By Ken Robinson
Managing Editor
Westside Weekly

By 1972, a site for the dome stadium in downtown Seattle was chosen to build on. Construction began soon after and the dome was completed by March 1976. The stadium was named the Kingdome because of its location in King County.

The Kingdome was demolished by implosion on March 26, 2000; the Seahawks' new stadium, Seahawks Stadium (now known as CenturyLink Field) was built on the site and opened in 2002. King County paid off the bonds used to build and repair the Kingdome in 2015, 15 years after its demolition.

54,00 people showed up for the opening of the Kingdome. Now, Seattle has about 25 percent more people. Snohomish and Piece Counties have grown similarly.

Now, some promoters want to put another stadium along stadium row on First Avenue in Seattle. We thought it was a bad idea in 1969 to locate the Kingdome where it was and we think it is a bad idea now to put a new stadium where the fans of basketball and hockey want one, just down the avenue.

Jamming big sports venues downtown already makes it irksome to cross the city during game time. Those rich enough to afford a ticket to a big league game apparently are willing to endure the traffic snarls they create on their way to an event. We think it is time to choose another site, if we must have a basketball team. We have one in mind.

A better site that does not add to the Mercer and Seneca Streets, designed for 1972 traffic, is near the Tukwila Amtrak station. There is land there, it is on a main north-south transportation corridor and it is not in Seattle.

The proponents of another stadium should take a hard look at this option. It could serve fans from Everett to Tacoma and beyond on the train, take a lot of cars off the freeway, possibly employing shuttles operated by the teams to ferry people to the game, cut down on carbon emissions from a lot of cars and provide a facility that could be used for other purposes now not available at the limited use Century Link and Safeco fields.

We wrote about stadium location in 1969 when John Spellman, the first King County Executive, pushed for a downtown place that became the Kingdome. In those days, people were doing dog circles about the idea. A stadium downtown seemed liked such a good idea.

Now we think it is time to move it south. Freeway access is better near Southcenter and there is more land for development that does not require displacing anything.

And maybe we can get a stadium that looks like it is a finished piece of architecture and not a building that is waiting for the top to be put on, like the baseball and footballs stadiums we have now.