Turns out, Hansen was right

  • Larry Henry / Herald Columnist
  • Thursday, May 20, 2004 9:00pm
  • Sports

EVERETT – Hockey? You want to bring a hockey team to Everett?

It’ll never fly.

I didn’t tell Ed Hansen this.

I was more politic. I said something like, “I don’t know if it’ll work.”

That was what, two, three years ago?

Time flies like a hockey puck when you’re having fun.

We’d met in his office – Hansen was then mayor of Everett – and he was telling me all about this multi-purpose events center he was pushing for the city of Everett.

The building sounded like a good idea.

The hockey team? A Western Hockey League franchise as the prime tenant in the proposed building?

I was skeptical. Very skeptical.

Hansen was adamant it would work.

He’d done his research. You’ve got to have a hockey team to make your building successful.

That’s what the feasibility study concluded. You really need to have a viable hockey team.

Key word – viable. Able to take root and grow.

“And, of course,” Hansen said, “there’s no hockey in Everett so how can hockey be successful in Everett?”

Simple. You build the building, you open the doors, the team soars like no WHL team in history has soared, you draw a quarter of a million fans and – ta-da!

Instant success.

Ed Hansen’s a genius. OK, maybe not a genius. But smart. Savvy. And adamant.

It will work. It has worked.

You know the story. Fairytale season for the expansion … excuse me! … first-year Everett Silvertips, who make it all the way to the WHL Championship round.

Fans embrace Tips like long-lost sons.

Hockey town? Yes, hockey town.

Turnstiles click to the tune of 252,564 fans filing into the new Everett Events Center. More than $8 million “flows through the building,” in the first six months, according to Fred Safstrom, executive director of the Public Facilities District. The economic impact on the community, he figures, is in the neighborhood of $24 million.

Ed, whoever told you hockey wouldn’t fly in this community is an idiot. And whoever doubted that your dream project of a building was a mistake was, well, mistaken.

There were doubters. And opponents.

“A lot of opposition,” Hansen said Thursday afternoon, as he sat in his office in the Public Utility District of Snohomish County headquarters in Everett.

Now the PUD general manager, Hansen had weathered the opposition without an “I told you so.” But when asked if some of the Doubting Thomases had given in and admitted that the events center wasn’t such a bad idea after all, he quickly responded, “yes!”

One fellow, who sold some property to the city where the events center was built, said to Hansen: “I’m not going to hold you up, but this thing just doesn’t make sense.”

“He died about a year or so ago,” Hansen said, “and I received an e-mail from his daughter who basically said, ‘This thing is amazing. My Dad and I were opposed to it and I’m writing to tell you if Dad were here, he would be writing you a letter admitting he was wrong.’ Congratulations on a successful project.”

Ed Hansen doesn’t seem like an “I told you so” kind of guy. He seems like a guy who gets things done, then sits back and enjoys watching people enjoy the things he got done.

Yes, he went to a “number of games” in the events center. Yes, he got as caught up in the Silvertips frenzy as everyone else did. Yes, he was ecstatic about the energy in the building that flowed onto the streets of downtown Everett on game nights. Yes, he was pleased to see restaurants filled to overflowing, bringing life to a once listless downtown.

Much of the flak he received concerned the location of the events center. Old, historic buildings had to come down.

Some contended it improved the landscape when they did come down.

Like the realtor and Jamie Moyer both insist, “Location. Location. Location.”

In visits to a number of other cities, Hansen had discovered that “without exception, when they (the events centers) had been located somewhere in the downtown, they had resulted in substantial redevelopment, and they brought increased foot traffic to downtown.

“That was one thing you have to go a bit on faith.”

Faith was rewarded in this old mill town. And there’s more to come. Much more, Hansen firmly believes.

“We still haven’t seen the full impact of this facility,” he said. “I think we will see more and more restaurants, and I hope we’ll see a downtown hotel at some point, but the most important thing is it’s bringing people downtown.”

This is important, too. It’s brought a sense of pride to the city where he was brought up, a city that used to have an inferiority complex, but now can point to this jewel of a building and crow, “That’s ours. We did it right.”

Ed Hansen is quick to spread the credit around for getting the events center built, but every project has to have a leader, and this man led from the start.

Several years ago, soon after Hansen became mayor, a private investor came with a proposal to build a sports arena and hotel in Everett. The fellow brought with him on one of his visits a guy who owned a WHL team and was looking to move his team. He thought Everett would be a good site.

Turns out, though, the investor couldn’t get his financing together so … mission scrubbed.

And, a seed planted.

Sports arena? Hockey?

In Everett?

“It got me intrigued,” Hansen said. “It made good sense for the city of Everett.”

Never fly, Ed.

No, it’ll just skyrocket.

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