Outside view: Icing the deal
The following editorial appeared Sunday in the Everett Herald.
The bid is in and the wait is on.
If Everett gets the good news it’s expecting, everyone can jump for joy, triple-axel style. Well, figuratively anyway.
The city was invited by U.S. Figure Skating this summer to bid on hosting Skate America, a three-day international ice-skating event in October 2008.
It’s impossible to overstate what a major coup this would be for Everett. Just as Comcast Arena at Everett Events Center has helped transform downtown, an event such as Skate America would put the city on a new plane.
The competition, which could draw 60 professional athletes from 15 countries, would also pump roughly $2.5 million into the Snohomish County economy, organizers estimate.
Several circumstances are in Everett’s favor: Comcast Arena is the perfect size for Skate America, which is ideally held in arenas with 7,000 to 10,000 seats. Everett seats 8,300 for hockey. U.S. Figure Skating invited Everett to bid on the event – a good sign. Bob Dunlop, a top U.S. Figure Skating official, told Herald reporter David Chircop that he thinks Everett has a “great set-up.” And, “Although we haven’t held the event there, we look at it as a very promising location.”
Steve Baker, co-owner of Production Sports in Mountlake Terrace, which is heading the effort to land the event, notes that with the 2010 Winter Olympics taking place in Vancouver, B.C., Everett is an ideal area to host Skate America. Indeed. And if it happens that Everett doesn’t win the bid to host in 2008, efforts should be doubled to land the event for 2009.
Every business should jump on this bandwagon, with the bigger ones casting an eye about for sponsorship. A successful event can be a building block to land other competitions, skating and otherwise.
Spokane hosted Skate America in 2002 at its Spokane Veterans Memorial Arena – a 10,500-seat venue. With lots of publicity and marketing, that event broke attendance records for Skate America.
Dunlop, the skating official, said that success and experience made Spokane an easy choice to host the 2007 U.S. Figure Skating Championships, making it the smallest city in 10 years to do so. Ticket sales were a record high for the eight-day event, and it’s estimated the local economy received a $30 million boost.
The three-day, televised Skate America would give Everett and Snohomish County unprecedented, incalculable exposure. Imagine TV shots of the events center, downtown, Port Gardner Bay, the mountains. Elite athletes gracing our ice.
The future is now, and it’s wearing ice skates. We can’t let this opportunity slip away.