Seattle Mariners, port, worried about impacts of SoDo arena | UPDATE
Published 10:18 am Wednesday, April 4, 2012
UPDATE | Christopher Hansen, the San Francisco-based hedge fund manager who proposed a new NBA/NHL arena in the Seattle’s SoDo district, said Thursday he will finance a traffic and feasibility study to ease the concerns of neighboring businesses.
The study will look at parking around a potential arena, and how people will get to and from the building.
An Arena Advisory Panel Wednesday concluded that the SoDo proposal is promising and will protect the city and county from financial risk.
Original story is below
Two of the largest forces in the SoDo area, the Seattle Mariners and the Port of Seattle, say other sites should be looked at for a new NBA/NHL arena.
The two organizations worried that a new SoDo arena could lead to gridlock that would ultimately hurt nearby businesses.
Both organizations made their positions known this week. The Seattle Mariners wrote a letter to the Seattle Mayor’s Office and the King County Executive’s Office Tuesday, stating a belief that a new arena in SoDo is a bad idea, and other areas such as Bellevue could provide a better location.
“The proposed SoDo location, in our, view simply does not work,” Howard Lincoln, chairman and CEO, of the Mariners wrote. “It would bring scheduling, traffic and parking challenges that would likely require hundreds of millions of dollars to mitigate. We doubt that an arena could succeed financially at this location given mitigation costs and necessary scheduling limitations.”
NBA and NHL schedules overlap for several weeks of the season. The beginning of the Mariners’ season in early April would coincide with last week or two of the NBA and NHL regular seasons. NBA and NHL playoffs can also extend into June. In the fall, NBA and NHL seasons often begin at the end of October, around the time MLB playoffs wind down.
An Arena Advisory Panel was put together to examine the proposal from Seattle-born hedge fund manager Christopher Hansen to build an arena with his own money and taxes on tickets and concessions. The committee will meet Wednesday evening at 5 p.m. to share its results.
The Seattle Seahawks and Sounders released statements of support for a new arena after the proposal became public in January.
Of more concern to the economic engine of the region is the effect on the Port of Seattle. The port wrote to the advisory committee Monday about the impact traffic could have.
In the letter, Linda Styrk, managing director of the Seaport, called for a traffic analysis to investigate the impacts of a new arena. Styrk wrote that increased congestion at the few access points to Interstate 5 and Interstate 90 could hurt operations, and lead to job losses at the port.
Both the Mariners and the port called on the arena panel and the county to examine other possible sites. Lincoln wrote that the Mariners would support a new arena in SoDo if the extra process vets it as the best possible location.
Bellevue has long been rumored as a site for an arena, and city officials acknowledged the possibility for the first time in recent years at a Bellevue Downtown Association forum in February. City Manager revealed that the city has been in consistent talks with private investors to try and create a plan for a new arena in Bellevue.
“We think with this very thoughtful approach, working with private investment groups, we think this project is very real for the Eastside,” Sarkozy said at the February forum. “Bellevue is very much an option.”
// <
