Ron: It’s time to start over with the KeyArena, Seattle Center

When Denver city leaders wanted to revitalize their Lower Downtown (LoDo), they created a six-year sporting venue upgrade program to cluster the baseball, football and NBA/NHL stadiums together. Since then, the former warehouse-centric area has sprouted hip brick bars, pubs and lounges, with younger businesses moving in, wanting easy access to, and parking for, games.

KIRO Radio’s Ron Upshaw believes the odds building that kind of growth isn’t going to happen at KeyArena, no matter how a new potential investor pitches it.

“An entire community has built up around these parks that never would have happened,” Ron said. “I think that’s what Seattle’s looking to do. It would be much more likely to happen with the southern location than KeyArena.”

The Seattle Times reported that a New Mexico-based real-estate investment company expressed interest in overhauling Key Arena with $285 million in private money so that the city-owned venue could host NHL and NBA teams.

The vice president of the company, Seattle native Christopher Brozovich, wrote a letter to Seattle Mayor Ed Murray in July saying that KeyArena could be successfully renovated at its existing size, according to The Times. Brozovich told The Times that city officials never responded to the letter.

The city has been working with entrepreneur Chris Hansen about building a new arena in the Sodo District near the city’s other sports complexes &#8212 Safeco and CenturyLink fields.

Ron noted that when the SuperSonics played at KeyArena there was little more than a Mexican restaurant and martini bar within walking distance.

“It wasn’t this vibrant scene,” he said. “That was the only thing really there in town. If you think about what could happen down by where you’re going to have the football stadium, baseball stadium, NHL/basketball stadium &#8212 that will bring in and revive and add more businesses and hotels.”

Ron posed the idea that Brozovich leaked the story to The Times in order to try to gain some traction on his proposal.

“I think the mayor and the city is wise to kind of go, ‘We don’t really know who you are; thanks, but no thanks;’ or ‘we’re just going to let that sit dormant while we figure this out,'” Ron said.

Ron believes the city needs to start over with Seattle Center and KeyArena, calling it a “dead-end destination” that is prime real estate for a restaurant hub or community area.

“If we’re going to move forward with basketball and NHL, you need to start thinking about it in terms of how will the whole area develop,” Ron said.

Don, meanwhile, thinks the real money-making ventures are putting together a line of Pacific Northwest-centric apparel for former Sonic greats Shawn “The Rain Man” Kemp and Gary “The Glove” Payton.

“Rainman galoshes, you wouldn’t have bought those back in the day? A rainman umbrella, a rainman rain jacket. You would buy that; of course you would,” Don said. “Why didn’t Gary (Payton) have gloves we could buy? You call him the glove, there’s not a glove we can purchase? I’m just an idea guy here, but please, there’s two ideas where we could still make money today.”

Renovating KeyArena, on the other hand, not so much.

“Yeah, good luck, it’s not gonna happen,” Don said. “Thing’s a dump.”