It’s 4th of July weekend, so we’re in the doldrums of the sports year. WNBA, soccer, and baseball are in the long stretch of their seasons, while hockey, NFL, and college sports are in their off seasons. So it’s time to look at the sports year that was, how it impacted the city, and get a glimpse ahead at the coming months and years.
Entries – a new home in Queen Anne
The headline for the last year was the new green neon on Seattle’s skyline. In October, Climate Pledge Arena opened its doors and welcomed thousands of fans to the inaugural season of Seattle Kraken hockey. By spring, the arena had hosted a number of concerts, all meeting with critical success. And the return of the Seattle Storm to Downtown after the arena construction sent them to Everett for a few years has confirmed one thing: Climate Pledge Arena looks great outfitted for basketball.
The building is a success. Developed by Oak View Group through a Memorandum of Understanding with the City of Seattle, the new 17,000 seat facility was built in four years over the pandemic. Preserving the historic roof from the 1962 World’s Fair, the site was excavated and a completely new building constructed to meet the old. Naming rights from Amazon’s environmental initiative pushed the structure to be the first events center trying to achieve net-zero carbon certification.
The results are spectacular. As we covered in our review of the building when it opened, the place is beautiful. The old arena had a horseshoe seating bowl, and the renovation completed the loop of seats by adding an airy atrium on the south side. New concessions serving the suites are located on the long stretches of the lower level. There’s a lot of concrete, but it doesn’t feel like an icebox. The green features, including plantings and wood, make the building comfortable.
Of course, there are two sides to the opening of the new arena: the building and the performances. Unfortunately, the city’s newest sports franchise didn’t have quite the expected number of wins during its inaugural season. The Kraken ended the season with 60 points coming from 27 wins, 49 losses, and 6 over time losses. This put them in last place in the Pacific division. But that was still ahead of last place teams in two of the other three divisions!
There were plenty of highlights to take away from the Kraken season, including a lot of firsts. But the gaudy first year success of the last expansion team — the Las Vegas Golden Knights made it to the Stanley Cup finals their first year — set the bar extremely high. What was not taken into account for the Kraken was a pre-season still tweaked by pandemic rules, weeks off for Covid and the Olympic Games (which ended up being Covid recovery), and 31 other teams that were not going to let another expansion team run on them again.
Two of our four critical notes of Climate Pledge Arena in October have been improved since publication of the review article. First, the entry works much better, mostly with the waiver of vaccine cards, and it’s down to standard venue entry queue wait times. Stanchions have also been put up at the bathrooms, so lines move quicker and more obviously from a single direction. Experience shows that the bathrooms clear in plenty of time during intermissions.
However, waits and selection at concessions continue to be hit-or-miss. A recent Storm game saw many empty food stands, including all of the Impossible stands, which limited vegetarian options to nachos and pretzels. There was also comment that staffing issues have contributed to the lack of options, but there would be a lot more forgiveness if beers weren’t $16.
The other very critical note still stands: 1st Avenue continues to be a godforsaken mess. Enforce the bus lanes, people.
