bellevue supersonics
DESCRIPTION
A two-part series examining whether Bellevue would make a good fit for a potential NBA arena.TRANSCRIPT
COMMUNITY | Group Health plans residences, businesses on former site of its hospital in Overlake area [3]
REPORTER .com
B E L L E V U E
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2011A DIVISION OF SOUND PUBLISHING
NEW
SLIN
E 425
-453
-427
0
Sports | Robinswood Tennis Center team wins senior men’s national championship for � rst time in its history [9]
Entertainment | Eastside native, now Broadway star, has lead in ‘Annie Get Your Gun’ [13]
Photo Specialists
1100 Bellevue Way NE • (425) 455-2126 www.OMEGAPHOTO.biz
JUST NORTH OF BELLEVUE SQUARE. EASY ACCESS, EASY PARKING.
All cameras includes one year limited warranty
Kit and Frank KleinKit: 206-719-8749
Frank: 206-714-8729
KitandFrankKlein.com
540203
SOMERSET??Kit and Frank Klein play, live and work in Somerset.
If you are looking to buy a home in Somerset or sell your home in Somerset please -
CALL for private planning
E n d l e s s V i e w s f r o m B e l o w $ 1 M i l l i o n
W W W. F I F T E E N T W E N T YO N E . C O M | 2 0 6 . 4 4 3 . 1 5 2 1
BY NAT LEVY
For Adam Brown and Jason Reid, the pain of losing the Seattle Supersonics remains fresh.
As documentarians of the movement to keep the team in town when Clay Bennett moved the franchise to Oklahoma City, they had a front row seat for the political hand wringing, litigation and fan heartbreak that accompanied the team’s departure in 2008.
“� ere was so much toxic energy around the way the team le� and people were burned out and apathetic,” said Brown, producer of the award-winning documentary “Sonicsgate.”
To many, the best way to move on was to forget. Local newspapers backed o� NBA cover-age, and the league is rarely men-tioned on sports radio
without a sco� that “nobody cares.” But little by little, the feeling has begun to fade.
With teams facing extensive � nancial hardship, and a fundamental restructuring of the NBA model, hoop hope is beginning to return. But any
discussions about bringing back the Sonics – the franchise moved to Oklahoma, but the green and gold stayed behind - � rst begins with an arena. Pundits have thrown out numerous possibilities for a new venue, and a consistent question has arisen. Would the Seattle Supersonics be better o� calling a new arena in Bellevue home?
Rumors have swirled around Chicago busi-nessman Don Levin’s desire to put an arena on the Eastside, and State Rep. Mike Hope (R-Lake Stevens) may introduce legislation to raise a portion of the money needed through an income tax on visiting players, but no concrete plan has emerged.
A new venue in Bellevue could catapult it closer to the goal of becoming a “world-class city.” With extensive planned transportation improve-
ments and several potential locations, Bellevue may overcome the two biggest deterrents to a ma-jor venue - tra� c and space. But developers and economists question whether an arena is even a good move for Bellevue. � e only sure thing in this discussion is that Bellevue and state taxpayers won’t be footing the bill.
World-class cityBellevue is the capital of the Eastside, and a
stone’s throw from downtown Seattle.Bellevue’s proximity to Seattle and the rest of
the Eastside, coupled with its sterling workforce and planned transportation projects, make the city a natural contender for a large venue such as an NBA arena.
Sonics fans at a charity game in July 2011 express their ongoing pain over losing the team. JOSH TRUJILLO, Seattle P-I
It’s not a slam dunk, but could Bellevue be home to an NBA team?
First of two parts
[ more ARENA page 6 ] [ more LIGHT RAIL page 8 ]
BY NAT LEVY
� e Sound Transit board endorsed an agreement Oct. 27 with the city of Bel-levue to to fund a down-town tunnel for East Link light rail
� e board authorized Sound Transit CEO Joni Earl to execute a Memo-randum of Understanding (MOU) with Bellevue fol-lowing upcoming action by the Bellevue City Council. Bellevue Mayor Don Da-vidson presented the board with a letter re-stating the city’s commitment to take action on the MOU on or before Nov. 14.
� e memorandum establishes a collabora-tive partnership for Sound Transit and Bellevue to work together during the � nal design and construc-tion processes for East Link to manage the project’s costs and impacts and to share the additional cost of building the tunnel.
� e tunnel is estimated to cost an additional $276 mil-lion beyond the cost of an at-grade alignment through downtown a� er factoring in cost savings from locating East Link’s South Bellevue alignment along 112th Av-enue Southeast. � e memo-randum establishes a � rm funding commitment by
Sount Transit OKs deal with Bellevue for light rail lineCouncil expected to sign pact by Nov. 14
High hopes for
hoops
[6] November 4, 2011 www.bellevuereporter.com
Former Planning Director Matt Terry was a key figure in discussions to bring an arena to Bellevue to keep the team from moving. Chad Coleman, File Photo
much of the talk about an nBa arena in Bellevue centers around two places: auto Row and the Spring district. each spot has its own features that could make it a good destination. The Spring district could be an ideal location because it has easy access to Interstate 405 and State Route 520. With light-rail planned to come right through the area, the Spring district could be the easiest access point for travelers coming from out of town to see an event. located near northeast 12th Street and 124 avenue northeast, the Spring district strays a bit from down-town, the city’s fastest growing neighborhood, and one of its largest employment centers. Those already downtown could have a hard time getting to an event. additionally, this area is set to be developed by Wright Runstead into a 36-acre mixed use area.auto Row is made up of mostly empty lots, and a number of car dealerships on 116th avenue. This area is just across the freeway from downtown, and a planned extension of northeast Fourth Street could help ease some of the traffic congestion. This area is also slated to be developed by the property KG Investments, which did not return calls requesting comment for the story. This location is near downtown, but a sizeable walk from central transit dropoff points at the Bellevue Transit Center downtown.
[ ARENA from page 1 ]
Experts mixed on economic effects of arena in Bellevue
Los Angeles’ Staples Center with surrounding restaurants, hotels and attractions, was a model for what Bellevue wanted out of an arena when staff discussed the possibility in 2006. CouRTeSy PhoTo
Possible arena locations
“Bellevue could make a great location for an NBA team,” Brown said. “If you’re going to build new a state-of-the-art arena, it goes along with all the things Bellevue has been doing for the last few years and their mas-sive growth.”
Bellevue features empty spaces near downtown and plans for East Link light-rail tracks that could eventually move people from as far north as Lynnwood to as far south as Federal Way into the city.
The two most likely spots for a new arena are the somewhat vacated Auto Row on 116th Avenue on the south side of Interstate 405 or the abandoned Safeway distribution site on Bel-Red Road, known as the Spring District. Both of these sites,
however, are up for extensive redevel-opment by their respective owners - KG Invest-ments and Wright
Runstead - and could become unavailable. However, if an arena were to come in the
next few years, the traffic and transporta-tion improvements may not be complete.
Greg Johnson, president of Wright Runstead, said he has not been approached about a potential arena development, and it isn’t a factor in the current planning of the 36-acre, mixed-use Spring District development.
“At this point [an arena’s] not even an option for us, and we’re not in the mode of developing one for ourselves,” he said.
Bob Wallace, President of Wallace prop-erties, said it would be easier to get people to and from games with an arena close to downtown and the freeways.
Attendance likely wouldn’t be a problem.
Bellevue’s population of approximately 123,000 could prove a bit worrisome, but according to the state’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, 97,000 of the 130,908 estimated workers in Bellevue commute from outside the city limits, adding another segment of population who already have ties to the city. Bellevue is a part of the nation’s 15th largest metropolitan area, which is the sec-ond largest region without an NHL or NBA team, according to census figures.
Eastsiders were Sonics fansEastsiders were already big buyers for
the Sonics, representing 26 percent of season-ticket holders and 19 percent of all attendees, according to records.
If traffic improvements make Bellevue a viable arena location, proponents say the new venue could have transformational effects on the city known for its ascension to the top of the employment world in Washington.
And while many have gossiped about Bellevue as an NBA arena destination, former Bellevue Planning Director Matt Terry was in the middle of a city effort to put together a stadium proposal in 2006.
As one of the key figures of Bellevue’s expansion to a growing city, Terry saw an opportunity with a new arena.
“It would create an entertainment des-tination unlike anything that exists in Bel-levue,” he said. “We imagined a younger, more hip kind of district.”
This site would resemble the Staples Center in Los Angeles, which is flanked with first-class restaurants, hotels, a 10,000-seat theater and even an arts mu-seum.
Proponents of a Bellevue arena see it as a new way to bring people to town, have them shop at local stores, and eat at nearby restaurants.
It would give Bellevue another signa-
ture element in addition to its downtown, which in the eyes of some has eclipsed Seattle’s.
“It’s a powerful thing when you unleash this kind of development activity,” Terry said. “It tends to drive up land values, and it encourages the kind of land development that couldn’t occur before.”
Would arena spur development?The creation of a pro sports arena is
seen as a recognition of a major economic success and development, not an impetus for it.
Economists question whether an arena would bring new development to the area. Victor Matheson, professor of sports economics at Holy Cross University, said economists have failed to find a way to measure economic benefits of stadiums. Unless the owner is a local mainstay, there is often little motivation to make the venue interface with the city to help other nearby businesses, he said.
In this case an owner, or group of own-ers, would have to build an arena, and buy a team – or two – no small financial feat. Owners would do better if they were able to keep patrons inside to buy their beer and food rather than going to the restaurant across the street.
“Arenas serve as a walled fortress with parking all around it, and they tend to restrict economic development,” Matheson said. “Your goal is to have people buy as many overpriced food items as possible rather than let the economic development leak outside those walls.”
Even if patrons stay within the fortress, portions of their sales tax dollars will go back into the community.
Nonetheless, the planners and develop-ers fear that a poorly conceived arena will lead to more congestion with cars jetting in and out of town without a second look at Bellevue’s restaurants and stores.
Matheson said Los Angeles’ old Forum
suffered from this problem before the Staples Center was built. When the Lakers began playing their games in downtown Los Angeles, sales tax revenue in the sub-urb of Inglewood, where the old arena was located, actually increased because patrons weren’t hindered by game traffic.
The arena would also take up valuable space in a community restricted by mu-nicipal and water borders on all sides. Terry, Bellevue’s former planning director, spoke of the tradeoffs such an arena would require, like the inability to locate a major university campus, health facility or new development in a prime location near downtown.
The question to the community then becomes whether an owner can build an arena, attract teams to the area, and give people a reason to stick around. To make this a feasible possibility, another pro team may need to be a part of the action.
The potential of a professional hockey team, in addition to an NBA team, and the possibility of hosting large conferences for local companies such as Microsoft, may be the arena’s greatest selling point. Hockey features 42 home games each year, and the possibility of conferences and headline acts could make the space palatable for a
potential buyer. “If you’re only
going to use it for 40 days a year, it’s much harder to make it profitable and private people are less likely to want to make that investment,” Matheson said.
But Wallace, who sat on the board of Kingdome and SafeCo Field, has a different view of an
arena. He sees it as not just a dollar-driver, but more of a statement, an amenity that grabs attention and makes Bellevue standout from the rest of the Eastside. Matheson too qualified the primary benefit as a quality of life issue rather than an economic one.
“Although the professional sports in-dustry in the United States is roughly the same size as the cardboard box industry, cardboard boxes don’t warrant multiple channels on television, have a dedicated section in most newspapers, and are not the focus of frequent discussions around the office water cooler,” Matheson said.
Next week: Is there the political will – and the money – to make an arena become a reality?
By Nat Levy
The race to replace departing City Council Member Grant Degginger is nearly deadlocked, and incumbents in other races are leading after the latest batch of tallied votes were released Wednesday.
In one of the closest races in the state, retired attorney, and current member of the Parks and Community Services Board John Stokes holds a slim 146-vote lead over land use attorney Aaron Laing. Incumbents
Claudia Balducci and John Chelminiak both garnered
approximately two-thirds of the vote in their races.
Stokes, Chelminiak and
Where is Sky Metalwala?
By BiLL ChriStiaNSoN aNd Nat Levy
Reporter Newspapers
Though police maintain that the mother of missing 2-year-old Sky Metalwala has cooperated with the investigation, holes are beginning to appear in her story.
Police said Wednesday they were able to determine that Julia Biryukova’s silver Acura Integra - which she said ran out of gas Sunday morning - had enough fuel to drive for a considerable amount of time. Combined with her unwillingness to take a lie-detector test, Biryu-kova has become a source of police frustration.
“The story doesn’t add up, the whereabouts of Sky are unknown, and mom’s story is falling apart day to day; and her lack of cooperation so far in providing more information proactively and submitting to a polygraph doesn’t help,” said Bellevue police Maj. Mike Johnson.
Johnson maintained that she has answered investigators’ questions through her attorney, and she has not been named a suspect.
The focus of the investigation continues to be getting in-formation from those closest to Sky and Biryukova, who lives in Redmond, so they can piece together the days and weeks that lead up to the boy being reported as missing Sunday.
“The people that were close to Sky and Julia are the people that know what happened to Sky,” Johnson told reporters Wednesday morning. “If everyone cooperates, we should have answers we need.”
The boy’s father, Solomon Metalwala was scheduled to take a second polygraph test Wednesday after the first one proved to be too emotionally trying.
Solomon and Biryukova were going through a divorce and
Sky Metalwala
Bellevue City Council members John Chelminiak and Claudia Balducci check elections returns Tuesday night. The pair held on to their seats by a 2-1 margin over their challengers. CHAD COLEMAN, Bellevue Reporter
Last of two parts
By Nat Levy
When the Seattle Supersonics left town, a trail of broken-hearted fans laid in the wake. State Rep. Ross Hunter was among the most passionate of them. He proudly called himself a fan for decades, but like other Washington lawmakers he refused to be ransomed by the National Basketball Association.
“The current NBA model is they ex-tort cities to get them to pay for arenas,” said Hunter, the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee. “With the fiscal reality that cities, counties, and states are in right now, it’s hard to imagine any state would put money into funding an
NBA arena rather than paying for public education, as an example.”
Though three years removed for losing the team, the bitter memories
throughout Seattle and the rest of the state remain. Fans blame politicians who fought to keep the team, and the league that has developed a model to coerce residents into spending billions on arenas, even as governments are forced to cut down to the bare bones due to economic recession. Legislators have worked on plan after plan to bring a team back, but thus far, nothing has come to fruition. Local and state legisla-tors have maintained that they will not spend tax dollars on a new arena, and it will be up to a knight in shining armor – one or a number of heads of the area’s largest companies, or an outside ob-server – to bring professional basketball back to the Puget Sound region.
In the past, arena money came out of
arena needs a ‘white knight’
[ more areNa page 15] [ more MiSSiNg Boy page 6]
Bellevue council incumbents keep seats
Police suspect foul play in case of missing 2-year-old
[ more eLeCtioN page 18 ]
HealtH | Children’s Hospital gets $65 million gift, $15 million of which will go to Bellevue facility [ 11]
RepoRteR .com
B e l l e v u e
friday, november 11, 2011A DIVISION OF SOUND PUBLISHING
new
slin
e 425
-453
-427
0
Business | Bellevue woman modernizes the world of antiques with Haystack Antiques in Downtown Bellevue [3]
Community | Bellevue boy gets his special wish – meeting Marshawn Lynch and the Seahawks [ 16 ]
pockets. New arenas for both the Mariners and Seahawks received tax dollars in the 1990s. The $430 million CenturyLink Field came to be following a special election in 1997 after Mi-crosoft cofounder Paul Allen stepped in to buy the team if a new arena could be built. Allen pledged responsibility for any cost overages, and the vote passed with more than 51 percent.
The Kingdome’s other team, the Mariners, were on their way to Tampa Bay in the mid 90s, but the magical 1995 season galvanized the Leg-islature. Even after the public rejected a funding measure, to vote in favor of a half percent sales tax increase and 2 percent car rental tax to build SafeCo Field, which opened in 1999.
But when the NBA stepped in and began to grumble about Key Arena being out of date, the public blowback was immediate.
Seattle City Council members showed a level of distaste toward the team, with then Council President Nick Licata going as far as to say the Sonics provided zero economic or cultural value to the city. He fought against a bill to bring in $200 million in state subsidies to keep the team financially viable.
Developers say these issues are why politi-cians and arenas don’t mix.
Bob Wallace, president of Wallace Properties and a board member for both the Kingdome and SafeCo, saw first hand how political bodies can interfere in sports activity. He said King County deferred much of the maintenance for the arenas because they had other budget priorities to fill. Taxes collected from the old stadiums are often talked about as means to fund other projects, not always related to the arenas.
“Whenever you’ve got a political body involved, they want to get their mitts on it and control it,” he said.
The Legislature too took a stand against the
league after the citizens of Seattle in 2006 voted in favor of Initiative 91, which prohibited Seattle from supporting teams with city tax dollars un-less such investments yield a profit on par with a 30-year U.S. Treasury bond, currently about 4.75 percent.
Behind Speaker of the House 43rd District Rep. Frank Chopp, the Legislature pledged not to pay for a new arena, a sentiment that stands to this day.
“I don’t think there’s a role for government in financing an arena,” Hunter said.
Seattle has maintained this stance as well, with Mayor Mike McGinn continuing to lobby for a Sonics return, with a clear mandate that public funding is not an option.
Bellevue too is open to bringing an arena to town, but again, only if it comes without expense to the public. At a recent City Coun-cil candidate forum, six sitting members and candidates were united in their views that a building could be great for Bellevue, as long as Bellevue doesn’t have to pay for it.
“If a plan came forward, and it meant not spending tax dollars, I would certainly work hard to try and find a way to make it happen, I think it’d be exciting,” said Bellevue Council Member Claudia Balducci.
Battling the budgetThe State Legislature has dealt with a $12
billion shortfall between 2009 and 2011, with another $2 billion hole to fill this year. It is look-ing at chopping millions from schools, social services and other organizations. Using tax dollars to fund an arena would create a political fiasco.
“There are cities that have laid off police offi-cers, firemen and teachers, and you are going to raise taxes to pay NBA players? That’s not going to be acceptable in this political climate,” said Victor Matheson, professor of sports economics at Holy Cross University.
But a group of legislators is working on find-ing a solution that doesn’t take money from the taxpayer.
The coalition, known as the Sonics Taskforce, is led by Reps. Dave Frockt (D-Seattle) and Mike Hope (R-Lake Stevens), and is dedicated to finding money for an arena without spending public tax dollars. Hope will likely propose a measure known as the “jock tax,” an income tax system that charges visiting professional athletes for money made in the state. This could raise approximately $175 million, according to the proponents.
That won’t be enough.According to research compiled by
Matheson, the average NBA arena since the year 2000 cost $302 million, with an aver-age of 51 percent public investment. And the trend over the past decade has seen greater public investment in arenas. Since 1999 only a single NBA-only arena has been funded by 100 percent private dollars, the Air Canada Center in Toronto. But this was a special case, with the owners buying up a partially built arena and established team. Rarely, if ever, is the case that an owner will build an arena, without the promise of the team, and then buy a team and bring it to the area.
The hope is that the jock tax package would present the motivation to an investor to come in and fill the void.
Matheson has shown in his research a variety of ways in which public money could be used to augment private investment. According to his research, the use of a number of methods, including hotel and gambling taxes, ticket charges, sin taxes on goods such as cigarettes and alcohol, and personal seat licenses - a system in which fans purchase the rights to later buy season tickets at a designated seat - often makes up a cocktail of funding sources to put together a public contribution.
Attaching a professional hockey team to the
proposal seems to spur more private investment as well. According to Matheson’s research, of the 10 new arenas since 1990 that house both hockey and basketball teams, the average public contribution was 14 percent.
Stepping upThat leaves any remainder up to a wealthy
individual or individuals. And while there’s no shortage of wealth on the Eastside, one name often comes up: Steve Ballmer.
The CEO of Microsoft, Ballmer has been a big part of Sonics discussions in the past. He helped organize a consortium of individuals to fund a Key Arena renovation, but that still couldn’t get it done.
Ballmer could not be reached for this story, but the Microsoft magnate did touch on the issue of an arena on the Eastside at a Seattle Rotary Club meeting over the summer. He characterized the problem not as a money problem, but a real estate problem of an arena to house the team. He also indicated he was not likely to be the man to build an arena to make way for the team.
“If somebody could solve the real estate prob-lem, someone could solve the NBA problem,” he said, and he added it’s up to the real estate industry to solve it. “If you find an answer to that problem, I’ll buy the first season ticket.”
Wallace watched the process that sent the Sonics to Oklahoma City. All of these interests, he said, have been around throughout the process and could have come in and saved the team.
“I believe we have the market, we have the capacity, all we need is the motivation, but I haven’t seen any evidence of that.”That means it may take a white knight – one or a number of heads of the area’s largest companies or an outside owner – to bring professional basketball back to the arena. The question, though, is: does such a person or group exist?
www.bellevuereporter.com November 11, 2011 [15]
[ ArenA from page 1 ]
Sonics didn’t have same public support as Mariners and Seahawks for new arenas