The mayor is pressing the Lincoln City Council to make the Lancaster County Agricultural Society hold off on a new arena until at least 2012, giving the city time to vote on its own arena.

And time to vote again, if the first try fails.

Mayor Chris Beutler wants to build a new arena near the Haymarket and will ask the council to put the issue on the spring ballot. In the meantime, he doesn’t want the Ag Society to build an arena — even if it’s smaller — that could compete with the city’s.

What leverage does the city have?

On Monday, the council votes on whether to approve the Ag Society’s proposed 14-acre development near 84th Street and Havelock Avenue in northeast Lincoln.

The Ag Society hopes a motel, restaurant and other businesses would attract more regional and national events. But the city has tabled those plans since December 2005, largely out of concern about the Ag Society’s plans to someday possibly build an arena.

Beutler wants the council to include in the legislation language restricting the Ag Society from building an arena with more than 2,000 seats before 2012. He also wants it to create an oversight commission to sort out conflicts over competing events.

The Ag Society opposes the restriction.

City officials are worried the Ag Society’s proposal included a site plan for a 6,000-seat arena — although Ag Society officials say that figure is outdated and any future arena would more likely have 3,500 to 4,000 seats.

In a Thursday letter to the council, Beutler wrote that such an arena could host concerts, sporting events, trade shows and other non-ag events that could compete with the city’s arena.

“In other words, at the 6,000 level of seating in an Event Center arena, it would clearly be competing with a new downtown arena,” Beutler wrote.

The Ag Society says it has no immediate plans to build an arena but won’t rule it out in the future.

Alan Wood, an attorney representing the Ag Society, said it doesn’t make sense to restrict the Ag Society from building an arena because it might “compete with something that hasn’t even been approved by the voters.”

And until a new Lincoln arena is approved, he said, an oversight commission would be premature.

“When is it we haven’t worked cooperatively?” he asked.

Although the Ag Society and Wood have said the Event Center caters more to a boots-and-jeans crowd than a chandelier-and-chiffon crowd, the Event Center has nabbed events from Pershing Center.

It’s better equipped than Pershing, for instance, to host some home and trade shows.

On Wednesday, more than 1,200 people came to hear oilman T. Boone Pickens at the Event Center — an event that could have been held at Pershing if not for a Poison concert.

At its last meeting, the council signaled it won’t require the arena promise, because the Ag Society opposes it. But the mayor clearly hopes to change council members’ minds.

“We appreciate the Ag Society’s comments and assurances about working cooperatively together,” Beutler wrote. “However, for the protection of all, I hope that you can agree that this language is important in the memorandum of understanding before moving forward with the four action items requested by the Ag Society.”

Wood said he’s not sure what the Ag Society’s board of directors would do if the city approves an arena restriction.

“What’s the connection between an arena and having a hotel and restaurant at 84th and Havelock?” he asked.

Reach Deena Winter at 473-2642 or dwinter@journalstar.com.