Morning Fizz
Arena Deal On
Caffeinated News & Gossip. Your daily Morning Fizz.
1. The news is out that the Seattle City Council has reached a deal with San Francisco hedge fund manager Chris Hansen to greenlight the $490 million arena deal for a new NBA team (and maybe NHL team) in SoDo.
Word is the council tweaked the initial proposal hammered out by Mayor Mike McGinn and Hansen, earmarking money, $40 million, to address transportation issues that had been raised by the Port of Seattle. The revised deal also reportedly addresses concerns about the future of KeyArena by dedicating $7 million to fund improvements there.[pullquote]Given the Seattle Times' gleeful spin this morning—"the City Council's renegotiation of the deal represents a rebuke of McGinn"— the Times has created a cover to reverse course and become a booster of a project they've been chilly to all spring and summer.[/pullquote]
This $47 million (either extra money or plucked from the city's $120 million initial pledge) will eventually be paid back by Hansen as per the original agreement—from annual rent and from taxes on revenue generated from stadium activity. This, of course, still leaves a central concern (one the council flagged in a late July letter when it started to renegotiate the McGinn-Hansen deal) out there: Without knowing the specifics of Hansen's deals with his other investors (these are separate deals from the arena deal, one with the team holding company itself and one with the overall parent company), it's unclear how Seattle will get paid back and how enforceable the team's commitment to Seattle is.
But whatever, #YOLO.
Count on this, though: Given the Seattle Times gleeful spin this morning —"the City Council's renegotiation of the deal represents a rebuke of McGinn" (oh, please, give the guy some credit for putting this on the table in the first place)—the Times has created a cover to reverse course and become a booster of this major civic-pride project that they'd been chilly to all spring and summer.
City Council president Sally Clark and member Tim Burgess and Mike O'Brien, are holding a press conference this morning at city hall at 9:30.
2. Another big deal today: The Seattle Port Commissioners, reportedly worried that CEO Tay Yoshitani may actually sue if they force him to quit his side gig as a board member at private shipping logistics company Expeditors International, are meeting today to discuss what to do about the glaring appearance of a conflict of interest that's got state legislators in an uproar.
3. Fizz doesn't really have a timely reason for running this picture, except that it cracked us up to see official Metro signs all over downtown letting riders know that downtown bus lines were being rerouted for "The Slut Walk." Fortunately for Fizz, a Metro announcement came on just as we got on our bus downtown: "Drivers return to your normal routes. The SlutWalk has officially been terminated."
4. At yesterday's otherwise momentous Seattle City Council briefings meeting (Richard Conlin pushed through"emergency" legislation to stop developers from building tall houses on small lots next to existing single-family residences), the council also discussed a proposal that one staffer said seemed like it had come from the Onion: Encouraging people to play "Compassion Games" that will, ideally, lead to both organized and "random acts of compassion."
There was also something about a restorative circle, a game called "Super Better," and "Waves of compassion floating through the streams of social media."
5. In other city hall news, a new report details the failures that enabled a Seattle Public Utilities employee to allegedly steal more than $1 million from SPU between 2008 and 2010. The news isn't encouraging: According to the report, many of the risk factors that were in place when the employee, Joseph Phan, allegedly diverted money for water-main extension projects into his own bank account, remain "high" (the red parts of the chart below).
Read the whole report, which details the systemic failures that allowed the alleged fraud to happen, here.
1. The news is out that the Seattle City Council has reached a deal with San Francisco hedge fund manager Chris Hansen to greenlight the $490 million arena deal for a new NBA team (and maybe NHL team) in SoDo.
Word is the council tweaked the initial proposal hammered out by Mayor Mike McGinn and Hansen, earmarking money, $40 million, to address transportation issues that had been raised by the Port of Seattle. The revised deal also reportedly addresses concerns about the future of KeyArena by dedicating $7 million to fund improvements there.[pullquote]Given the Seattle Times' gleeful spin this morning—"the City Council's renegotiation of the deal represents a rebuke of McGinn"— the Times has created a cover to reverse course and become a booster of a project they've been chilly to all spring and summer.[/pullquote]
This $47 million (either extra money or plucked from the city's $120 million initial pledge) will eventually be paid back by Hansen as per the original agreement—from annual rent and from taxes on revenue generated from stadium activity. This, of course, still leaves a central concern (one the council flagged in a late July letter when it started to renegotiate the McGinn-Hansen deal) out there: Without knowing the specifics of Hansen's deals with his other investors (these are separate deals from the arena deal, one with the team holding company itself and one with the overall parent company), it's unclear how Seattle will get paid back and how enforceable the team's commitment to Seattle is.
But whatever, #YOLO.
Count on this, though: Given the Seattle Times gleeful spin this morning —"the City Council's renegotiation of the deal represents a rebuke of McGinn" (oh, please, give the guy some credit for putting this on the table in the first place)—the Times has created a cover to reverse course and become a booster of this major civic-pride project that they'd been chilly to all spring and summer.
City Council president Sally Clark and member Tim Burgess and Mike O'Brien, are holding a press conference this morning at city hall at 9:30.
2. Another big deal today: The Seattle Port Commissioners, reportedly worried that CEO Tay Yoshitani may actually sue if they force him to quit his side gig as a board member at private shipping logistics company Expeditors International, are meeting today to discuss what to do about the glaring appearance of a conflict of interest that's got state legislators in an uproar.
3. Fizz doesn't really have a timely reason for running this picture, except that it cracked us up to see official Metro signs all over downtown letting riders know that downtown bus lines were being rerouted for "The Slut Walk." Fortunately for Fizz, a Metro announcement came on just as we got on our bus downtown: "Drivers return to your normal routes. The SlutWalk has officially been terminated."
4. At yesterday's otherwise momentous Seattle City Council briefings meeting (Richard Conlin pushed through"emergency" legislation to stop developers from building tall houses on small lots next to existing single-family residences), the council also discussed a proposal that one staffer said seemed like it had come from the Onion: Encouraging people to play "Compassion Games" that will, ideally, lead to both organized and "random acts of compassion."
There was also something about a restorative circle, a game called "Super Better," and "Waves of compassion floating through the streams of social media."
5. In other city hall news, a new report details the failures that enabled a Seattle Public Utilities employee to allegedly steal more than $1 million from SPU between 2008 and 2010. The news isn't encouraging: According to the report, many of the risk factors that were in place when the employee, Joseph Phan, allegedly diverted money for water-main extension projects into his own bank account, remain "high" (the red parts of the chart below).
Read the whole report, which details the systemic failures that allowed the alleged fraud to happen, here.
