Months of negotiating between Sound Transit and the UW culminated today in a final deal on the Husky Stadium light rail stop. UW was concerned about losing up to $68 million during construction, equivalent to a 30 percent drop in attendance.
Though Sound Transit says it “does not compensate businesses for revenue losses from construction,” the UW will be getting about $35 million in exchange for UW property, planning assistance, and use of the parking lot as a staging area.
Of course, potential revenue losses depend on how good the Huskies are. All the construction mitigation in the world won’t help the team if, well, they suck, admits UW athletics director Todd Turner:
“I don’t know. It depends on how good our football team is,” he said. “If we have a Rose Bowl-caliber team, it might be on the low end. If we’re just average, 30 percent loss in attendance might be low-balling it.”
Indeed. Not much Sound Transit can do about that.
What they have done, it seems is come up with a bunch of steps to make the impact as small as possible, given the loss of some 600 parking spots and a 6-acre construction site in the middle of the the parking lot.
2016 is the date most often bandied about for the UW extension, and this press release seems to indicate that that’s still about right. Construction on the extension could begin in “late 2008,” and is “not to exceed 66 months.”
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