Lary Bloom
Writer, Editor, Teacher
The Bloom Blog
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Monday, November 13, 2006
Sonic Boo
The good citizens of Seattle have rejected a measure that would have revamped its basketball arena with public funds. And so the Supersonics apparently will move elsewhere.Rick Horrow must feel, this morning, like George W. Bush. Rick is the marketing genius who over a 20-year period convinced city fathers and mothers around the country to float bonds or hike taxes in the short term in order to support such projects. How he did this was fascinating -- I watched him do it, as we worked together on his memoir, When The Game Is On The Line.
Rick retains no doubt that such funding is critical to a city's economic development. This argument has been challenged widely. Critics argue that the numbers Rick produces are suspect, and that very rich men who own sports franchises ought to finance their arenas.
Seattle, as it turns out, is something of an anomaly. It is one of the few cities that have demonstrated this hardline approach -- and this only after one of the world's richest men, Paul Allen, had the gumption to ask citizens to help him finance a home for his pro football team, the Seahawks.
As with every issue, the wisdom is somewhere in the middle. The Hartford Whalers, a team I once supported, brought revenue to downtown Hartford. How much revenue was probably overstated. But Hartford, in those days, was a destination. When it lost the Whalers to that traditional hotbed of hockey, North Carolina, it also lost a part of its indentity and fervor, and hasn't yet recovered.
Cities like Seattle, however, don't have as much at stake. It matters not whether it has a world-class sports team -- Seattle has its great downtown market and living community, Boeing and Microsoft, a spectacular natural setting, and attracts tens of thousands of young people who could care less about who is good at dunking a basketball.
And yet, for Rick, who seems to live a charmed life, this will all work out. He convinced the citizens of Oklahoma City to build an arena on spec -- and it just may be the place where the Sonics find their home.
Posted by:Lary Bloom at 6:13 AM
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