Seattle City Council approves new arena for 2020

The Seattle Supersonics may be coming back a bit sooner than we thought. According to a report from King 5 Seattle News, Seattle’s city council voted 7-1 to approve a new memorandum of understanding with the Oak View Group of Seattle that paves the way for renovations Key Arena to the city by 2020.

According to Daniels, the renovations will amount to $660 million. Though it does open up the door for the NBA’s expansion back into Seattle, Daniels reports that the renovations are primarily to attract the NHL.

There is widespread belief among many people at City Hall that approval on Monday will send a strong signal to the National Hockey League about Seattle’s interest in housing a team in a new building on the Seattle Center campus. The NHL however, has remained mum on the possibilities.

This is a decision that has been anticipated by the council for quite some time, according to Paul Rogers of Sonics Rising. Chris Hansen’s memorandum of understanding for SoDo Arena expired after five years yesterday, which cleared the way for the council to go all-in on OVG group’s memorandum with the council.

Very. Adam Silver has talked openly and positively about it recently. Silver wouldn’t make any promises about expansion for Seattle, but said in an interview with the Player Tribune that expansion of some type was “inevitable.”

“I think it’s just a question of when the right time is to seriously start thinking about expansion,” Silver said. And as for Seattle? “Seattle will, no doubt, be on a short list of cities we’ll look at.”

That’s not a guarantee, but that’s as close as we’ve been in years. And that interview was done over the summer before the memorandum of understanding in Seattle was agreed upon.

The biggest issue for expansion was the city getting an up-to-date facility for the NBA to expand to. Now, that problem seems to be solved.

The SoDo group’s memorandum of understanding shows us that. A memorandum of understanding is just that — a memorandum. It isn’t necessarily legally binding at this point.

There are still legal terms that need to be agreed upon in terms of land use and architecture. Like any project, the building has to meet city and state requirements and those things will have to be financed. The city and the OVG group will agree upon a contract that allows construction to begin.

Hopefully, both sides will be able to learn from the past and avoid the same mistakes that caused the previous memorandum of understanding to fall through. It’ll be a lot of work, but with both sides eager to get things done, things should work out. In the meantime, we may be able to talk about a return for the Sonics.

For more coverage on potential expansion, read Sonics Rising.