Hawks: Build It, Or Team May Move And By The Way, Cleveland Has Made Nfl Team A Lucrative Offer
The owners of the Seahawks said Tuesday it might take a new football stadium to keep the NFL franchise from moving to another city.
For the first time since July, when the team started new negotiations with King County, Ken and David Behring said their requested $150 million in Kingdome improvements might not be enough to meet their needs.
They also said Cleveland has indicated an interest in obtaining the Seahawks.
“We are having numerous problems trying to work out a Kingdome resolution, so we don’t know what is going to happen in the future,” David Behring, Seahawks president, told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
In an interview with KING-TV, Ken Behring, majority owner of the Seahawks, said Cleveland is “offering us the same (deal) as Baltimore gave to the Cleveland Browns.”
Asked if the Seahawks want an entirely new football stadium, David Behring said: “Right.”
Ken Behring said tearing down the Kingdome, where the Mariners and Seahawks now play, and building a new football stadium near the new ballpark might be cheaper in the long run than refurbishing the Kingdome.
“If there’s a baseball and a football stadium we can have a parking garage in between, probably where the Kingdome is now,” Behring said in the TV interview Wednesday night.
In the interview with the Post-Intelligencer, David Behring revealed the Cleveland offer was not made to the Seahawks alone.
“There isn’t a done deal anywhere,” he said. “People from Cleveland have contacted various teams. They are in the process of losing the Cleveland Browns, so they are contacting other teams that have stadium problems.”
The Browns’ move was announced earlier this month after Baltimore offered the team a new $200 million stadium, plus $75 million in relocation expenses. Voters in Cleveland then approved an extension of the county’s so-called sin tax to come up with $175 million to build a new football stadium in an effort to block the move. But Browns owner Art Modell has said the Cleveland offer came too late.
Since then, the Behrings have been negotiating with King County over how to pay for their requested improvements to the Kingdome, which include new luxury suites, club seats, wider concourses and a new entryway to the stadium.
The Behrings on Monday met with King County Executive Gary Locke and County Councilman Pete von Reichbauer, but nothing was resolved.
The Seahawks owners, however, are willing to listen to new offers, including a possible move to Los Angeles - which in June lost the Raiders to Oakland, or to Anaheim, which earlier saw the Rams move to St. Louis.