Published: 2 years 69 days ago
Sacramento Bee: Ever since Gregg Lukenbill sneaked into Kansas City one night about 25 years ago and made off with that town's NBA franchise, finding a home for the Sacramento Kings has been pre-eminently about real estate development, secondarily about franchise profitability and only incidentally about the interests of the team's fans.
Back then, Lukenbill and his partners deftly used the palpably urgent need to build a suitable home court for the team on available land in Natomas as political leverage in obtaining official acquiescence to develop large tracts of housing in a floodplain defended by some of the most fragile levees this side of New Orleans.
Recently, an even more audacious development plan has been proposed that would not only entail the construction of a sports arena and entertainment facility in downtown Sacramento but a land swap that would send the state fairgrounds to the Arco Arena site in return for 350 acres at Cal Expo for real estate development.
That plan, proposed by developer Gerry Kamilos, has gained the support of the NBA and the team's owners, even though it rivals a Rube Goldberg contraption in complexity and the number of moving parts.
On Thursday, Mayor Kevin Johnson's Sacramento First task force, charged with evaluating seven different arena proposals, shortened the list to three but signaled its support for the Kamilos plan – as long as the arena is integrated with a transportation hub, which was proposed in the plan from Thomas Enterprises, the company handling the vast railyard development project. Under the plan, the arena would be built in conjunction with the intermodal transportation depot adjacent to Sacramento's train station.
When they convene on Tuesday to evaluate the various proposals still on the table, City Council members should ask what any household would prudently ask when facing a major purchase or investment: Can we afford it?
The answer may not be the one we want or expect to hear.
http://www.sacbee.com/2010/03/14/2603800/reality-check-for-arena-project.html
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