Ron Sims Would Like To Sell You Seattle Center

Ron Sims graces the editorial pages of the Seattle Times today to dangle the carrot of a "re-imagined Seattle Center" in front of us. The Center sucks, he says, and it does. We can do better, he says, and we can. Some things like the Needle and the fountain should stay, but the Center House and the Fun Forest are crap he tells us in colorful metaphor: "Too much of Seattle Center remains like a relic from the '60s: a beloved but worn-out eight-track tape playing a dated, low-fi tune in an iPod world."

In their place could be insert-your-urban-fantasy-here. "Broad pedestrian thoroughfares lined with cafés, museums, work-force housing, artist lofts, theaters and more," he says. The streets of Seattle Center could be paved with iPods, we pretend he says, and fulfilled and happily-housed poor people will dance and freestyle at every intersection adding a funky charm to your latte sipping, culturally expanding visit to our city's living room. All of this could be ours, he argues, at the low low price of expanding the debate about whether area hotels and restaurants should subsidize the Sonics. To us it seems more like he's reframing the debate rather than expanding it, but whatever.

Currently, we are engaged in a narrow debate about whether to renovate KeyArena to keep the Sonics in Seattle. But whether the team stays or goes, we should embark on a holistic rethinking of how to revitalize the center in its entirety. The city of Seattle has already initiated this process; a panel convened by the mayor is expected to deliver a report in upcoming weeks. Its recommendations should provide a useful starting point for public debate.

Moreover, we have a potential revenue source to pay for improvements without raising taxes: Simply extending the restaurant and hotel taxes currently used to pay off Safeco bonds — a bill to do just that was recently introduced in Olympia — would create a civic-amenities fund that could help pay for the Seattle Center of our dreams.

Seattle Center has to be good for something other than the dilapidated carnival of horrors and sweetheart land deals to Microsoft guys and we suspect it could easily be done without the assistance of taxpayers, but if it costs us money it costs us money. We'll pay it. Be straight about it, though.

The city of Seattle has already initiated this process; a panel convened by the mayor is expected to deliver a report in upcoming weeks. Its recommendations should provide a useful starting point for public debate.

We're waiting for that report.