Mayor Punts on Seattle Center Development

About Memorial Stadium, the City may want it back but no, they can't have it. The head of the Seattle Center came to the School Board, very humbly, to explain the City knows very well who owns those 9 acres and that's Seattle Public Schools. It would take some negotiating between SPS and the City to fulfill Deborah Daoust's wish that the city make money off renting the rebuilt stadium because again, it belongs to SPS. Rental money would likely belong to the district. I just did research on Memorial Stadium at the SPS archives. It was built in 1946 and dedicated on Thanskgiving Day 1947. The land has been used for school athletic events since 1918. Memorial Stadium is used by Ballard, Roosevelt, Garfield and Franklin as their home turf for their varsity football and soccer games. It will host at least one graduation, Roosevelt's, this year. These schools have no other place to have their games so that land has to remain with SPS for their use. The memorial wall lists the names of 770 young men who attended Seattle public high schools and died in WWII. The wall was designed by a Garfield student and financed by the annual Thanksgiving Day high school football game that used to take place there. The plan (only 1 option) presented to the School Board is to reconfigure the direction from east-west to north-south and only cover one side. Since the boosters of the football teams will be using it during fairly wet times of the year it might be nice to cover both sides (also do you really want rabid football fans from both sides sitting side-by-side?). The plan does send the parking underground which is fine except for one small thing. The district makes about $2 million a year on the parking; they'd need a guarantee that they would lose no parking spaces under the reconfiguration. The other problem? The district would lose 4 of its 9 acres in doing this. Anybody think it's a good idea to lose 4 acres of prime real estate in downtown Seattle? That would have to be one heck of a stadium to make that palatable. I'm sure the district will negotiate in good faith with the City for a plan that allows all citizens access to the Stadium. The stadium was created long before Seattle Center and the main and primary use is for the students of Seattle public high schools. So to recap: - the district owns the land and uses the land and has so - continuously - since 1947 - the district makes money off the land and cannot lose that money on any deal - Memorial wall has to stay WITH the stadium. It was created for the stadium by and for Seattle high school students. To move it elsewhere defeats the whole purpose. This may be the one and only time the district is in the driver's seat on any deals with the City.

Memorial Stadium is a shithole.