There’s no good reason at this point for the Seattle City Council to vacate an industrial street to support a nebulous arena proposal.
SEATTLE’S waterfront industrial zone is not a field of dreams, where one can build an arena in hopes that the NBA will miraculously appear.
There’s no reason for the city of Seattle to continue chasing this fantasy, especially not until there’s evidence that a team is within the realm of possibility.
It would be tremendous if the NBA returned to the area. But it’s a terrible idea to squeeze a basketball arena and cluster of restaurants and bars between train yards and arterials serving one of the world’s best deep-water ports.
Seattle’s quixotic pursuit of an arena in this Sodo location sends a message to shipping companies and industry that the city would rather gentrify its industrial district than fight for its long-term viability. On Sunday, Times reporter Geoff Baker revealed city officials’ deliberate decision to exclude from a key environmental study the fact that KeyArena would be a feasible place for an NBA arena, after all.
Instead of seeking a more suitable location for the NBA elsewhere in the region, elected officials would endanger a corridor of working-class, family-wage careers. In return, they’ll get a sprawl of restaurants and bars providing mostly part-time, low-wage jobs.
Seattle should not compound this grave mistake by abandoning a key stretch of roadway to accommodate this dead-end project.
Yet Mayor Ed Murray and the City Council appear dead set on proceeding with the vacation of Occidental Avenue South through the proposed arena site. The vacation is moving through committee and likely to be voted on this spring.
Stricter conditions would be an improvement, such as Councilmember Tim Burgess’ proposal to make the vacation conditional upon arena developer Chris Hansen fulfilling the terms of his original deal with the city.
That 2012 memorandum of understanding with the city and King County commits $200 million of public financing toward the $500 million project, as long as Hansen secures an NBA team by November 2017.
The chances of meeting that deadline appear to have diminished.
It didn’t help that Hansen’s scheming to lure away Sacramento’s team in 2013 violated campaign laws there, making the Oklahomans who spirited away the Sonics look relatively upstanding.
Then Hansen’s biggest backer, Steve Ballmer, bought a team in Los Angeles instead.
Since then, Hansen’s been quiet with little to no public updates on progress toward securing a team.
In the meantime, there’s no legal obligation for the city to give up a street for the arena. The only reason to do so now is to demonstrate political support for Hansen’s proposal — and reject the industrial sector’s opposition.
Vacating the street also invites a lawsuit from maritime interests. They have plenty of ammunition, since the city failed to fully explore alternate locations such as KeyArena in its environmental review. KeyArena was deemed viable and more cost effective for the city.
City plans to mitigate arena traffic impacts are also ripe for challenge. An expert hired by the Port of Seattle testified last week that vacating Occidental would significantly reduce street capacity and resiliency of the area’s street network.
Already it can take nine minutes to drive 1.5 miles through the area at peak periods. Arena events could increase that travel time to 21 minutes, the expert said.
To recap, the City Council will decide whether to make what’s likely a symbolic gesture to support Hansen.
That would tell everyone else that the city is so committed to the Sodo site, it’s willing to make a patch of bad traffic unbearable, trade good jobs for lesser ones and go to court against groups trying to preserve its working waterfront.
If only this really were a dream.