Seattle OKs Arena Plan

 

The vote didn’t come easily, however.

 

Hansen has been in talks with the mayor’s office for some time, but only won over a majority of the council after making a number of concessions. Specifically, he agreed to personally guarantee the debt payments on the venue, buy back the arena for $200 million at the end of 30 years if the city wishes and will put up additional money for transportation improvements and for KeyArena, where the Seattle SuperSonics basketball team played until moving to Oklahoma City in 2007.

 

“I think that today’s vote demonstrates that by listening to each other and working hard to address the concerns of all stakeholders that we can make the arena a reality and bring professional basketball and hockey back to Seattle,” he said in a statement to the Seattle Times.

 

Hansen’s group has yet to release design plans for the project, though the venue will be situated in the city’s SoDo neighborhood on a multi-acre plot of land his WSA Properties group has been amassing. 

 

Last month, WSA Properties purchased the Showbox SoDo, which sat in the project footprint, for $8 million, and the group just bought additional land south of the site that could be used for parking, a spokesman told the Times.