Through Town
A poll commissioned by the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) to take the region’s pulse on transportation issues turned up some bad news for Mayor Nickels. Team Nickels is hot to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct with a $4 billion tunnel, but the WSDOT poll found that Seattleites favor a rebuild over the tunnel by a margin of 58 to 38 percent. (The poll made no mention of the surface/transit option being hyped by folks like Peter Steinbrueck.) JOSH FEIT
On April 5, the Basketball Club of Seattle, a group of 58 Seattle SuperSonics investors headed by Howard Schultz, planned to meet to discuss… well, nobody knows, exactly, but the rumor is that the Sonics are up for sale. Starbucks CEO Schultz has already claimed that the Sonics have been offered a “blank check” to move to an unnamed city, with Oklahoma City; Las Vegas; Kansas City, Missouri; and Bellevue among the reputed contenders.
The Sonics, Seattle’s oldest professional sports franchise, have threatened to move because the city and state have refused to provide a new $200-million-plus tax subsidy to upgrade KeyArena. (The last upgrade, just 10 years ago, set taxpayers back $76 million, and the city continues to pay $2.6 million a year toward retiring those construction costs.) Already, city and state lawmakers are looking at ways to upgrade KeyArena and keep Seattle Center afloat without a pro basketball franchise; yesterday, Seattle City Council President Nick Licata met with state house Speaker Frank Chopp to discuss ways to pay off the remaining debt on KeyArena and provide funding for the arts. “The discussion we had was not contingent on the Sonics remaining in Seattle,” Licata says. ERICA C. BARNETT