The proposed Memorial Stadium Deal: Is it deja vu all over again?
The old Queen Anne High School building, sitting magestically atop Seattle, is a stark reminder of the lack of long-term strategic thinking from the public sector. The building was sold for a song to developers in the early 1980s after the student population fell dramatically, a result of ‘White flight’ and overall declining enrollments–and the school district was looking for a quick buck. Today, the seams are bursting on Queen Anne and Magnolia and the neighborhoods lament the loss of a high school.
In the coming weeks the Seattle City Council and the Seattle Public School Board will vote on another deal. The school district owns much of the rights to highly valuable property–Memorial Stadium–part of the heart of Seattle Center and the soul of our city.
The nine acres of real estate in Seattle Center is extremely valuable by any measure. “The parties have agreed on a combined value of $45 million for the Stadium Lots and the Parking Lot,” according to the Memorandum of Understanding. Yet, from my buddy and Queen Anne parent Kelly Charlton’s research, it looks like the combined value of the parcels in the King County Records is $76,226,000. That’s a 41% difference.
Are you kidding me?
The School District is giving up a world class, high quality, amazingly valuable property in exchange for a reduced price and a modest income stream. That’s a bad deal in my view even during rough economic times and I hope they reconsider. I am a huge booster of the Seattle Center, and I want the facility to be built in the best interests of the public for generations to come. But school kids shouldn’t lose out in the process. Can’t school kids get a little something?
Queen Anne and Magnolia need a high school and a rejuvenated middle school. The leverage from a pure business deal perspective resides with the school district, not the city. This is our chance to capture value from real discussions with the city to strike a better deal.
When the school district and, unfortunately, much of the public sector “negotiates” deals over assets, the public often gets the short end of the talks. One suggestion that has surfaced is the idea of the city providing support for a comprehensive high school, rebuilt McClure Middle School building, and Queen Anne community center facility. Or even programmatic support from the city in exchange for the Memorial Stadium, in addition to capital facilities.
I hope the school district will throw some elbows (in a good way) and renegotiate this deal which to me, as an outsider, seems like another Queen Anne High School-like give away that will be regretted for decades.
I often prod the public sector for its failure to have an entrepreneurial spirit and an innovator’s passion. School district: You have an amazing asset. Don’t give it up without striking a smokin’ hot deal for the future of the district.
Your partner in service,
Reuven.
I think you’re comparing apples to oranges here Reuven. This isn’t a straight sale like the Queen Anne High debacle. Under the agreement with the city, the district maintains a parcel in the lower Queen Anne area (which can be used for a new high school), rids itself of the cost of maintaining a dilapidated facility, gets a, hardly modest, $2-3 million per year for 60 years and the city has to foot the estimated $200 million price tag for a new stadium (in which the district gets priority usage). I don’t doubt the straight value differences of the parcels. However, holding property on which sits an absolute dump of a stadium does the district no good, and truthfully is a huge risk. Sooner rather than later, Memorial Stadium has to be replaced with a seismically-modern, ADA-compliant facility. Transferring the cost of the new stadium to the city relieves the district of this $200 million burden and more than adequately makes up for the difference in parcel value. The district is getting a smokin’ hot deal already in my opinion.
I’m with Paul on this one. When you look at the entire deal rather than one aspect or headline, this is a win-win for everyone. It even helps get a new site in the neighborhood for a new high school – a pretty hard thing to find or afford. Why derail a good deal after twenty years of conversations?…