Thiel: As costs rise, arena builders make a switch

THERE. IS. NOWHERE. TO. ADD. ROADWAY. TO. BRING. PEOPLE. IN. I know SF’s story quite well. Neither of those arenas is wedged into an area anything like Queen Anne. At AT&T, there was and is that barrier of broad public access and older buildings that could be razed to allow for the stadium. There was quick access to TWO interstates. King Street was adequate to the development of traffic access. NOTHING – not ONE aspect of the area around Key Arena is that sort of disposable, displaceable property. Elliott Avenue is the closest sizeable roadway and that is a traffic nightmare in any regular rush hour, as is the entire downtown core. And when does travel to the weekday games happen? Rush Hour! And how’s regular traffic on weekends? HEAVY. That’s why, after THREE votes in favor of it, there is not one millimeter more monorail – because right of ways in Seattle are almost impossible to negotiate.

For Chase in SF, the area at 3rd and 16th had ONE primary landowner with whom to negotiate: UCSF, which proved to be amenable (with a little arm-twisting) to selling off the large tract of waterfront space where the arena will go. King Street and 280 provide access for large traffic volumes and I-80/CA 101 is less than a half mile west. Terry Francois Boulevard will be widened and a bunch of older buildings in the immediate area will be razed for parking and pedestrian access. Neither location in SF is ANYTHING like the nightmare that Queen Anne is. As I mentioned above, a city planner told me that there is NO possible way to increase access to the Seattle Center site without disruption of the entire northern downtown area, for MORE than a year and a half, and MORE money than the arena will cost. His hunch is that the city council is betting that the public will be swept away with enthusiasm for the new team(s) and new arena and say, “Well, we have this new facility, so we HAVE TO lay out money to get people to it.” But even the construction of a subway system into the area – by far the most feasible option – would cause MASSIVE surface disruption to the businesses and NEIGHBORHOODS on LQA and upper downtown and would certainly rally vast public opposition, especially from those who dig in their heels on the mere idea of the city paying ANYTHING to get an arena built and consider sports teams and facilities needless frivility. “Citizens for More Important Things” ringing any bells for ya?

IN short, the city council is praying desperately that people will say things like

” Three years from now, the new Seattle arena will be open to fireworks and fanfare. The slings, arrows and gnashing of teeth will be forgotten just as it was for AT&T, Chase, Century Link and Safeco (T-Mobile?). Folks will marvel at the architecture (“Oh, look at how they incorporated the Coliseum’s roof!”) and they will be lined up to buy their Totems (?) gear….”

They’re counting on fans like you to get caught up in the fever of the NHL and the (remotely possible) NBA (cue celestial chorus) and forget the bedrock realities of how the issue of people actually trying to get in and out of their prissy little vest-pocket site is going to happen. What they’re REALLY thinking, when all the rhetoric is stripped away, is “Hey, if these sheep want to attend hockey games and NBA games, they can damned well put up with it taking two to three hours to get in and out from anywhere farther away than Eastlake, Capital Hill, or Ballard and three to four hours each way to get there from Issaquah or Redmond or Tacoma or Kitsap. They wanted this stadium, so they can STFU and do what it takes to attend. And besides, if they do balk, we can always shriek at them for being bad citizens and tell ’em the teams will go away of they don’t show up and pony up.”

These idiots had a site and a person who was willing to pay to have it developed. They had a place with access to interstate highways and major surface streets. None of that suited them. Their egos and the ineconomy of having an arena that they built stupidly in the first place and then renovated on the cheap, stupidly, got glossed over as though it wasn’t a problem. The NBA REJECTED – THREE TIMES – both Key Arena and any plan to expand the building AND the area in which it’s located. They said the building and its location were not suitable for NBA basketball. And yet, in EVERY council meeting on bringing hockey or basketball to Seattle, somebody on the council continued to whine, “Well, what about KEY ARENA? Can’t we use thaaaaat? Whats wrong with thaaat?”, in a sort of Rain Man chant, until they found somebody greedy and cynical enough to agree to develop it.

YEAH, there WILL be a puck drop at the new arena in three years. Hey, I bought seat licenses because I love hockey and have been watching the NHL since I was twelve and living in Chicago and worshiping the Blackhawks. I would LOVELOVELOVE to be able to go to games and wear the colors and be a fan. But, having watched hockey in Chicago and DC and SF and St, Louis and NYC (both teams) and Atlanta and Dallas and Phoenix and Philly, I can tell you from first-hand experience, there is NO arena in the entire NHL that is anything like as hemmed in as the new Key will be and NONE that has completely non-negotiable neighborhoods where nothing can be torn down and swept aside to accommodate access. And after a period when people DO endure that five, six hour ordeal to get in and out of Queen Anne, what will eventually happen is that the arena management and the city will have to hope and pray (and probably do some right special begging) to get enough rich folks who live in downtown and its immediate neighborhoods to make up the VAST numbers who give up on attending because it’s just too damned much trouble. And that has quite likely been their plan all along, unless the council is even more stupid than I think: a hugely expensive tree house for the rich and the powerful to go and dally, after their long days of movin ‘n’ shakin’, where only the occasional garbage person is around to spoil their view.

And 75 – 80 trips to get crowds there for each game? And back? To…? NO.

The last few years of my Sonics tickets, the monorail was DEFINITELY the best way to the games: Parking was available on the street (free) and the monorail was obviously faster than the streets. Total no-brainer.

She doesn’t know she’s a Trump puppet and would be horrified if anyone suggested it but she plays right into the hands of him and his ilk every day she sits on that council. She thinks she’s a valiant crusader against the tides of patriarchy and nationalism and All Things Right but what she has become is a model that the Conservatives can hold up like as a visual aid and say, “See? Look how radical and out of touch the radical Left is!” She’s as rigid and doctrinaire in her thinking as Trump is in his. They’re at least spiritual cousins in that their views are SO far out of the common attitudes that what they perceive as stirring the pot is actually alienating those who hear them. I’m about as far Left as it’s possible for an American to be and I have not mellowed much at all in my old age and she makes me want to seal her up in an oil drum and set her adrift in the Straits of Juan de Fuca. I called her a Trump puppet as an ironic expression of my complete disdain for her and her asinine “ideas”…which is really only ONE idea: promote Kshama Sawant to national prominence, by ANY means necessary.