The Seattle city council held its public hearing on the closure of a street to make way for Chris Hansen’s proposed sports arena, and it went exactly as you’d expect:
Most of the crowd sported green and yellow Sonics gear, while others carried NHL hockey signs. A small group associated with the Port of Seattle, who oppose the deal, held signs saying, “Save Sodo.”
The dockworker union folks claimed an arena will hurt the viability of the port, Sonics fans replied nuh-uh it won’t, and a fun time was had by all. There are two more hearings scheduled on April 5 and 19 before the council votes, so to save everybody time just bookmark this post and re-read it again then, okay? Thanks.
200 people? I’d have thought the turnout would be bigger, given how much traction the “bring back the Sonics” thing has gotten on social media.
Honestly, I think hardcore sports fans in general overestimate the level of passion and commitment that their towns have toward their local teams. I think the fact that they tend to associate almost exclusively with other die-hard fans has a lot to do with that…
Everyone can enjoy and relive the 2+ hours of public testimony and cheering/booing now
www.seattlechannel.org/explore-videos?videoid=x62477
How would a new arena impact the economic viability of Seattle’s port? Will the new arena prevent ships from docking at any particular industrial related berth?
The project would have an impact on traffic patterns, parking, loading/unloading access for trucks moving freight. Anything that comes in by ship has to move inland on a truck unless it is going by rail. You have to have room to move around. Also if any of the port industries want to expand and purchase adjoining properties, they are going to be now competing with restaurants, bars, apartments, retail for land. There is a reason that certain areas are zoned industrial and others commercial. You can build an arena anywhere, you cannot build port facilities anywhere other than at the port.
jcpardell, there are a few other big ports around here, including Tacoma just 20 miles further S in the port. When it comes time for shipping companies to renew their leases, they’ll cite everything, including 200 arena events on top of the NFL and MLB stadia as reason for reducing their payments or moving to Tacoma. I think a few decades back the big battle between the two ports involved cold storage and how much was being charged… IIRC Seattle lost that battle.
RE: Kei above,
I think people also overestimate the effectiveness of social media. It’s not necessarily a given that someone will get off their ass and show up to something just because they decided to click a like button or retweet something. Unions have been doing the difficult face-to-face organizing this kind of campaign requires for years with the deck stacked against them. When they lock on to something, it’s not easy to shake them off.