More details (than you probably ever wanted to know) emerged from today's arena council briefing, which we mentioned in Fizz this morning, on the transportation and land use impacts of the proposed arena.

Council members, of course, have declared themselves universally "agnostic" on the arena (even Richard Conlin told PubliCola that he isn't opposed opposed to the project, he just has lots of questions). But their questions for staffers definitely trended more skeptical than supportive.

Here's some of what they learned:

• Although the plan calls for a new pedestrian plaza connecting Safeco Field and the new arena along what is now Occidental Way, the area around the stadiums in general is zoned specifically to discourage hotels, housing, and street-level retail uses---the kind of stuff that draws pedestrians to an area. The zoning reflects a compromise the council struck back in 2000, when the city was considering a new arena for the Seahawks, to balance industrial interests (many of which oppose the arena) with the need to make the stadiums district a draw. Also, the council thought hotel patrons might be put off by loud nearby trucks and cranes and "noxious smells" in the area, as a council staffer put it.

"It’s almost like we’ve told the manufacturing and industrial area that we want to protect this are [for industrial use]… but we're also saying we’re really not going to let that area thrive and be an active neighborhood because we’ve got these other restrictions," said council member Tim Burgess, who likened the zoning to "tying one arm behind [arena proponents'] back."

• The arena will definitely include some new parking in SoDo, but it's unclear just how much. The parking plan requires around 2,375 spaces to serve the arena---one for every 8 seats---but that requirement can include some existing parking, assuming ArenaCo strikes a deal with nearby parking owners. That deal would stipulate that the spaces couldn't be reserved exclusively for arena patrons, and that they be available for three hours before every arena event and one hour thereafter. Some of the potential parking sites, council member Sally Bagshaw pointed out, are a mile or more from the arena itself.

• The council also got into the issue of how the arena site would work if Hansen doesn't get access to a sliver of land owned by Burlington Northern Southwest Railroad where BNSF workers currently park. Hansen wants BNSF to turn over use of the site so he can build an access road to the arena. Without that road, it's unclear how trucks would access the arena site; the parking lot would also create a roadblock to cars and trucks entering and exiting the Mariners' parking garage to the north (since their current north-south route, Occidental, would no longer exist---it would be part of the arena site). The land-use issues around the BNSF site get a lot more complicated, but we'll spare you the gory details and just say it's far from a done deal.

• Transportation planning for the area around the arena is far from over.  Much more planning will be done under the state environmental policy act (plus, the council has to approve closing Occidental to traffic for both the arena itself and the pedestrian plaza. However, that planning won't happen until after the city has already signed off on a memorandum of understanding with Hansen's group---that is, after the city has already agreed to pay its portion of the arena costs, up to $120 million---so there will be, in effect, a momentum that can't be turned back by the time transportation analysis gets underway in earnest.

And traffic is bad around the arena site already, Bagshaw noted. On Saturday, she said, when the Mariners were playing the Rangers, it took her 35 minutes to drive 12 blocks through the stadium district. "There was absolutely no parking there [already], so who's going to look at this to figure out what to do when multiple events are happening?"