Kudos to the Seattle City Council for voting down street vacation for Chris Hansen

Yes­ter­day, in a land­mark five to four vote, the Seat­tle City Coun­cil turned down a request by hedge fund man­ag­er Chris Hansen to vacate part of Occi­den­tal Avenue South in the city’s South Down­town (SoDo) neighborhood.

Hansen, who has been engaged in a mul­ti-year quest to return an NBA fran­chise to Seat­tle, had peti­tioned the city to trans­fer the afore­men­tioned pub­lic right of way to his are­na enter­prise he could uni­fy mul­ti­ple pieces of prop­er­ty he owns in order to pro­ceed with plans for con­struct­ing a new sports palace south of Safe­co Field.

But a major­i­ty of the Coun­cil (Sal­ly Bagshaw, Lisa Her­bold, Kshama Sawant, Deb­o­ra Juarez, and Lore­na González) wise­ly vot­ed against giv­ing Hansen the street.

Bagshaw and Her­bold had made their feel­ings on the mat­ter clear well in advance, but Sawant, Juarez, and González wait­ed until Mon­day to say how they would vote. González summed up her deci­sion by declar­ing, “I believe it’s in the city’s best inter­est to pro­tect the jobs we know we have rather than sell the street for hypo­thet­i­cal jobs that are con­tin­gent on a hypo­thet­i­cal team.”

The Coun­cil is to be com­mend­ed for turn­ing down Hansen’s peti­tion. It’s not easy to say no to a wealthy indi­vid­ual with a league of vocal allies, includ­ing influ­en­tial per­son­al­i­ties on sports talk radio. But it had to be done, for Chris Hansen’s agen­da is sim­ply not in the city or the region’s best interest.

Hansen, an out of state bil­lion­aire, sees SoDo as the per­fect place to build a new enter­tain­ment dis­trict anchored by a flashy sports palace. He’s con­vinced a lot of peo­ple des­per­ate to see the Son­ics return that his plans are well thought out and would­n’t adverse­ly impact the near­by sea­port or our mar­itime sector.

But just about every­one who actu­al­ly has a stake in the mar­itime sec­tor has reject­ed Hansen’s vision for SoDo, includ­ing the Port and the ILWU.

We all know — or should know — that talk is cheap. Espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing his track record, Hansen’s promis­es and assur­ances aren’t worth much.

The truth is, Hansen does­n’t have an NBA team secured, which his mas­ter agree­ment with the city and the coun­ty says he needs in order to begin con­struc­tion on an are­na. Nor is the prospect of a team on the hori­zon. Top NBA brass recent­ly reit­er­at­ed they’re not ready to even talk about expan­sion yet.

Since Hansen has no team and is unlike­ly to have one before his orig­i­nal mas­ter agree­ment expires, it would have been fool­ish and pre­ma­ture to con­tin­ue down the path of clear­ing the decks for a third are­na smack in the mid­dle of SoDo.

Coun­cilmem­ber Deb­o­ra Juarez astute­ly observed before the vote that a bas­ket­ball are­na can poten­tial­ly be built in a num­ber of dif­fer­ent places, but a deep water port can­not. And she is absolute­ly correct.

If the peo­ple and elect­ed lead­er­ship of Seat­tle desire to lure the NBA back here by part­ner­ing with a poten­tial own­er on an are­na project — a goal NPI is hap­py to sup­port — then the city needs to col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly and thought­ful­ly weigh all the options. That includes a poten­tial refur­bish­ment of KeyAre­na, where the Son­ics played for many, many years before Clay Ben­nett and his Raiders stole them away.

This orga­ni­za­tion would like to see the NBA award a new Son­ics fran­chise to Seat­tle, but not at the cost of jeop­ar­diz­ing our mar­itime and indus­tri­al sectors.

Our mar­itime jobs are some of the best-pay­ing jobs that we have. Our broth­ers and sis­ters in the ILWU and oth­er unions have been fight­ing to pro­tect these jobs for a long time — often with­out recog­ni­tion or appre­ci­a­tion. Our sea­port is a work­ing water­front; it is one of the engines of our region’s economy.

“The mar­itime com­pa­nies are real, con­tribut­ing to the econ­o­my, pay­ing wages,” Jon Tal­ton not­ed in a col­umn today. “The NBA and NHL teams are not real (yet). If these leagues want to be part of Seat­tle, they will make an effort. We don’t have to beg like some needy burg in nowhere.” He’s right.

It is impor­tant to remem­ber that before Seat­tle was a high-tech hub, it was a sea­port city, and it remains one today.

Seat­tle’s work­ing water­front and sta­tus as a gate­way to the Pacif­ic is so cen­tral to its iden­ti­ty, in fact, that the city’s Wikipedia page begins as fol­lows:

Seat­tle (ⁱ/siˈætəl/) is a West Coast sea­port city and the seat of King Coun­ty. With an esti­mat­ed 662,400 res­i­dents as of 2015,^[2] Seat­tle is the largest city in both the state of Wash­ing­ton and the Pacif­ic North­west region of North America.

There is no rea­son why Seat­tle can­not both pro­tect its mar­itime sec­tor and win a new NBA fran­chise to replace the team that now plays in Okla­homa City.

These have only been per­ceived as con­flict­ing goals in recent years because of Chris Hansen’s plans for SoDo. Regret­tably, the City of Seat­tle and King Coun­ty gave tac­it bless­ing to these plans when they signed the afore­men­tioned Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing (MOU) with Hansen sev­er­al years ago. That was a bad move.

At the time, Hansen was maneu­ver­ing to acquire a team in the same fash­ion that the Raiders got a team for Okla­homa City: by steal­ing one away from anoth­er town. Hansen entered into an agree­ment to buy the Sacra­men­to Kings from their own­ers, but that agree­ment fell apart when the NBA refused to sign off on relo­ca­tion. The Kings stayed in Sacra­men­to and Hansen’s gam­bit failed, leav­ing him emp­ty-hand­ed.

It should be evi­dent now that Chris Hansen is the wrong per­son to lead the effort to bring the NBA back to Seat­tle. Time and again, he has exhib­it­ed poor judg­ment, from select­ing the wrong site for an are­na to attempt­ing to land an NBA fran­chise by poach­ing anoth­er city’s team instead of lob­by­ing the NBA for a new fran­chise to vio­lat­ing Cal­i­for­ni­a’s pub­lic dis­clo­sure laws when he did­n’t get his way.

(Not to men­tion that time he neglect­ed to pay the City of Seat­tle in a time­ly fash­ion for the work city staff were per­form­ing on his are­na project.)

This region needs a prospec­tive own­er who is com­mit­ted to the region’s vital­i­ty and well-being, includ­ing its mar­itime jobs. It needs some­body who can work effec­tive­ly with the NBA, its cur­rent thir­ty own­ers, and league Com­mis­sion­er Adam Silver.

The ide­al part­ner would be an indi­vid­ual or group of indi­vid­u­als with means who are laser-focused on get­ting the NBA to com­mit to begin­ning the process of expan­sion, and open-mind­ed as to where the rein­car­nat­ed Son­ics should play. That’s the key. There is no are­na project with­out a team. And it must be a team that Seat­tle can legit­i­mate­ly call its own — not a team spir­it­ed away from some­where else.

Again, it would be wrong to rob anoth­er city of its fran­chise. We should not want any oth­er com­mu­ni­ty of fans to go through what we went through in 2008.

It tru­ly sad­dened me back in 2013 to see ardent Son­ics fans root­ing for Chris Hansen to suc­ceed in uproot­ing the Kings from Sacra­men­to and bring­ing them here. That would not have been the return of the Son­ics; it would have been the theft of the Kings. How can any Son­ics fan com­plain about what hap­pened here in 2008, and then turn around and excuse Hansen’s actions?

In addi­tion to find­ing a new part­ner and let­ting the MOU with Hansen’s enter­prise expire, we need to seri­ous­ly study the fea­si­bil­i­ty of refur­bish­ing KeyArena.

I would be very hap­py to see the Son­ics resume play there. It would com­plete the feel­ing of a prop­er home­com­ing. Neigh­bor­hood busi­ness­es would sure­ly be hap­py to see the Son­ics back. KeyAre­na, remem­ber, used to be the Son­ics’ house. It was their home court, which they shared with the Storm, Seat­tle’s WNBA fran­chise, and the Thun­der­birds, who now play in Kent at the ShoWare Center.

I can appre­ci­ate that for those who jumped onto Chris Hansen’s band­wag­on, yes­ter­day’s vote by the Seat­tle City Coun­cil comes as a dis­ap­point­ment.

But those folks real­ly, real­ly need to look at the big pic­ture. Approval of the street vaca­tion would have been a boon to Hansen, cer­tain­ly, but not nec­es­sar­i­ly to the city’s prospects of scor­ing a team to replace the Son­ics of old.

When it comes to expansion/relocation, the league’s exec­u­tives and own­ers are in the dri­ver’s seat. They call the shots. Not the Seat­tle City Coun­cil or the May­or of Seat­tle. Not the King Coun­ty Coun­cil or the King Coun­ty Exec­u­tive. If the NBA does­n’t want to work with Hansen, it does­n’t have to. It can just blow him off, which is essen­tial­ly what it has been doing ever since it nixed his bid to buy the Kings.

We can’t get the Son­ics back unless the NBA says yes to giv­ing us a fran­chise. If the NBA does­n’t want to col­lab­o­rate with Hansen (and they’ve sig­naled repeat­ed­ly that they don’t), then Hansen is actu­al­ly an imped­i­ment to the Son­ics’ return.

The soon­er Chris Hansen is out of the pic­ture, the soon­er we can choose a new part­ner to lead the effort to secure an NBA fran­chise for our region.