QUEBEC - Quebec City has announced a name for the not-yet-built arena that will be home to its not-yet-existent NHL team: it will be called the Videotron amphitheatre.
The city's mayor has announced that the arena will be named after the Quebec cable provider following a deal with its parent company, the media giant Quebecor.
Mayor Regis Labeaume says the company will pay $33 million for naming rights for 25 years, another $3.15 million annually for the right to manage the building, and will also give the city 15 per cent of profits from the facility.
In return, the arena will be built entirely with taxpayers' money; since Ottawa has, so far, not agreed to get involved the estimated $400 million could come exclusively from provincial and city coffers.
But Labeaume made it clear Tuesday that he would continue pushing for federal money.
He said he would be sending more details of the project over the coming days to Josee Verner, the Conservative government's minister responsible for the region.
Labeaume made the announcement at a joint news conference Tuesday with Quebecor president Pierre Karl Peladeau.
Financial terms announced today are specific to the building -- which is slated to be constructed by 2015. Profits from any future NHL team would be separate.
Quebecor, which owns the Sun media chain in English Canada, has long expressed interest in bringing NHL hockey back to the provincial capital, which lost the Nordiques 15 years ago.
But funding for the project has been mired in uncertainty since last summer, when the idea of a federally-funded arena touched off a political furore across the country.
As part of the deal, Quebecor has promised to make the building available 30 days each year for cultural events.
Peladeau stressed that he would continue trying to bring an NHL team back to Quebec City and promised to develop amicable ties with the league.
He said he would lobby discreetly -- an oblique reference, perhaps, to the league's long-running quarrel with billionaire businessman Jim Balsillie, who has publicly lobbied to bring a team up north.
"We all know there is no guarantee from the league, for the moment, that we will have a hockey team in Quebec," Peladeau stressed.
"But that won't stop me from continuing to promote the file . . . because we have all the necessary conditions."
He also hinted at the marketing position he intends to take with the building, and perhaps also with a future team.
Peladeau's statement seemed designed to win over a rest-of-Quebec audience, outside Montreal.
Peladeau mentioned Montreal several times at the news conference, saying people in northern and eastern Quebec would no longer have to go so far to see big-name concerts.
He quipped that perhaps, one day, Montrealers would have to drive up Highway 20 to the provincial capital if they wanted to see top-name concerts.
"Our objective is to turn the traffic the other way," Peladeau said.
