The Sacramento Kings and the City of Sacramento are working towards a new arena for the Sacramento Kings. On many fronts progress has been made, however no financing has been secured.
The ICON presented their feasibility study to build a sports and entertainment complex to Mayor Kevin Johnson and the Sacramento City Council in a special meeting at City Hall. The study the ICON group concludes that building a new arena can be done. They however made no mention of how the arena would be financed. “Today is indeed a historic day for the Sacramento metropolitan region,”
said Chris Lehane, co-chair of Mayor Johnson’s arena task force. “The feasibility study was conceived, really to address three questions. Is the site feasible, is the cost feasible and is it feasible to do some type of financial approach?”
The details behind financing included the following statement:
* Neither 100% Privately funded nor 100% Publicly funded ESC are feasible
* Public-Private Partnership needed with both sectors offering significant contributions
* Private sources could include community interests beyond the team that would benefit from location of ESC at the Railyards.
* An outside developer/operator could also be a meaningful additional source of private funds.
* Broad range of public funding sources available for city and region to sources funding public of range –
* evaluate during upcoming discussions and negotiations
* The ICON-Taylor team has identified a preliminary set of potential funding sources
The study failed to lay out any specific financial information and included vague generalized statements. The study did layout specifics to what the new arena would look like. The Kings new ESC would be over 675,000 square feet and the arena able to seat 18,594 people, 1,200 more than the Kings’ current venue, Power Balance Pavilion. It would have 44 more luxury suites than the 50 standard suites the current arena has and adds over 1,000 more clubhouse seats.
Another glaring issue not addressed was the lack of parking. Developers may add a small number of “premium”
parking spaces in the future but the arena project would rely mainly on existing parking lots and buildings located in the downtown area. Apparently the ICON group has never actually tried to park downtown. When asked about parking they said “I’d say enjoy the walk, and buy a meal on the way, and enjoy downtown, and use light rail and the train system and don’t drive,”
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There are 8,200 parking spots within a half mile of the proposed arena. How many spots would be needed for an area that has 18,594 seats, 1,000 clubhouse seats, 94 luxury suites, and hundreds of staff members? A half a mile is a long way to a walk with your kids to watch an NBA game. Downtown is not the safest place and having families walk. An inevitable increase in crime was not addressed in the study. The comment about using light rail also has its issues. Namely there is no plan to bring light rail to the new arena. If they add that to the plan how will it be paid for?
The study concluded that a new arena would cost about $387 million. No one has any idea how or who will pay for the arena. The Maloofs are correct in saying “the political and public will are here”
, unfortunately you also need money.
