Tempe councilman Hugh Hallman offers a third version of events.
Hallman says the Papago Park Center site was among six sites under consideration by Tempe in late 1999, but most were quickly eliminated. Hallman says the Papago Park Center site was eliminated from consideration before the election because SRP was attempting to lease the site to Lennar Partners of Irvine, California.
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Hallman says Giuliano announced sometime after the election that the Lennar deal had fallen through and that the Papago Park Center land was available.
SRP records, however, reveal that the Lennar Partners' option to lease the Papago Park Center was coming unraveled by early last summer and was terminated by Lennar on August 28, 2000 -- more than two months before the election.
Lennar's interest in the Papago Park Center project would soon be rekindled.
Soon after TSA selected the site, Lennar was tapped by the Arizona Cardinals to oversee more than two million square feet of hotel, retail and commercial development planned to be built around the stadium.
As part of the deal with the Cardinals, Tempe agreed to give the team all the development rights on 37.5 acres surrounding the stadium. The deal is a potential windfall for Lennar.
"We thought that the stadium would actually heighten interest in the area," says Lennar Partners Senior Vice President Curt Stephenson.
At the same time that Tempe and SRP were shuffling the Papago Park Center site to the forefront, the TSA reversed its requirement to submit potential stadium sites prior to the November 7 election.
In August 2000, TSA lawyer Jay S. Ruffner wrote Phoenix Mayor Skip Rimsza that "prior to the November 7 election, the Tourism and Sports Authority is required to select one or more sites for the multipurpose facility. . . ."
Ruffner reiterated this requirement in an October 25, 2000, letter to former Tempe interim city manager John Greco and again on November 2, 2000, prior to Tempe's formal submission of the McClintock/Rio Salado site.
"The purpose of this letter is to acknowledge that the City of Tempe proposes to provide to the Tourism and Sports Authority a site for the multipurpose stadium facility to be developed by the authority upon passage of Proposition 302," Ruffner stated in a letter to Greco.
"The site," Ruffner continued, "is within an overall tract in excess of 200 acres at the northeast corner of McClintock Drive and Rio Salado Parkway."
Tempe's sudden switch to the Papago Park Center site after the election ruffled a few feathers, particularly in the West Valley, where John F. Long was prepared to donate land for the stadium.
Peoria Mayor John C. Keegan sent a January 29, 2001, letter to the TSA stating that a "common belief among many of the voters I have spoken with is that the final site was to be selected from those submitted prior to the election."
Not so, the TSA responded a week later.
TSA president and chief executive officer Ted Ferris states in a February 6, 2001, letter that the fine print in the request for site proposals "did not exclude post-election proposals and agreements."
