SoDo group offers arena refresher; asks public to reach out to council

The SoDo arena group wants to remind the public and the Seattle City Council of the status of their project to push forward review of their requested street vacation. They’d like you to help.

The Seattle City Council is back to work after a brief summer hiatus. The SoDo group would love if fans, and the general public, would share the latest updates and the benefits of the revised package offered in exchange for the vacation request with these elected city leaders.

On Tuesday, the group took to its social media channels to direct folks to a post from this past May following the April recommendation approvals for both the urban merit and the public benefits package by the Seattle Design Commission.

The street vacation request process then moved to the Seattle Department of Transportation to review and provide an overall recommendation to the city council. It has mired in limbo since.

Last month, it was revealed that the request had been put on a de facto indefinite hold as city executive resources were directed toward completing the draft Memorandum of Understanding for the proposed KeyArena redevelopment project being explored with Oak View Group.

The deadline set by the council for the draft MOU is in one week, September 12th.

To free the stalemate, the SoDo group offered the following message:

Now that the City Council is back from their summer recess, please take 5 minutes to watch this video on our Design Commission presentation and politely remind the Council to approve the conditional street vacation so SoDo Arena can be shovel ready. Also remind them that approving the vacation will in no way stop them from continuing to explore KeyArena options.

Council emails:

Bruce.harrell@seattle.gov

Lorena.gonzalez@seattle.gov

Lisa.herbold@seattle.gov

Kshama.sawant@seattle.gov

Sally.bagshaw@seattle.gov

Rob.johnson@seattle.gov

Tim.burgess@seattle.gov

Debora.juarez@seattle.gov

Mike.obrien@seattle.gov

We encourage everyone to reach out to each of the councilmembers, just as we have, and respectfully request that they ask for SDOT to complete their recommendation and report on the street vacation. This will allow the council to have control over their portion of the vacation process.

Even if you’ve contacted them before, reach out again. This is a case where repetition is definitely a virtue.