The anti-game thread is here!
Mentioned at Monday's Seattle City Council Briefing was that the site screening and filtering process has narrowed the number of sites to four, and locations to two.
According to Cliff Portman, Department of Planning and Development, No site outside of Seattle was in the potential list that was "a couple dozen", "maybe 18", sites around the city.
The 17 slides used in the discussion (found here).
Some information discussed, beyond the 17 slides:
The city is working together with the county and/or Chris Hansen's group, nearly daily on permitting process and Key Arena.
Draft EIS with scope settled, and is moving forward.
Alternative sites with the selection criteria ill be provided to the council in full detail.
Some of the site criteria included:
The size of the building being proposed, zoning, available parking, available transit, repurposing existing property, impacts on residential neighborhoods adjacent to a proposed property, and traffic.
The EIS focus is down to two sites at SoDo that include Hansen's proposed site and one 10% smaller. there are two sites at Seattle Center, Key Arena and Memorial Stadium.
There is also a "No Action" option that would show what things look like without an arena at all.
No sites outside of Seattle were considered (I guess Seattle isn't interested in paying for an arena in somebody else's city). The filtering criteria will be very important to anybody challenging why these two locations are the main points to be studied.
The permitting process, including the EIS, are being paid out of pocket by Chris Hansen. The other parts, like outside experts and legal, are reimbursed costs only if Hansen and the city both agree to move forward after all of these processes are complete.
This is a potential cost risk to the city if they say "no" at the end. Council President Sally Clark said that they would get a cost breakdown of what the risk cost really is, and what the "burn rate" of the reimbursable fund is on a quarterly basis, as well.
Chris Hansen is interested in running Key Arena, and there are ongoing discussions on that with Seattle Center.
The SoDo Arena design:
The arena property footprint is 6.1 acres in the Stadium District
The parking proposal is a combination of structured (to be built) and shared parking that already exists.
The council had concerns about outdoor signage shown on the current renderings. In my opinion, the restrictions in the Stadium District as compared to the Seattle Center are significantly different. What kind of signage is possible will be discussed in the 3/4/2013 Department of Planning meeting.
It is simply not possible to have the same kind of commercial signage that is visible to people outside of Safeco Field and Century Link Field at Seattle Center. The signage you see on Key Arena is about as much as is possible. That is a source of revenue to the arena, putting anything at Seattle Center at a disadvantage on that point.
Here is the video for your viewing. They do not get to the arena until the 1:33.20 mark.
We move forward.
Paul Rogers:
I’m thinking haiku competition.
Done, a Spring haiku (it is February, and I’m using Sonics as a blossom).
Why are we here, rain
No politics and Kings talk
You wait for Sonics