News Photo by Steve Schulwitz Northern Lights Arena employee Jessica Sandahl sharpens an ice skate at the rink on Tuesday. Alpena County, which owns the arena, is preparing to seek proposals to find a new arena management group.

ALPENA — The Alpena County Board of Commissioners has started looking for a new management group to take over operations at the county-owned Northern Lights Arena.

The current management group, the Northern Lights Arena-Community, has informed the county that it intends to step away from its current lease, which includes a 90-day escape clause.

The NLA-C leases the arena from the county for $1 a year, and pays for operations and pays toward county bond debt with revenue from ice rentals and other income. The management group keeps any profit.

The county on Tuesday received the required written notice from NLA-C, starting the 90-day clock for the group to exit the lease.

A pair of local entities may submit proposals to take over the rink, both with a long history at the facility.

Jeremy Winterstein and Dave Guzman are the current arena managers who work for NLA-C. Winterstein said he and Guzman are considering forming a new company and intend to submit a proposal once the county officially requests bids.

A possible second candidate is the Park Family Foundation, which owns the APlex convention center adjacent to the ice arena and managed the arena from 2011 to 2013.

Over the last several years, Winterstein said, the number of board members at the NLA-C has shrunk, and others don’t have the time to commit to the arena as they did before. Winterstein said some board meetings lack the quorum needed to take action.

That aside, Winterstein said, he and Guzman have a great relationship with the county commissioners and believe their experience at the arena will allow them to continue to run it effectively.

“We know the rink, and we know the day-to-day operations of it,” Winterstein said. “We can do the job.”

Although the arena was closed for large chunks of the year because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Winterstein said, finances aren’t as bad as they could be. If the county were to reduce or remove the arena’s payment toward bond debt that helped pay for energy efficiency upgrades, the arena’s finances would be much better off.

“We are in a great position to move forward,” he said. “If the county could just give a little help or relief from the payment.”

The Park Family Foundation hired Synchronizations Management years ago to manage the APlex and the rink.

The county’s deal with the foundation was terminated early in 2013, when the foundation said user groups and members of the Multi-Purpose Arena Coalition protested its hiring and refused to rent ice, despite the fact that the foundation subsidized ice fees to lower the cost to users.

Synchronizations Management owner Norm Sommerfeld, who was the manager at the time, said the foundation is waiting for the details in the county’s request for proposals before deciding whether or not to submit a proposal. If Park is selected, he wouldn’t be the day-to-day manager again, and someone else would have to take that role on, Sommerfeld said.

Winterstein said he would welcome a chance to work with Park and possibly team up if it meant moving the arena forward.

Sommerfeld said the foundation would likely include several non-negotiable items in its proposal. He said a change in operations is needed to help stabilize finances and make the arena more appealing to people who don’t use the ice.

“We’re not sure of anything right now, but we are going to look at it,” he said. “I think there would be value in combining the two buildings, but, if we do it, there will not be ice year-round, and there won’t be two sheets of ice. We would move the turf over there and have soccer fields and a place to have baseball activities. We would make it more all-purpose.”

County Commissioner John Kozlowski said that, because NLA-C needs to continue management duties for at least 90 days, the county has time to fine-tune a request for proposals before sending it out.

He said the county needs to focus on the long-term financial condition of the rink, so the county doesn’t get put into a position where it needs to pay for it more than it does now.

“We need someone to run it and have a plan for the future, because all want it to be financially sound,” Kozlowski said. “We need to look at the most viable options for the arena. I don’t care if the managers make $100,000, as long as they pay the bills and are successful.”