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Seattle City Council unanimously voted Monday a plan to allow a group of private investors to build a new stadium on the current site of the Seattle Storm and the old house Seattle Supersonics. expansion of the NHL franchise later this year.
Tim and Tod Leiweke are partly leading the effort to bring a hockey team to Seattle, whose names you will be able to recognize from their recent roles in North American professional sports. Tim Leiweke is the former CEO and President of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, which owns the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Toronto Raptors, among other professional sports franchises. Tod Leiweke was the chief operating officer of the NFL from July 2015 to earlier this year. Tim leads the group of investors in the construction of the new stadium. Tod is about to take over as CEO of the NHL's potential expanding franchise.
The stadium agreement differs from other recent stadium projects in that the costs of demolition and construction will be borne by the investors. do not by taxpayers. The Seattle Arena Company will spend $ 700 million to demolish the existing arena and build a new one on the same site, and will pay the city about $ 5 million a year for this land, an agreement that. "But that does not mean that the transaction is without incentives:
The city will pay ArenaCo about $ 350,000 a year for the first 10 years of the transaction to cover the sales tax that ArenaCo will pay during construction. The city will also pay ArenaCo all entry taxes collected on tickets for events in the new arena beyond the amount that the city currently levies entry taxes on events at KeyArena.
Given how doubtful the stadium deals have become, Seattle has managed to reach an agreement that saves taxpayers the type of long-term debt they face, for example, Cobb County, Georgia. The cap on the municipal tax portion of the tax on tickets and the property tax exemption on the property group is equivalent to providing an expensive public subsidy. The stadium deals have become so unbalanced, and the leverage is so good for the team owners, so it's no wonder that Seattle needed more than a decade to get that result. a fair deal.
"In many ways, today's Council vote is the last chapter of a fourteen-year history that is coming", [Councilmember Debora Juarez] said in a statement: "I'm so proud of this moment and what it stands for, including our history with the Sonics and our future with the Seattle Storm World Champion, a proposal that could lead to more than one billion dollars of private investment in Seattle Center. We have achieved a feat rarely seen in the construction of sports stadiums – a public-private partnership in which taxpayers do not pay for the construction of arenas. I am proud to have played my part in creating a world class asset for our city.
Whatever luck Seattle hopes to someday bring back the Sonics is surely enhanced by the promise of a bright new arena. The current arena will host an exhibition match between the Golden State Warriors and the Sacramento Kings on October 5th, for its last scheduled event. The Seattle Hockey Partners group is expected to launch the NHL on a Seattle expansion franchise sometime next week.
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