Joe Mink

It’s worked just fine for the Green Bay Packers.

Taking a page from the storied NFL franchise, the Elmira Jackals announced plans Wednesday to become a community-owned team.

Chemung County Executive Tom Santulli, joined by Jackals co-owners Tom Freeman and Nate Cook and other team officials, said Freeman and Cook will turn over the club to the community in a fashion similar to the Packers, the only community-owned club in the NFL.

Santulli said a board of directors made up of local business leaders, residents and politicians will run the team under the name Local Development Corp.

Calling it “crunch time for the community,” Santulli said First Arena drew sellout crowd in the first six to seven years of the Jackals existence.

“We don’t want this team moved to another city,” Freeman said.

Freeman added that he and Cook will remain owners of First Arena. They will maintain an office across Main Street from the arena and will help manage the team from there.

Before the announcement, the Jackals unveiled a $1.5 million state-of-the art scoreboard that can show slow-motion instant replay.

Freeman said discussions to hand the team over to the community started at the end of the 2013-14 ECHL season. He added that the league will have to sign off on the move but doesn’t expect any problems from that end.

No stock will be sold, and board members will be made up of a group of about 25 local business leaders, Freeman said. No names of board members were released on Wednesday.

“We need people who know how a business is run,” Santulli explained.

Santulli said the board will determine how profits are handled, noting that he would like to see youth hockey programs benefit from the money.

Freeman said he hopes to have the team under community ownership before the start of the 2014-15 ECHL season. Elmira’s first game is 7:05 p.m. Oct. 17 against the Kalamazoo Wings at First Arena.

Santulli praised Freeman and Cook for the improvements they made to First Arena since they acquired the team and the arena from Michigan-based Mostafa Afr in 2013.

“Take a look at this facility since Tom Freeman and Nate Cook took over. This is the most sophisticated scoreboard operating in professional sports at this moment,” Santulli said. “For years we had an operator who had no sense of community. It’s local people who make this place work.”

He also said Freeman and Cook recently purchased the Lindenwald Haus in Elmira and will use the bed and breakfast as housing for Jackals players.

Earlier in the off-season the Jackals announced their affiliation with the Buffalo Sabres of the NHL and the Rochester Americans of the American Hockey League.

Freeman believes the Jackals give Elmira a higher profile not only regionally but nationally.

“We’re in the papers every day because of the Elmira Jackals,” he said. “Look at the cities the Jackals play in. They are much larger cities.”

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