GLENDALE, Ariz. -- The Glendale City Council unanimously approved development agreements late Tuesday for a $180 million hockey arena for the Phoenix Coyotes.

"I'm very pleased," team owner Steve Ellman said about the proposal, which grants the Coyotes naming rights worth an estimated $30 million in addition to being given the key to a 17,500-seat arena paid for by the city.

Ellman and co-owners Wayne Gretzky and Jerry Moyes, who lives in Glendale, have been dickering with the city since April. That's when plans to locate the building at a defunct mall site in Scottsdale, another Phoenix suburb on the more affluent east side, fell through.

On April 11, Glendale signed a "memo of agreement" with the Ellman Cos. and the Coyotes to build an arena specifically as good or better than the 8-year-old America West Arena in Phoenix, where the Coyotes now play, and the new Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio, home of the NHL's Blue Jackets.

It will be the centerpiece of a development project that also will include 6 million square feet of retail, entertainment, dining, office and residential development on a 223-acre site near the Loop 101 freeway and Glendale Avenue. Builders could break ground early next year.

Since April, the city and the Coyotes' financial team has been working out the details, while the city presented the arena proposal in each of its council districts.

But Ellman was always confident the west-side project would reach fruition.

"I never had any doubt," he said. "I mean, this project is very sound."

Several opponents of facets of the project spoke against it before the vote, but appeared to be in the minority in a packed hearing room.

Councilman Manuel Martinez left no doubt of the council's agreement and said the arena constituted the best use of the largely undeveloped site.

"We came close to seeing a 54-acre swap meet out there," Martinez said. "That's where we were at one time."

Prior to the vote, Ellman's lawyer Grant Woods read a letter from NHL commissioner Gary Bettman in which Bettman congratulated Glendale on the arena and promised that an All-Star Game would be played there. No date was set.

Team president Shawn Hunter said the name of the team probably would be changed to the Arizona Coyotes, but the change might not be made for a year.