Delaware Thunder Out of Center Ice Arena
Deleware State Fairgrounds General Manager Bill Dimondi asks the Delaware Thunder to be moved out of fairgrounds by April 21st
HARRINGTON, Del — The Fate of Delaware Thunder has not been set in stone.
Could this be the final season for the Thunderdome in Harrington? Right now it seems like it’s heading toward a messy divorce. The Thunder Officials on one side saying they want to stay in Harrington for the next couple of years. The Delaware State Fair officials say the Thunder’s time is up…
“I think it would be very sad if people dig their heels in and don’t swallow their pride and figure out how to do the right thing,” Delaware Thunder CEO Charles Pens says.
The Delaware State Fair Grounds say they’ve moved on leaving the future of the team uncertain.
On Monday the Thunder announced on Facebook that state fair officials had pulled a renewal offer for the Thunder to stay at Centre Ice Arena.
“In the past, it’s never been an urgent matter. We just assumed we were coming back for another three years. It went from ‘Here is this offer with this huge increase’ to ‘We’re not going to give you an offer’. That kind of took us aback,” Pens says.
Dan Aguilar, the state fair’s assistant general manager tells a different story.
“At no point in time did we ever have fully agreeable terms, or a contract or extension extended. we went back and forth and at that point in time we made the decision to return back to our core programming. but we did not extend a contract, come to agreeable terms and then pull that away. that was not the case,” Dan Aguilar says.
47 ABC Sports was able to obtain a proposed draft extension from Aguilar to the Thunder dated December 15. Pens tells us there was an 87 percent rate increase
“Just for the month of December, our electric bill went up $19,000, we nearly doubled what it takes to operate the center ice rink. so naturally, our non-profits were paying a certain rate. the thunder enjoyed rates less than our non-profits so we needed to bring them up to speed,” Aguilar says.
After digging through the draft we could not find any signatures finalizing a lease extension.
Aguilar tells us that in late January, there was a meeting with Pens and other Thunder officials letting them know they would not be renewing the lease with the Thunder. After a couple of months of further correspondence, Deleware State Fairgrounds General Manager Bill Dimondi emailed the thunder asking them to be fully moved out by April 21st.
Pens believes there’s still time to salvage the partnership.
“The reason we’re here today is with three weeks to go in the season, there’s still time left to negotiate,” he says.
This leaves the question of what will the Thunder do if they can’t renew the lease. Pens tells us the only alternatives are relocating the franchise for two to three years before coming back to Dover or going dormant for that time.
Aguilar says fair officials want to focus on programs like public skating, figure skating clubs, youth ice hockey clubs, and more but the Thunder got in the way of that and now it’s time to go in a new direction.
