, and generally do this only once.”
Blackman and Cunningham co-own a real estate firm. Cunningham’s “deep connections through many leagues” and Blackman’s NBA ties should help “find the very best projects,” Turner said.