Seattle all but confirmed as 32nd team
SEATTLE Five years ago this coming spring, I participated on a special Hockey Hangout media panel at The Angry Beaver sports bar in Greenwood, Wash., where we chatted with fans about the NHL’s apparent interest in putting a team in this city.
It seems like an eternity has passed since, what with all the arena sagas and false starts aimed at fulfilling what has long been the NHL’s wish. But this morning, hockey fans again will gather at a local watering hole and this time the hypothetical will give way to reality.
An event titled “Decision Day for Seattle Expansion Team’’ will take place from 7:30 to 11:30 a.m. at Henry’s Tavern in South Lake Union, roughly timed with a meeting of the NHL board of governors in Sea Island, Ga., to discuss awarding Seattle the league’s 32nd franchise. Food and beverages will be paid for by the NHL Seattle group and Sports Radio KJR will host a two-hour show remotely from the venue in an event designed to build suspense ahead of an expected expansion announcement. It will be much like your average football tailgating party with one notable exception: We already know the outcome.
When the meeting in Georgia lets out somewhere between 8:30 and 9 a.m., NHL commissioner Gary Bettman will confirm the Seattle ownership group of David Bonderman and Jerry Bruckheimer has a franchise to launch either in 2020 or 2021. So the Henry’s Tavern event is more a post-game celebration than a pre-game tailgate. And why not?
After what local sports fans have been put through to get a winter team, it won’t hurt to have the suspense curtailed. Once a deal between the City of Seattle and the Oak View Group to renovate KeyArena was confirmed a year ago this week, everything else became academic.
As far as the NHL was concerned, having waited this long to give us a team, this was a done deal the minute the city signed off on an environmental-impact statement and final documents.
So, yeah, it’s time to celebrate. Sure, this isn’t a return of the NBA’s Super Sonics just yet — and won’t be until that league awards similar expansion franchises or relocates a team. But we’re lightyears from where we were in early 2014 with winter sports on hold pending the ability to get an arena deal not only agreed upon, but paid for as well.
The staggering costs associated with the KeyArena deal and the team that will play there show why it took so long. The latest estimates of the KeyArena construction bill peg it at US$750 million — all privately funded.
Throw in $650 million for the NHL team and $70 million for the practice facility planned at Northgate Mall and you’ll see why pretenders need not apply.
Of course, that didn’t stop several applicants from stepping forward during the last five years, some more capable than others.
One of the more memorable applicants was Ray Bartoszek, the Connecticut investor and oil-fracking expert who in 2015 wanted to build an arena in Tukwila.
In mid-2013, Bartoszek had been the guy who was poised to buy the Phoenix Coyotes and move them to Seattle if Glendale, Ariz., city council didn’t vote to extend the team’s arena lease — which it did by a single vote.
Bartoszek sure had a knack for showing up in places whenever the NHL needed local politicians and business types to get their arena act together. We had lunch in April 2014 near his Greenwich, Conn., home and he told me he was investigating KeyArena as a potential site, but would later that summer dismiss the idea as impossible without demolishing its soon-tobe historically protected roof.
Little did Bartoszek know at the time that Seattle city council that summer was only weeks away from giving the go ahead to the AECOM firm to investigate future KeyArena uses. And AECOM was to surprisingly discover renovating KeyArena was indeed possible — something that led to the city exploring that venue as an NHL and NBA possibility.
So Bartoszek’s timing wasn’t always impeccable. But when it came to pressuring politicians and other groups to jump-start arena plans, he couldn’t have been better placed had the NHL been paying him as a stalking-horse consultant all along.
For now, sit back, hoist an early morning brew at Henry’s and celebrate what all of this jockeying has led to. Pro sports can’t always be about arenas and politics. They require an actual team and games to be fun for the average fan.
Today, we’ll have the NHL team. And then a whole new set of games can begin.