As I was sitting up the vast majority of last night, sniffling and snuffling with another "weather change" cold, I happened upon Steve Kelley's column in the Seattle times, wherein he discusses what the city is likely to be about when/if the Sonics depart after the end of this season.

With the passage of Seattle Initiative 91 last November, the voters indicated that they have no desire to pay for most (or all) of a third new sports venue within a seven year span of time.  (Of course, they voted the same stance on Safeco Field, but still ended up paying for it anyway).

Clay Bennett and the new ownership group of the Sonics and WNBA's Storm are currently in Olympia giving testimony before the state legislature, and are asking for a minimum of $300MM in taxpayer subsidies to help them build a new arena in either Bellevue or Renton, since they have no chance of erecting one in the city of Seattle.

They are planning a multipurpose venue, that can be used not only for basketball, but also for a hoped for NHL franchise and/or our local WHL franchise, as well as conventions, concerts and other public events. This is planned to be similar in scale, if I am reading things right, to Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles.

Commissioner Stern is already on record lambasting the city of Seattle for "the worst venue in the league," and supporting the teams' packing up and loading their 18 wheelers for the trip to the new arena already completed in Oklahoma City and currently hosting the New Orleans/OKC Hornets.

Governor Gregoire has gone on record as saying that she does not think that a consensus of the voters is necessarily  needed for the state to provide some funds for construction of the proposed arena. The hotel and car rental associations are in favor of continuing the current hotel and travel related sales taxes for an additional period of time to get the arena deal done.

Still, if the new ownership group follows in the footsteps of Starbucks founder and CEO Howard Schultz and the previous group and wants to put less than 10% of their own money into the project, it will not be if the team leaves for OKC, but WHEN.  They gave the locals a one year period to "pony up" the new arena, or they will be leaving.  Effectively, however, since that time period ends in the offseason, it is likely that they will be gone at the end of regular season play, since the Sonics are hardly likely to make the post-season this year. The Storm may play out their 2007 season, since it is considerably shorter.

Will their departure have a deleterious effect on both the city's morale and economy? I believe it will.  Sure, none of the local teams are living up to their potential right now, though the Seahawks are head and shoulders above the others, but they do bring people from outside the city in to watch games throughout the year--some fans flying in from as far away as the East coast and the UK for some football contests; and lots of our neighbors to the north for baseball and hockey contests. And visitors from outside the city mean sports related revenue--hotel rooms, meals, souvenirs, tourism dollars, and more.

If  the teams leave town, they will also be putting a good number of seasonal workers out of a job--concessions workers, ushers, AV personnel, team office workers, and more.

Like the Mariners and the Seahawks, the Sonics are the only franchise in their particular sport that caters to much of a five state area:  Washington, Idaho, Alaska, Hawaii and Montana. The Blazers have somewhat of a hold on Oregon, of course, which is a sixth state covered by the 'Hawks and the M's. Like the other two teams, they also have their share of fans in Western Canada, ever since the Grizz moved to Tennessee.   They are not locally televised this year, but are still on the radio, so there will be decreased revenues for the stations that produced the coverage.

All in all, it's going to hurt, in more ways than one, when they are gone. I, for one, hope that they get it worked out and stay, but I'm pretty pessimistic about the chances of it happening (though I think that Oklahoma City Supersonics sounds pretty dumb--guess they will have to change the name of the team).