News Roundup

As Sonics Pack to Leave Town, Seattle Shrugs

New York Times
November 13, 2006
By JESSICA KOWAL

SEATTLE, Nov. 12 — Empowered by a wave of venture capital, a hiring boom and pride in its homegrown billionaires, this city has decided it no longer needs a mediocre professional basketball team to feel good about itself.

On Election Day, residents rebuffed their once-beloved Seattle SuperSonics, voting overwhelmingly for a ballot measure ending public subsidies for professional sports teams.

The owners, who bought the Sonics in October for $350 million from Howard Schultz, the founder of Starbucks, had warned that the team would leave unless the city provided a new arena.

The vote delighted Citizens for More Important Things, a group that, with the help of a statewide health care union, spent $60,000 to sponsor the initiative. Other cities “may be so desperate to lure tourists there that they have to overpay for an N.B.A. team,” said Chris Van Dyk, a founder of the group. “Seattle doesn’t have to lure anybody.”

Mr. Van Dyk’s priorities are schools, transportation projects and health care, and he openly disdains wealthy people who buy professional teams, pay huge salaries to players and then demand handouts. Owners who threaten to take their teams elsewhere, Mr. Van Dyk said, are no better than “the neighborhood crack cocaine dealer.”

Told of Mr. Van Dyk’s comments, Clayton I. Bennett of Oklahoma City, chairman of the group that owns the Sonics, sighed.

Seattle “turned its back on the N.B.A.,” Mr. Bennett said in a telephone interview, and gave up its chance to build a “multipurpose” arena suitable for basketball, hockey and conventions.

“I’m not saying it’s the most important thing or the only thing, but I think professional sports are an important component to the overall economy and quality of life in any marketplace,” Mr. Bennett said. “It’s about flying the flag of the city nationally and globally.”

The vote last week guarantees that the Sonics will leave their current home, KeyArena, in 2010, he said. The team may move to the Seattle suburbs and plans to talk to the State Legislature about that in coming weeks, but most people here think Mr. Bennett and his partners will move the team to Oklahoma City.

Even without the Sonics, Seattle would still have professional baseball and football teams, the Mariners and the Seahawks.

Antistadium sentiment was also reflected in Sacramento, where voters rejected a sales tax increase to pay for a new arena for the Kings, the basketball team there.

Residents and elected officials here have gone back and forth on financing for sports facilities. In 1995, voters narrowly rejected a sales tax to finance a baseball stadium for the Mariners. But after the team had a record season, the Legislature decided that the public would pay for most of a new stadium, Safeco Field, which ultimately cost more than $500 million.

In 1997, Paul Allen, a founder of Microsoft and one of the city’s billionaires, sponsored a statewide campaign that persuaded voters to commit $300 million to replace the Kingdome for the Seahawks. In return, Mr. Allen bought the team and put $100 million into a new field.

Last season, the team went to the Super Bowl for the first time, and Mr. Allen credited boisterous fans for victories at Qwest Field.

Owners of professional teams have long argued that arenas and stadiums increase economic development, jobs and tourism. With some economists challenging that view, the owners have developed a new argument: that a team enhances a city’s social status, said David J. Olson, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Washington.

Seattle is not buying it.

“Citizens in Seattle look around and see Microsoft and Boeing doing fabulously, the Port of Seattle is booming and trade with China is going to define this city’s existence for the next 50 years,” Professor Olson said. “Seattle has said, We can be a big-league city, we can be an international city, without kowtowing to professional sports franchises.”

The Sonics were Seattle’s first professional team and first love, especially after they won a National Basketball Association championship in 1979. But the team’s record, aside from a playoff run in 2004, has been middling for years.

KeyArena, the smallest of any N.B.A. team, was renovated in 1995 with $75 million from taxpayers.

Public sentiment turned against the Sonics last winter when Mr. Schultz, the Starbucks chairman, demanded that the state provide $200 million to refurbish the city-owned arena. The team would have contributed $18 million.

It did not help the Sonics that on the morning of last week’s vote, a local newspaper heralded a deal to build a privately financed headquarters for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation near the Sonics’ home.

The foundation, which gives billions of dollars to improve global health and public education, has paid $50 million for the land, will build three office buildings and will pay $1.7 million for traffic improvements. The city’s main financial commitment is to build a $15.3 million parking garage, which it will own.

To many Sonics fans, the rejection of sports financing proves that old, laid-back Seattle has been crushed by elitist Prius-driving do-gooders.

To say there is “no cultural value” in the Sonics is “ludicrous,” said Paul Merrill, a 34-year-old stand-up comedian who was 7 when the Sonics won the championship. Yet even Mr. Merrill, who helps run Supersonicsoul, “the Sonics blog for the Sonics people,” finds it hard to justify public spending on a new arena, an attitude reflected in a joke he tells in his comedy routine.

As a big basketball fan, Mr. Merrill says, he should come up with 200 million reasons why the city should pay for a $200 million arena: Where else can he buy a $7 pretzel? And, sure, that money could build housing for the homeless, but can homeless people dunk?

The real punch line, Mr. Merrill said, is that even he can think of only seven “reasons” to keep the Sonics in Seattle.