Seattle Arena

[dfwabel]

7 minutes ago, colortv said:

 

We'll see what happens with that arena. It only holds 16k for basketball and seems pretty cookie cutter.

Nothing well occur to it.

New Orleans has a metro population of just 1.2M.

 

Plus, they must pour more $$$ into the Superdome (again) first.

[The_Admiral]

10 minutes ago, colortv said:

 

We'll see what happens with that arena. It only holds 16k for basketball and seems pretty cookie cutter.

It's that small? I thought it was at least 18,000.

 

It's easier to say now because we're so far removed from Katrinamania, but the best play circa 2006-07 would have been to broker a sale of the Hornets to the Oklahoma City guys with an exit strategy where New Orleans and/or Louisiana would get some donations, not have to subsidize a team anymore, have All-Star Weekends awarded to the franchise played in New Orleans, and maybe even maintain New Orleans as a television territory because as luck would have it both markets had Cox Cable. It would have been like when a guy gets in a car accident and becomes a quadriplegic so his wife eventually remarries because it's sad and all but eventually you gotta trade up.

 

Meanwhile, the Supersonics still would have been a problem franchise, but not a problem that couldn't be managed in the name of maintaining a heritage franchise with a large and devoted fanbase in a key (npi) media market. Maybe the league owns the team for a while but someone surely buys them up, and most likely not to move them to a newly vacant New Orleans.

[Noir]

9 hours ago, DG_Now said:

 

I think we're going to find out in a few years that David Stern was suffering from dementia circa 2005-onward.

 

But at least he didn't run for president.

David was a LOT of things, suffering from dementia was not one of them. 

[Sport]

7 hours ago, the admiral said:

It's that small? I thought it was at least 18,000.

 

It's easier to say now because we're so far removed from Katrinamania, but the best play circa 2006-07 would have been to broker a sale of the Hornets to the Oklahoma City guys with an exit strategy where New Orleans and/or Louisiana would get some donations, not have to subsidize a team anymore, have All-Star Weekends awarded to the franchise played in New Orleans, and maybe even maintain New Orleans as a television territory because as luck would have it both markets had Cox Cable. It would have been like when a guy gets in a car accident and becomes a quadriplegic so his wife eventually remarries because it's sad and all but eventually you gotta trade up.

 

Meanwhile, the Supersonics still would have been a problem franchise, but not a problem that couldn't be managed in the name of maintaining a heritage franchise with a large and devoted fanbase in a key (npi) media market. Maybe the league owns the team for a while but someone surely buys them up, and most likely not to move them to a newly vacant New Orleans.

 

They probably would've been purchased by Ballmer in that alternate reality. 

[The_Admiral]

Oh, almost certainly. I wonder if that would have allowed Donald Sterling to keep being racist.

[IceCap]

1 hour ago, the admiral said:

Oh, almost certainly. I wonder if that would have allowed Donald Sterling to keep being racist.

Nah. The Clippers would have gone to Magic Johnson's group.

[The_Admiral]

Indulge me in reposting the greatest Donald Sterling material of all time:

 

[BeerGuyJordan]

17 hours ago, colortv said:

NBA isn't looking to expand anytime soon according to the commissioner. 

And the NHL claimed the same, just months before allowing Vegas to do ticket sales. Everyone has their price, in the sports world...

[ninersdd]

[DG_ThenNowForever]

To be clear, Chris Hansen just pledged to build his own arena and to renovate KeyArena into a multi-purpose concert venue. I don't think there's ever been a public arena offer like this, to both build new and renovate old with private funds. It's a home run for my city.

 

However....Hansen has offered several home run offers already and our Council continues to block him due to pressure from the Port of Seattle. If we turn this down, I don't see a pathway to any suitable NBA arena in Seattle.

 

BTW, what the Council continues to deny is Hansen taking over an alley that is currently used for minimal parking and the homeless. All opposition to Hansen is just carrying water for the Port of Seattle.

[The_Admiral]

Why is the Port so opposed to a new SoDo arena? What major effect would it have on their operations that the adjacent Safeco Field doesn't have already?

 

I like this amphitheater concept for KeyArena. I think the outdoor part would be good for Seattle Center, and the Inglewood Forum proved that you can retrofit an old sports arena into a good concert venue.

[DG_ThenNowForever]

Safeco doesn't want the competition in the area.

 

The Port is trying to protect Port traffic like trains and trucks. And also mask that the Port of Seattle is struggling compared to other west coast ports. I'm sure there's other stuff too levels below what I would know.

 

But there's no longer a legitimate reason to oppose the Hansen group. It's a twofer deal with some really amazing outcomes. The Key Arena concert venue idea is amazing, especially with the different permutations.

[The_Admiral]

Yeah, it is pretty cool, but the 500-seat house looks like the kind of add-on that gets negotiated out, like when my high school wanted to add a black box in the renovations to the performing arts wing but eventually settled for new classrooms, a lecture hall, and the main auditorium/backstage no longer collapsing in on itself.

[Gothamite]

22 minutes ago, DG_Now said:

Safeco doesn't want the competition in the area.

 

Same reason why the owners of Madison Square Garden killed the Jets' West Side Stadium.

[The_Admiral]

Yeah, but that was a good thing, because Manhattan shouldn't have had a football stadium sitting there doing mostly nothing. That precious space is for things like luxury condos that sit vacant as places for oil sheikhs to hide their money, or at least the money they don't spend on renting instagram whores to piss all over.

 

Well, anyhoodles, I found this song from Sonicsgate in my library just now and remembered how much I liked it. I would struggle to fill a college-ruled sheet of notebook paper with rap songs I like, so I guess that's an endorsement:

 

[kiwi_canadian]

So Seattle has apparently approved a new... or rather renovated Key Arena.

 

http://www.tsn.ca/report-seattle-agrees-to-tentative-arena-deal-1.854039

[Sodboy13]

In the era of XXX-treeeeeeme Sports Graft, good on Seattle for making private funding the vast, vast majority of this project. Even kicks in $40 million to address transportation, and $20 million for community resources which, if it comes through, puts the new ownership up $20 million on Jeremy Jacobs.

 

Cross-post to the OITGDNHL thread: The new arena opens in 2020, which is right when the NHL's collective bargaining agreement runs out if the opt-out gets deployed. We're going to see an expansion team lose its first season to a lockout.

[BeerGuyJordan]

1 hour ago, kiwi_canadian said:

So Seattle has apparently approved a new... or rather renovated Key Arena.

 

http://www.tsn.ca/report-seattle-agrees-to-tentative-arena-deal-1.854039

I can't see any good reason for Seattle to reject this, which means there's about a 50% chance they still will.

 

Seriously, when was the last time someone came to a city with a deal this tilted, in their favor?

[DG_ThenNowForever]

5 hours ago, BeerGuyJordan said:

I can't see any good reason for Seattle to reject this, which means there's about a 50% chance they still will.

 

Seriously, when was the last time someone came to a city with a deal this tilted, in their favor?

 

In Seattle. When Chris Hansen offered something similar 5 years ago, but in a different location.

 

Meanwhile, our mayor Ed Murray, who pushed and approved the KeyArena location, was today just accused by his cousin of having sexually abused him in the 70s. This follows a string of accusations revealed this summer that forced Murray out of the re-election campaign. Sadly, a lot of people who should have known better thought it was election-year politics and a smear campaign focused on an openly gay mayor who outwardly opposed Trump's early initiatives. Well, it looks like it's more than that.

 

Anyway, I bring that up to say that 1.) the Key renovation is still dumb and 2.) the politics around this decision are not great and I doubt we've heard the end of this.

 

EDIT: And just like that, Mayor Murray resigned today. So nothing about this is certain until shovels are in the ground.

[DustDevil61]

Horrible news (for the children), but maybe this moves the needle? 

 

Also, the guy's had 4 accusations. How does he stay on for so long?