Mayor to 'Downtown Freddie' Brown: Your arena proposal is DOA
It's April Fool's Day, and still someone announces an apparently earnest plan [234K PDF] to find financing and a location for a $1 billion basketball and hockey arena, perhaps in SoDo on Pier 46. At least, it appears former Sonic "Downtown Freddie" Brown and his partners are earnest, because Mayor Greg Nickels simultaneously issued a statement that, between the lines, characterizes the concept of Emerald City Center, which would sport a retractable shell of a roof, as half baked and dead at conception:
We welcome everyone who wants to try and help solve our problem and welcome all good ideas. We appreciate all Fred Brown has done for Seattle. From bringing Seattle its first modern sports championship with the Sonics to his proposal today for a new sports and entertainment facility, we appreciate his commitment to the community. Today's proposal is a very long-range vision, however, for the foreseeable future Pier 46 will remain one of our most active container facilities.
KeyArena is our region's sports and entertainment facility. We remain focused on improving KeyArena so that it will remain the region's sports and entertainment facility for years to come.
For its part, B2, the company headed by Brown that dreams of making KeyArena irrelevant, has kissed the Sonics – and every other existing NBA team – goodbye, according to today's press release announcing the plan:
B2 will submit expansion team applications for both the NBA and NHL franchises. "In reality, the Sonics are gone, and quite frankly we do not want to be part of an effort to relocate an existing team to Seattle. We are using the NFL Cleveland Browns model of how to reestablish a team and a facility in a proven pro-sports market," Brown noted. The original Cleveland Browns moved to Baltimore and became the Ravens. Cleveland was then granted an NFL expansion team and launched the new Cleveland Browns with a new football stadium.
"It's obvious that the days of taxpayer-financed sports facilities are over in Seattle. While most facilities are used on a limited basis, our business model creates a 365 days per year revenue stream for the complex, which is very attractive for private investors. We believe the ECC will become a model for other cities to use as they explore facility challenges," Brown continued.
Comments:
Posted Tue, Apr 1, 1:31 p.m. inappropriate
Not an appropriate waterfront use.: Our State Shoreline Management Act would not see this idea as a water-related or water-dependant use. Thus, it is DOA!
Art
Posted Wed, Apr 2, 11:23 a.m. inappropriate
wrong: true, the pier 46 location seems like a long shot for the reasons you gave. But that doesn't mean that the whole project is DOA, they gave I think 4 other possible locations for the facility.
Posted Wed, Apr 2, 3:59 p.m. inappropriate
Give them a chance: Skepticism is healthy, but I don't like hearing how the plan could be DOA before it even has a chance. Yes the waterfront idea was a mistake, but it was only their coolest location, not their only location. And don't slam them for presenting the idea on April Fool's Day, that's just childish treatment of a BS "holiday" akin to calling the idea haunted if it was presented on Halloween!
A huge private investment that could house the Sonics or their successor and attract national conventions is a dream. Dreams do come true, sometimes. Give B2 some encouragement to keep developing their plans, and most importantly find some financing that will actually bring them credibility, don't just laugh them away!
Posted Wed, Apr 2, 4:39 p.m. inappropriate
RE: Not an appropriate waterfront use.: That didn't seem to stop the Seahawks from building a gigantic training facility on the shoreline of Lake Washington. What's the deal with that?
Also, didn't the city and port consider a long range plan for Pier 67 pitched by Nitz Stagen, supposed to include residential development/entertainment/hotel? I think they shot that down citing that the water dependent port use was too important, and they extended Hanjin's lease. Would be dubious if they entertain this proposal now, in this location anyway.
Posted Wed, Apr 2, 4:40 p.m. inappropriate
RE: Not an appropriate waterfront use.: ... Pier 46 I mean
Posted Thu, Apr 3, 10:40 a.m. inappropriate
Mayor Nickels' Truly Represents Seattle Attitudes: DOA? After seeing this latest knee-jerk reaction to a new idea, I now finally realize that the Mayor is simply a reflection of what has become the typical Seattle passive/aggressive mentality: Offer lip-service and half-baked ideas but shoot down any other ideas as DOA. DOA? How about NIH?
It's that Not-Invented-Here syndrome that permeates Seattle life and attitudes today, causing everything to grind to an agonizing halt. So much for any progress. This once-fine city just might still become a world-class city some day but it'll be in spite of - and not because of - our so-called leadership.
Posted Thu, Apr 3, 3:01 p.m. inappropriate
Sutpid Money and the KeyArena Yard Sale Emporium: How did the City of Seattle get in this mess? First it upgraded the old KeyArena at the behest of what was once a first-class NBA team named the Seattle Supersonics. The co-venture turned into failure because the corporate rich-folk boxes were a bust, as the corporate rich folks chose the Mariners and Seahawks over the moldering Sonics.
After a succession of ownerships resulting in a Sonics team sporting all the allure of Starbuck's passionless Americano, the NBA, yet another passionless franchise provider, handed over the Boeing 727 keys to a wannabe pilot from Oklahoma who overpaid, didn't know how to fly, and wanted to park the 727 in his garage back home. The NBA encouraged this selfishness because the NBA monopoly relies on an auction mentality to elicit stupid-money purchases of existing teams from envious wannabe non-world-class cities.
When the Sonics came to the City of Seattle, after a third marriage, sporting their ugly Oklahoma trophy wife with the crew cut, the City told the cheatin' heart Sonics that they didn't like the way they'd been treated last time, and that upgrading KeyArena from a bungalow into a McMansion was hard on the budget, particularly given the payments still being made on the rich-folk boxes.
Understandably, the ugly, crew-cut trophy wife was indignant. At first she demanded a new $500 million home if she was going to live in a moldy, liberal city with no oil-depletion allowance. When people rolled their eyes at her tantrum, she appealed to her NBA relatives for relief, and the Band of Inbred Brothers of the NBA rubber-stamped the corporate relocation of the trophy-wife and his 777 to Oklahoma City, a city I refuse to denigrate here, because it is now a successful wannabe world-class city with an NBA basketball franchise, while Seattle remains a wannabe world-class city soon to be without.
The preceding is a digression, however; because this is the story of KeyArena, a home owned by the City of Seattle, but on the brink of foreclosure. With its arguably googie, World's-Fair-of-'62 appearance, KeyArena is unsuitable for upgrade to a more state-of-the-art McMansion arena. That objection was overcome, when the stupid money flowed in from various stupid-money providers (SMP's in the vernacular) who realized that, indeed, their money was stupid in an investment sense, but was purely a gift to the City and the citizens of Seattle and King County.
The City of Seattle, realizing that KeyArena was otherwise on the way to becoming a debt-ridden venue suitable for a large yard sale, "found" $75 million to contribute to the stupid-money offer, realizing that this was a good deal for the City that could also induce good things happening in a Seattle Center revamp. Alas, the stupid-money taxing folks in Olympia -- arch-stupid-money solicitors themselves -- saw the opportunity for raising even more stupid money for the Arts (along with the already stupid 1%) and nixed the original stupid money offer.
All is not lost -- yet. Don't underestimate the value of stupid money. It's worth just as much as the hard-earned stuff taxed by the IRS. If enough stupid money is dangled in front of the NBA Inbred, they'll fall all over themselves extorting some other NBA city to spend money on improving a stadium, rather than fixing that wannabe city's moribund school system (can any city's school system be dying faster than Seattle's?) or addressing that wannabe city's 21st century transportation problems (with locomotives from the 19th).
Me, personally, I'm expecting the usual divine billionaire intervention, although the divine intervention I'd like to see would be the passing of regressive hemophiliac genes to the NBA Inbred Brothers, causing each local NBA shakedown practitioner to bleed to death financially.