Ford Center upgrade effort under way
Ford Center upgrade effort under way
March 6, 2008
OKLAHOMA CITY – Now that city voters have passed a temporary 1-percent sales tax worth about $120 million, city leaders have entered a complicated new phase of actually setting in motion construction of Ford Center arena upgrades.
“We don’t know the time frame exactly for designing what’s supposed to be ready and when,” City Manager Jim Couch said. “We know generally the scope of what we want, but the staging is going to be difficult.”
Couch’s staff has made at least one big step, however: Weeks ahead of Tuesday’s election, architectural firms were reviewed and a contract is ready to be awarded for initial designs on the new facilities. That decision will be announced next week.
Oklahoma City residents passed the sales tax by a large margin with a vote of 44,849-27,564, or about 62-percent approval. Voter turnout was nearly 31 percent, double the response of an average city election, election board officials said.
The tax, which will go into effect at the beginning of 2009, is earmarked to pay for massive upgrades to the downtown arena to make it worthy of hosting NBA league games. About $20 million of the expected tax revenue will go toward the construction of a practice facility for the sole use of a National Basketball League team.
Tax supporters hope that team will be the SuperSonics, currently based in Seattle. Oklahoma City businessman Clay Bennett heads Professional Basketball Club LLC, the group that paid $350 million last year for the Sonics and the WNBA’s Storm.
Bennett’s partners in the deal include Aubrey McClendon of Chesapeake Energy, Tom Ward of SandRidge Energy, and Jeff Records of MidFirst Bank, all based in the metro area; Bennett is chairman of Dorchester Capital. But before Bennett and his group can move the Sonics to Oklahoma, they’ve got a few hoops to jump through. One of the two largest problems is that the Sonics’ lease with Seattle runs through 2010, and city officials there aren’t going to let the team go without a fight; the city has sued the team to hold to the contract. That case is still three months away from being heard in federal court.
Before then, the NBA’s board of governors is scheduled to meet in April to consider the Sonics’ relocation proposal. That decision deadline is the main reason Oklahoma City leaders put the arena sales tax issue to a public vote so quickly after announcing it in January – Ford Center upgrades originally were intended to be part of a larger package of infrastructure improvements under MAPS-3, a successor to Metropolitan Area Projects and MAPS for Kids.
A committee of NBA owners will visit Oklahoma City ahead of the board’s decision – “a dog and pony show is what they’re calling it,” Cornett said Wednesday – to judge whether the city can legitimately sustain a team of its own. That group is expected later this month. Cornett, Chamber President Roy Williams and others will show the group around town and answer their questions. “If we’re going to get a team will be decided by the NBA’s relocation team here in the next 30 days or so, and when we get a team will be decided by a judge in Washington,” Cornett said.
But otherwise city leaders and residents have played their parts in the election. Now it’s largely a matter of waiting for certain dates and decisions to be made elsewhere, Cornett said. For example, Couch said designing the arena can’t begin until it’s known whether the center will serve as the new home of the Sonics. Certain amenities such as a warm-up court, executive operations offices and reserved spectator suites might not make it into the blueprints otherwise.
If the Sonics team is allowed to move to Oklahoma City to play as early as November, the start of a new league season, officials might be able to push ahead certain improvements – a new scoreboard and skyboxes or offices, for example, Couch said.“When we know that, it will really help us in our decision-making,” he said. As for the funding, even though the dedicated sales tax won’t start until next year, the city has some flexibility in its budget to cover minor expenses, Couch said. A short-term line of credit also is available if needed until the tax revenue starts coming in.
Funds for the election campaign itself are still be collected across downtown by the chamber of commerce, Williams said. Cornett has been the main spokesman promoting the issue; the chamber took the lead financial role in the campaign. According to campaign financial records filed with the city clerk’s office, by mid-February the Citizens for a Big League City campaign collected more than $113,000, of which $100,000 was submitted by Williams on behalf of the chamber’s Forward Oklahoma City III project. Half of that had been spent by Feb. 17, mostly on advertising. Williams said Wednesday he didn’t know how much money the campaign ultimately will report next month. Contributions are still being accepted, he said. None of the Sonics’ owners or their companies have made contributions yet, he confirmed.“We knew it was going to be close, and we actually thought it was going to be closer,” he said of election results. A last-minute media surge was needed, Williams said. “We didn’t want this to be a small group of people to make this decision. We wanted as many voters as possible to weigh into this. You do have to have a very, very high-profile campaign to turn the voters out.”
The chamber last year created Forward OKC as an economic development program with funding separate from chamber operations. Williams said supporting the “Major League City” campaign was well within the program’s mandate. And the large number of residents involved in the election is bound to have a positive effect on NBA officials’ decision to move the Sonics, he said.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by metro
Bookmarks