January 19, 2007
Sonics seeking $300m, no public vote
Seattle Sonics owner Clay Bennett delivered a letter to Washington state lawmakers yesterday, indicating that the team's planned new arena would cost $530 million, and that he wanted taxpayers to cover $300 million of that. In the understatement of the young year, state senate majority leader Lisa Brown observed, "That sounds like a lot of money." (Service Employees International Union spokesperson Adam Glickman, meanwhile, called it "the biggest waste of money I can imagine," which shows a serious lack of imagination.)
And why, pray tell, do the Sonics deserve $300 million in taxpayer dollars? According to Bennett, it's because "we have been confronted by construction costs that are rising on a daily basis and have made the project more expensive than other recent arenas." Former Sonics coach Lenny Wilkens added that the team's current home, KeyArena, was "a little bit obsolete," which sounds like, well, you know.
The real hammer, though, was waved menacingly about by Bennett spokesperson Jim Kneeland, who told reporters, "You know, there's a tremendous effort to make sure the team doesn't leave and it's a full-court press to make it happen." Of course, for $300 million the people of Washington state could just about buy their own basketball team and have it play wherever they want, but that's not the sort of thing that one discusses in polite society.
Bennett also continues to demand that any arena plan not be subject to voter approval, something that Gov. Christine Gregoire now says she might be cool with. That did not sit well with Chris Van Dyk, the prime force behind Seattle's successful anti-sports-subsidy Initiative 91, who said: "The governor has got wax in her ears if she thinks the public is not going to demand a vote on this."
