Seattle’s hopes of bringing the NHL to town just got a little brighter. (Getty Images)
While the hockey world’s focus has been expended mostly on Las Vegas as a potential destination for the NHL to expand into, there have been some significant developments on another prospective expansion location.
Before Las Vegas even seemed like a possibility, much was made of Seattle’s bid to bring the NBA back, with a despire to tie those efforts into bringing a new NHL team to the city. Chris Hansen, the man who has committed to help build a new arena that could house teams in both leagues, made an important public statement to that end in light of the completion of an environmental impact study for the potential arena that should be of particular interest to hockey fans in Washington.
Wide speculation had been that the arena would only get built if the city could secure an NBA team first. Seattle mayor Ed Murray has been more vocal about creating a plan that would bring the new arena even if it was a NHL team moving in first. Thursday morning, in light of the final environmental impact statement being published, Hansen said his group would be open to that as well.
Here is Hansen’s group’s statement from sonicsarena.com:
The long-awaited Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) for the Seattle Arena has been released and it is a greenlight for us to continue moving forward to finish the remaining work needed for the final construction permits. A summary of that document is provided below for your information.
We want to thank the city staff and technical consultants who worked hard to get this document completed and published. It is a major milestone in our journey to bring the NBA and NHL back to Seattle.
We also wanted to take the opportunity to reiterate that we remain 100% supportive of the NHL returning to Seattle and playing in the Arena — and are completely open to the prospect of that occurring prior to the NBA. In light of recent speculation, we would just like to clarify that we have sought to be as accommodating as possible in our negotiations with potential NHL partners, with our only major requirements being that such a deal does not jeopardize the process or put the City, County, Taxpayers or us in a worse financial position.
Lastly, we also want to extend …Read More