Sports Authority Approves New Predators Lease

NashvillePost.com is reporting it right now. Of course it is a pay only article, and i don't have a subscription, so i have no more details than a headline right now...

UPDATE: The sports section of the Tennessean doesn't have anything, but deep on the metro news section there is an article that talks about "Metro will always pay $3.8mil in arena loss" and mentions in passing that "Sports Authority members voted 7-1 to approve the lease agreement. The dissenting voter, Steve North, said he thought the new lease might leave the city paying for more than it expects."

Next move from here is for the new lease to be approved by the Metro Council. No idea on the time frame for that one.

UPDATE 2: According to a random article by the Canadian Press, the new lease will go before the Metro Council on April 1st. Just hope that isn't a joke. ;-)

UPDATE 3: The City Paper finally posts an article! Confirms the passage and the April 1st date for Metro Council. A few other comments, but not real details beyond what we had already heard about the lease changes outside of specifying the penalty amounts the team has to pay if it wants to leave after 3, 4, or 5+ years: "$20 million for 2010, $25 for 2011 and then drops to $10 million for any year thereafter" (more on that later...).

I'll make another big Preds update soon...