I don't think they'll have to worry about that. The Ford Center was already built back in '02 in hopes to attract a NBA/NHL team.
Posted on 05/10/2008 11:10:14 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
OKLAHOMA CITY — Oklahoma City officials want Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz to know they expect the Seattle SuperSonics to relocate, regardless of who owns the team.
An assistant municipal counselor sent a letter on behalf of Mayor Mick Cornett and other city officials informing Schultz, the team's former owner, that Oklahoma City's lease with the SuperSonics will be enforced no matter how pending lawsuits in Seattle are resolved.
"We expect that any subsequent owner or owners would join hands with the city, and its citizens, and honor the OKC NBA agreements, made in good faith, and perform as good corporate neighbors to make NBA basketball a success in Oklahoma City," Assistant Municipal Counselor Wiley Williams wrote in the letter, dated Thursday, that was released to reporters on Friday.
Schultz has filed a lawsuit seeking to reverse his 2006 sale of the SuperSonics to Clay Bennett, claiming that Bennett failed to make a good-faith effort as promised to keep the team in Seattle. Bennett has defended his attempts to negotiate for a new arena in Seattle and claimed that Seattle officials are trying to force him to sell the team.
Schultz's lawsuit and one filed by the city in an attempt to keep the Sonics in Seattle through the end of their lease in 2010 are pending in federal court in Seattle.
Oklahoma City officials believe that their own lease with Bennett requires the SuperSonics to relocate at the end of that lease, or earlier if Bennett is able to buy his way out.
"We are unaware of a legal theory that would render the OKC NBA agreements voidable, regardless of the outcome" of the Seattle litigation, Williams wrote in the nine-page letter addressed to Schultz attorney Richard Yarmuth.
(Excerpt) Read more at seattletimes.nwsource.com ...
Oklahoma City taxpayers watch out, professional sports are coming to town.
I don't think they'll have to worry about that. The Ford Center was already built back in '02 in hopes to attract a NBA/NHL team.
Are you trying to skate around this issue?
Call me about something that matters in life.
Ping!
Time to get the Sonics outa there, so Paul Allen can move his basketball team from Portland, up next to his football team in Seattle...
I give it 2 years and there will be a “Public/Private” deal cut to build the Trailblazers a new stadium...
Developing...
The real outcry should have come when they spent all that money just in the hopes of landing a team.
That doesn’t make sense. Portland always have been a better basketball town than Seattle. They had a streak of many sell outs.
Say WA? Evergreen State ping
FReepmail sionnsar if you want on or off this ping list.
Ping sionnsar if you see a Washington state related thread.
Do they have to take all the fugly uniforms, too?
You sound like you're a member of the Seattle SuperCynics.
:-)
Ya....there’s a lot of bad blood in this area over the subsidizing of the Mariners and the Seahawks stadiums.
Bttt
Subsiziding is actually not a bad deal. Especially in industrial cities in the RUST BELT like Pittsburg
The public funds for the first stadium were put to a vote and voted down. Then the State Legislature stepped in, bypassed the counties vote and put the tax and monies in place anyway.
Then the second vote was rigged to be statewide instead of county wide, even though the brunt of the taxes were in the City of Seattle.
Now the Sonics owners are trying the same crap the Mariners and Seahawks owners pulled off and people are pretty pissed about it. We're already on the hook for God knows how many hundreds of millions of dollars.
Bttt
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