Panel Approves Sonics Lease, $73.4 Million Bonds Project
In a go-ahead vote for renovation of the Seattle Center Coliseum, a City Council committee yesterday approved a 15-year lease with the Seattle SuperSonics basketball team and authorized the sale of bonds for a $73.4 million project.
Heeding the advice of Seattle Center Director Virginia Anderson, the Parks Committee approved the sale of up to $79 million in council bonds in order to take advantage of current low interest rates.
Payback of the 20-year bonds will be $600,000 per year less under today's interest rates than when the financing was first discussed a year ago.
Approval of the bond sale also hinged on the SuperSonics' sale of 44 of 58 luxury suites in the remodeled Coliseum, which will seat a total of 17,200 for basketball, up from the present 14,253. The target for luxury-suite sales was reached last month, Anderson said.
Revenue from the new facility also will include a hoped for $500,000 per year from a corporate sponsor, whose name would be put on the new arena, and sales of 1,100 "club seats" - special seating without the privacy of the suites.
Obtaining those revenues had been a condition of the renovation of the 32-year-old Coliseum. To help the city move ahead now, the Sonics have guaranteed they'll pay the city the name sponsor fee and for 250 club seats if necessary.
Before yesterday's vote, opponents, such as longtime Ackerley billboard fighter and Lake City activist Jordan Brower, criticized
the city for using its bonding capacity for a sports arena rather than for such things as police stations and libraries.
Through its current refinancing of city bonds, the city has gained bonding capacity, Councilwoman Sue Donaldson, who chairs the Parks Committee, told the critics.
Joining Donaldson in voting for the bond sale and approval of the lease with the SuperSonics were council members Jan Drago and Jane Noland.
Noland complained that changes - increasing the city's financial obligation - had been made in the proposed lease but the rush to sell the bonds meant there was not enough time to review the consequences.
If the full council approves the bond sale and lease as scheduled on Monday, construction will begin in June "right after the Supersonics win the National Basketball Association championship," Anderson said.