The big news for hockey fans coming out of Kent, Wash. was the two wins notched by the Seattle T-Birds in their first two games at ShoWare Arena. But the more sustaining news will be how the new arena impacts the area.
The big news for hockey fans coming out of Kent, Wash. was the two wins notched by the Seattle T-Birds in their first two games at ShoWare Arena. But the more sustaining news will be how the new arena impacts the area.
Bill Virgin argues the new arena will have a positive effect on the local economy:
ShoWare Center (the naming rights were purchased by a ticket service company) won’t just be used for hockey. Already on the schedule, stretching to September, are the Harlem Globetrotters, high school basketball games, a concert by contemporary-Christian artist Chris Tomlin, the Lipizzaner Stallions, Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus and commencement ceremonies.
Each time the building’s doors open for one of those events, the city benefits from ticket sales and facility rental fees, jobs at the arena and whatever people spend while in town at restaurants and stores. Every one of those dollars spent in Kent is money that isn’t going to some other community — such as Seattle.
Is the future of arena development in smaller community-based facilities rather than big, central-city facilities? With each successful smaller arena in Seattle it will be harder for anyone to make an economic argument for a half-billion arena to replace KeyArena. (Indeed, there seems to be little appetite to spend a half-billion dollars to bring back the NBA to a new arena; no one seems to miss the Sonics.)
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