Chris Hansen’s latest arena offer shows how serious he is about bringing NBA back to Seattle
Oct 25, 2016, 3:49 PM | Updated: Oct 26, 2016, 11:46 am
Chris Hansen has offered to forgo public financing and privately fund a proposed Seattle arena. (AP)
(AP)
OK, Chris Hansen.
You’ve got everyone’s attention again.
Saying you don’t need the $200 million in public bonds to help finance the construction of an arena tends to do that, and if we’re being honest, maybe we owe you a bit of an apology.
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At least I do. See, I tended to think that the departure of Steve Ballmer from the ownership group took some of the starch out of your quest to resurrect the Seattle Supersonics. Then, when the Seattle City Council started hemming and hawing and dragging its feet over vacating the glorified alleyway that is Occidental Avenue, I thought the Seattle process had ground the whole project down to a raw nub.
Even last week, when it was reported that you had bought another parcel of land down in SoDo, I thought you were more aspiring landlord than a man on the cusp of bringing NBA basketball back to Seattle.
Today showed just how serious you are, and with the clock ticking on the Memorandum of Understanding that will expire a year from now if you don’t have a team in hand, well, you just removed the last reasonable objection that any reasonable city could have.
And while reasonable may not be the first word used to describe our fine city, even Seattle should have the good sense to not stand in the way of a man who’s willing to build a new house for what was our oldest pro sports team.
Thank you, Chris. It’s not just perseverance at this point, but determination. You’ve elevated your level of commitment to the point that it’s becoming hard for even a city like Seattle to say no.
