Virgin on Business: Change of venue

The Boston Garden provided a playing home for Beantowns hockey and basketball teams for nearly 70 years. Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto was home of the eponymous hockey club for about as long. The current incarnation of New Yorks Madison Square Garden, opened in 1968, is still in operation as a venue for sporting events, concerts and political conventions as it undergoes yet another renovation.

Granted, those venerable old barns lacked amenities such as food courts and luxury suites. The concourses of older arenas were crowded, the restrooms and locker rooms antiquated and dingy, the seats narrow and uncomfortable, and the pitch of rows in the nosebleed section scarily steep.

Still, they were functional buildings where ticket holders could enjoy a few hours of entertainment, maybe a beer and a hot dog (of admittedly dubious nutritional value or delectability), and actually afford the tickets theyd bought. The focus of attention was what was happening on the ice, the court or the stage, not on the structure itself.

But that is an outmoded way of thinking, as Seattle found when the Sonics departed town and the National Basketball Association declared KeyArena, remodeled within recent memory and still perfectly serviceable, unsuitable as a home for one of its franchises. As a major league sports venue, KeyArena lasted less than 13 years.

Now Seattle wants back in the game, with a proposal for an arena capable of hosting not only an NBA team but also an NHL franchise. (Because of its configuration, KeyArena couldnt accommodate NHL hockey.) Its a proposition with huge business and economic implications for cities up and down the Sound, for existing venues, for tenants, and not the least for the taxpayers who will be asked to finance buildings to host events many of them wont be able to afford to attend.

Start with Seattle itself, where a Bay Area hedge fund manager is proposing an arena for the SoDo district. Ostensibly, the arena will involve no public funds, although the publics credit will be used to finance a sizable chunk of the construction cost (to be paid back with facility rental fees and tax revenue generated at the venue).

Maybe the new arena itself will prove self-supporting and require no public funding of infrastructure, although those are two huge ifs. Such projects almost always seem to require some sort of accessories to fix up the neighborhood, and the big-budget hit isnt just construction but operations and maintenance as well as upgrades when other cities build even gaudier venues.

Those concerns dont address the question of what to do about KeyArena. The operators of a new building arent going to want to compete with another arena in the same town for concerts, monster truck events and whatever else can fill the calendar.

So if no KeyArena, what happens to its remaining sports tenants, the Seattle Storm and Seattle University basketball, which, in a manifestation of Gonzaga envy, is moving its hoops program back to the top level of college ball? And what does the city do with a gaping hole at Seattle Center?

These questions arent simply Seattles headache. Tacoma will find itself in competition with a newer, glitzier building as soon as it figures out what role or future an arena of the Tacoma Domes size has. Kent and Everett will hope that their smaller arenas and their distance from the expensive parking and traffic congestion of downtown Seattle will shield them. But they will still be in competition with those larger buildings for events that can use either size of venue (the Harlem Globetrotters or ice shows, for example). Even more important: Theyll be in competition for a share of the consumers entertainment dollar.

There are alternatives beyond a return to dreary, decrepit, cheap buildings featuring backless, splintery wooden benches for spectators. But the people paying for these buildingsand the public will be paying even if they never set foot in themneed to understand the full tally of costs, risks and economic impacts. The healthy skepticism raised already indicates the public is paying attention and has a pretty good sense of who will be tapped if a new building is deemed hopelessly outmoded and outdated before the first fan files through a turnstile.

Bill Virgin is the founder and editor of the subscription newsletters Washington Manufacturing Alert and Pacific Northwest Rail News.