March 31, 2000

Many professional, personal memories Kicked up with the Kingdome dust

By TOM KELLY
The Real Estate Advisor

Twenty-five years ago, Georg N. Meyers, former sports editor of The Seattle Times, plucked me off of the Santa Monica Pier to work on his night desk. The King County Domed Stadium soon would be finished. Professional sports teams would follow. He needed bodies, and I was one of them.

I thought about that day last Sunday when I huddled with friends on the eastern side of Bainbridge Island in an attempt to watch the Kingdome, laced with explosives, crumble to the ground. A light fog hugged Puget Sound, curtailing any chance of my witnessing the last stand of that costly piece of real estate that brought me to the Pacific Northwest. My memories in and near that round, gray structure two blocks from Elliott Bay were many and varied, both personal and professional.

The Kingdome’s 24-year history was as crazy and surprising as the five bond measures it took to persuade local voters to build it. Nobody could really predict the extent of the cost of the building - a portion of which it took with it to its dusty doom. In fact, the debt remaining of the imploded Kingdome, scattered in millions of pieces north of Safeco Field, still is greater than the cost to build each of Seattle’s downtown skyscrapers.

While I spent countless hours from 1976-1982 in the Kingdome writing sports sidebars on the Seahawks, Sonics, Mariners and other events my favorite quote came not from a superstar centerfielder or from a Hall of Fame receiver. It came from the heart and lips of a small-town high school football coach who could not hold back his excitement of playing for the state title in the cavernous Dome.

“This is the biggest doggone thing to hit Woodland, Washington, since D.B. Cooper fell out of the doggone sky!” blurted Steve Morton, coach of the Woodland High School football team, at the pregame press conference.

Morton’s game was one of five championship matchups featured in the “Kingbowl” that sacred late autumn Saturday when all schools - big and small - came to the state’s largest city to play for all the marbles out of the wind and rain. Entire communities like Woodland, Colton, Ritzville and Chewelah arrived to watch their heroes - many of who had never stayed in a hotel. Moms would shop in the city’s retail core while Dads would gather for a beer in Pioneer Square taverns, eagerly awaiting their first visit into the only dome stadium on the West Coast.

Because it was the only West Coast dome - and the only one west of the Mississippi River besides the Alamodome in San Antonio - it will be years until the region hosts another Final Four, the common name for the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s Division I Men’s basketball championship.

The Kingdome held it three times, all three memorable title games. In 1984, Patrick Ewing finally nailed down a title for Georgetown; the 1989 Seton Hall-Michigan overtime thriller brought a magical shootout by the Pirate’s John Morton and the Wolverines’ Glen Rice, and freshman Toby Bailey put on a show for UCLA in 1995 in its win over Arkansas.

I have witnessed the Final Four 14 times, including all three in the Kingdome. Selfishly, that will be the event I will miss most. Tickets, now one of the hottest in all of sports, were easy the first year (300-level tickets were being given away as bookmarkers), difficult the second time around and absolutely scarce in 1995.

My most memorable moment in that round building also occurred the same year about six months later. It was October 8, 1995, my 45th birthday, and 20 years to the day that I first saw the Kingdome. That day rates at the top of the list for many local sports fans because it was the day the Mariners defeated the Yankees in their American League playoff series.

When Edgar Martinez drilled a rope down the left-field line to score Ken Griffey, Jr., in the biggest moment of Seattle baseball history, my youngest son, Chris, jumped into my arms and said: "Can’t believe this is happening in the Kingdome.’’ It did, and the all the dust is just beginning to settle.

Previous columns:

• What happens when mistakes are made, 03-24-2000
• Microsoft promises home loan revolution, 03-17-2000
• Economist for NAR dusts off his crystal ball, 03-10-2000
• How to let someone rescue your deal, 02-25-2000
• Options for stock-rich, cash-poor homebuyers, 02-18-2000
• What lies ahead for real estate?, 02-11-2000
• Selling that vacation property, 02-04-2000
• Definition of fixture isn't fixed, 01-28-2000