The Con View: We Don’t Need a New Husky Stadium

by Michael van Baker on December 7, 2010

A few years ago, Curitiba mayor Jaime Lerner was in town, and I will always remember the look he had on his face, as he remembered learning that we had built one huge stadium for baseball and another huge stadium for football right next door. Along with the awe at the amount of money Seattle had to throw around*, there was clearly pity for our great stupidity and selfishness. 

On Lerner’s list of five things for a sustainable city, number five is “make facilities multiple-use.” Partly because it’s the least you can do if you’re using public funds, but also because their presence is a gift from the community. They take up public space, make demands on public infrastructure, so it’s part of the deal that they get used as widely and often as possible. 

You can argue over the folly of having the two stadiums–please, have at it–but there they are. Since we do have our two mega-stadiums, it beggars belief that at this particular time in economic history, the University of Washington would decide to raise $250 million for a new Husky Stadium, rather than simply put one of them to better use.

There’s a Danny Westneat interview with Mick McHugh that spells out the obvious alternative: Just play at Qwest Field. The logic is unassailable since, no matter what, the Huskies will play at Qwest Field–that’s where they’ll be meantime if the new stadium is constructed. Seth has argued that tradition is at stake–an intangible good, how do you put a price on that?–and there’s no question that it is. Just listen to the UW Board of Regents describe the project:

Plans include the complete demolition and reconstruction of the lower bowl and southside upper stands. [...] Premium seating opportunities, including 25 suites, 25 loge boxes, and over 2,500 club seats, will be built into the facility.

That is, what’s being destroyed is the original stadium, built in 1920. It’s being replaced by very expensive seating.

I appreciate the fact that the UW department of Intercollegiate Athletics is responsible for the funding, and that they’ll do this by issuing 30-year bonds backed by revenues from donations ($50 million) and increased income (naming rights, premium seating, soaking the Tyee Club). But whether you think that UW football fans will give more willingly to the UW if they have a brand-new stadium to cement their commitment or not, you have to realize that they are not an inexhaustible source of income, and this stadium is being built to extract as much of that as possible. 

I’d be more sympathetic to the university’s claims that it is worried about student attendance at Qwest (despite new light rail that will take students directly there), if their plans didn’t call for booting students out of their existing prime location to the west end zone. And that’s not even getting into the impact of 70,000 people streaming into the Montlake neighborhood on weekends, which traffic Qwest is far better able to accommodate. 

Let me phrase this as a sports question–does the UW have their eye on the university’s economic ball? Ironically, Scott Woodward, the UW’s athletic director was just called on the carpet for suggesting that an over-emphasis on sports can be bad for a university: “In my mind, it’s a wonderful athletic facility,” Westneat quotes Woodward saying of Oregon’s remodeled sports complex. “But they’ve watched it at the expense of the university go really down.”

The Regents haven’t given us a comparison, side-by-side, of leasing Qwest for 30 years versus building a new stadium. But they have already raised tuition for those 700-student biology classes, and now the legislature is preparing for a special session to deal with a chronically increasing deficit. (“Gregoire has already put forth some budget-balancing options, including elimination of the Basic Health Plan and raiding federal education dollars.”)

How will the Regents address further cuts to state funding, given that the cost of attending the UW has already tripled in the last 20 years? What is their plan if and when stadium revenues fail to meet projections because our challenging economic climate continues?

This is not a question of misplaced priorities, but of simple common sense.

*Actually, debt. In 2015, Seattle will finish paying off what it owes on the Kingdome, the multi-purpose stadium demolished in 2000.

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  • TroyJMorris

    They should use the new stadium for wicked awesome physics experiments. Perhaps include a photon accelerator.

  • Mark

    They should go to such lengths to try offsetting tuition costs. Or is it trickle-down from the football team?

  • bilco

    Didn’t we just build some fancy-ass new wing to this thing?

    Does any education go on at this institution, or is it just the free training facility for the NFL?

  • Audrey Hendrickson

    Oh bilco. We missed you when you were away!

  • Matt

    Funding for the renovation is coming from private sources and ticket sales — not public tax dollars.

    The argument that the stadium renovation is taking money away from academics is completely false.

  • Michael van Baker

    “Overlooking”–or did I actually spell that out in the post? I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what this line says in the English language: “I appreciate the fact that the UW department of Intercollegiate Athletics is responsible for the funding, and that they’ll do this by issuing 30-year bonds backed by revenues from donations ($50 million) and increased income (naming rights, premium seating, soaking the Tyee Club).”

    I can’t say that it does or doesn’t impact academic funding–that argument was made by the UW’s athletic director, who might better know. My point is simply that $250 million from private pockets is $250 million less in the overall UW donor pool. Are the majority of UW donors inclined to give only to support football? That may well be. But then let’s not pretend that a football program adds much to the university’s academic donor base.

  • Adam

    You forget the new(ish) team in town already makes Qwest a mixed use stadium: the Sounders. MLS games are played almost exclusively on Saturdays through the summer, but well into college football season as well. The Sounders already create a logistical challenge for the grounds crew at Qwest (who have met it with aplomb thus far), who during the Fall have to convert the stadium overnight from Sounders to Seahawks. The Sounders are primary tenants, and part of their requirement to play there is that there are no football lines on the field. (oh, and just to drive home the point, Saturdays in the fall might cause problems.) I realize the need for a place for the Huskies to play, but they can’t just muscle the Sounders out from their own home.

  • Michael van Baker

    You make a good point. However, they’re going to have to make it work somehow, because that’s where the Huskies are to play when Husky Stadium is being renovated. So it can’t be impossible. And again, all of this speculation might be improbable–it’s just that I haven’t seen anyone demonstrate that.

  • Adam

    Agreed. If nothing else, it’ll be a valuable test for the long-term viability of the concept of mixed-use/multi-tenant stadiums (and a source of nightmares in the scheduling departments of MLS, the NFL, and the NCAA). The outcome may well impact future mixed-use venue decisions around the country, or perhaps even around the world.