The US city of Seattle could be set for a new NBA basketball franchise after an investment group proposed a model that would result in a new arena being built without the need for public funding.
The group, led by Chris Hansen, has written to Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, the city council and King County executive Dow Constantine to propose the cancellation of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) that called for up to $200m (£164.1m/€182.8m) in public investment in the arena.
The MoU was signed in 2012 but the group has now offered to pay for the project privately. The group has also offered to contribute to a nearby transportation project that would help ease freight traffic at the Port of Seattle in exchange for a waiver of the city’s admissions tax and an adjustment of the city’s business and occupation tax. Freight traffic has been an obstacle for the construction of an arena in the past.
“We just concluded the landscape had changed,” Wally Walker, part of the investment group, told the Associated Press news agency. “We can’t be ignorant of where we are four years in. If we think we can do this, then we should. Our priority is to get the arena because we think the NBA and NHL will come after that.”
Seattle did have an NBA team, the SuperSonics, until 2008, when the franchise relocated to Oklahoma and adopted the Thunder moniker.
Seattle is also without an NHL team and the new proposal would open the door for the ice hockey league to form a franchise in the city. The MoU had dictated that an arena would only be constructed on the condition that an NBA team be acquired.
Hansen already owns the land for the project, which in 2012 was expected to cost $490m – a figure that has likely increased. The NBA has been made aware of the group’s proposal.
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