Arena investor Chris Hansen buys up more Seattle land

In his effort to bring the NBA back to Seattle, investor
Chris Hansen has bought up more land in the SoDo
neighborhood where he hopes a new arena will be built.

KING-5 reports Hansen’s holding company
finalized a deal July 18 for two pieces of property on 1st
Avenue South for $5.5 million. The addresses are 1712 and
1722 1st Avenue South, south of the Showbox and west of
Occidental.

Hansen has now spent $40 million on land in SoDo as he
awaits approval from the Seattle City Council to move
ahead with plans to build an arena.

The King County Council approved the plan Monday, getting
the green light from six councilmembers. Reagan Dunn,
Larry Phillips and Pete von Reichbauer voted against the
MOU, saying they want assurances, particularly about Port
jobs and traffic.

King County is being asked to invest up about $80 million
to help finance the arena.

The Seattle City Council sent a letter from 8 of 9 members
Monday to Hansen outlining changes needed before they’ll
vote for the Memorandum Of Understanding. The city is
being asking to invest about $120 million to the project.

“We’re saying today we want to get to ‘yes,’ but we have
to work out the technical details and I think we can with
Mr. Hansen,” councilmember Tim Burgess said in a news
conference Monday.

View Chris Hansen’s
latest land purchase in a larger map