Pro franchises find Everett, Snohomish County good places to call home

Published 11:37 pm Thursday, July 23, 2009

Until the day she decided to move her professional lacrosse team to Everett, Washington Stealth owner Denise Watkins had never spent time in this town — except maybe to fill up with gas once or twice on her way to the San Juan Islands.

While it’s not the way the Stealth’s Bay Area-based owner would want to be introduced to Snohomish County, Watkins serves as a testament to the kind of a reputation Everett has built in the sports world of late.

Sight unseen — Watkins relied on research done by the National Lacrosse League and its now-defunct Portland franchise, which considered a move to Everett before folding in June — the professional sports owner felt comfortable heading north to put the Stealth’s stakes down at Comcast Arena.

“It reminds me a lot of the town that I live in,” said Watkins, who resides outside of San Jose in Pleasanton, Calif. “Pleasanton is a great family town, and Everett strikes me as the same way. It’s the kind of place where people like to do things as a family, and we like to believe that (the Stealth will) appeal to that.”

In the past month, both the Stealth and the American Basketball Association’s Everett Longshoremen announced intentions to set up shop in Everett. That could give Snohomish County as many as seven professional sports teams in the coming years — quite a crowd for a town that had only the Everett AquaSox minor-league baseball team when the 21st Century began. In the past three years alone, Everett has added two professional basketball teams and a lacrosse team, with professional soccer and indoor football teams potentially in the works.

So what’s all the fuss about Everett?

“Fan support,” said Tim Joseph, who owns the ABA’s Longshoremen along with his wife, Regina. “Seeing the fan support (attracted the ABA to Everett).”

David Takata, the chief financial officer of the NLL’s Stealth, said that 6-year-old Comcast Arena, which became home to the wildly popular Everett Silvertips of the Western Hockey League in 2003, has put Everett on the radar of professional sports franchises.

“When people think about putting pro sports teams into an area, Everett wouldn’t be the No. 1 choice,” he said. “But (the arena) is the most attractive thing about it.”

Said Comcast Arena general manager Kim Bedier: “It’s an arena that’s very right-sized for some of these teams. People would rather play in front of a packed house of 6,000 people than in a huge, 15,000-person arena that looks empty.”

Not all teams to call the arena home have flourished. Former NFL player Sam Adams brought an arena football team to town, but the franchise folded in 2007. Marysville native Nathan Mumm brought in the International Basketball League, but his Everett Explosion lasted only one season at Comcast Arena before downsizing to Monroe High School. Mumm has talked of bringing soccer and indoor football teams to the area as well, although those plans are still in the works.

The Josephs, owners of the ABA team that has announced plans to play out of Everett, live in Castle Rock but were attracted to Snohomish County by the Explosion’s initial popularity. Tim Joseph said that he was “blown away” by the basketball fans who commuted to Morton for the Everett Explosion’s first IBL game in 2007.

While the Longshoremen have yet to finalize a home court — Comcast Arena is unlikely because of other events during the same winter season — Joseph said he expects to make a big return on the investment.

Then there is Watkins, who moved her franchise to Everett sight unseen.

Watkins and her husband, Seagate CEO Bill Watkins, purchased the San Jose Stealth two years ago after the season-ticket holders found out that the franchise was on the verge of moving. The Watkinses decided to purchase the team and to continue playing under the two-year lease at San Jose’s HP Pavilion.

But the arena, which also plays host to the NHL’s San Jose Sharks and seats 17,000 fans, proved to be more of a detriment than an advantage for the NLL team.

“We’re clearly not the biggest thing in San Jose,” said Watkins, who admitted her family has lost money during its two years of owning the team. “There are 200-plus things going on at the HP Pavilion annually, and while I wouldn’t say we were a nuisance to them, we clearly weren’t their No. 1 thing.”

The Stealth are taking an unconventional marketing approach in these parts by aggressively pursuing fans from bigger cities such as Seattle and Bellevue. Both Watkins and Takata said the approach is necessary if the team is going to reach its initial goal of 5,000 fans per game.

“We can’t expect 10 percent of the (Everett) population to come to every game,” Watkins said. “You need a larger demographic. The larger lacrosse community gives us an in to all the other communities. And we’ve already started taking (ticket) deposits from all over the area.”

Marketing is not the only unique aspect of the NLL in Everett. It also ranks as the only professional franchise in this area that is not at the minor-league level. The NLL features some of the world’s top lacrosse players.

Everett has been on the NLL’s radar for several years. The Portland franchise nearly moved here last month. Portland originally had a June 1 deadline by which to decide whether to move, but the league granted the franchise a two-week extension. During that extension, San Jose’s franchise — the Stealth were also looking at Stockton, Calif., Abbotsford, B.C., and Hamilton, Ontario — saw a possible opening in Everett and started doing market research.

The fan base and the arena were enough to bring the Stealth north.

Six years after opening its doors Comcast Arena continues to draw both fans and franchises from all over the West Coast. Puget Sound cities such as Kent and Wenatchee recently built similar facilities in hopes of garnering the same kind of attention.

“Imitation being the sincerest form of flattery,” Bedier said, “we must be doing something right here in Everett.”