Arena partnership grows icy.

By Mark Eddington, The Salt Lake Tribune Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

Jan. 31--PROVO, Utah -- The Olympic hockey stars are gone, but the power plays continue at the Peaks Ice Arena as lawyers trade shots and a judge acts as referee.

Seven Peaks Management Co., which leases and operates the $13 million arena in southeast Provo, is two years behind in its annual rent payments. So the Ice Sheet Authority, the hybrid agency that owns the building, is asking a 4th District judge to end the lease and evict Seven Peaks Management.

"The problem is that they won't pay," said Jesse Trentadue, attorney for the Provo City-Utah County Ice Sheet Authority. "It appears now the only alternative is to take it over."

Seven Peaks Manager Max Rabner counters that the Ice Authority has refused payment and wants to rob him of the millions his firm has invested in the arena, which staged women's and men's hockey games during the 2002 Winter Olympics. He says Seven Peaks Management is poised to turn its first profit this year.

"I feel like the wife that put the husband through medical school," Rabner said. "And now that he's got an education and is making some money, he dumps the wife that got him there."

A hearing, the latest of many since the Ice Authority sued Seven Peaks in June 2003, is set for Tuesday at 9 a.m. in American Fork's 4th District Court.