A library lesson for the Sonics

Guess which is more dependent on a government handout: An arena for a for-profit, pro basketball team? Or the public libraries?

Now the libraries are so bad at business they let you enter for free and lend you their merchandise for nothing. So surely an arena for a commercial enterprise, where tickets can run more than $100, would attract more private money than a library?

Amazingly, it isn't so.

The $500 million Renton basketball palace unveiled last week by the Sonics would get only about 20 percent of its financing from investors. The rest would come from us.

Even that split is generous, says owner Clay Bennett. His team loses so much money it makes no sense for him to invest any more, he said.

"The model that works is that these arenas are public buildings," Bennett told the state Senate.

Yet when Seattle built or renovated 28 libraries recently, about 30 percent of the $275 million came from private donors. They were gifts, not investments. But 22,000 people gave $82 million to build and stock the libraries. Taxpayers paid the rest.

Bennett says he is perplexed that few seem to like his world's priciest arena. Here's a thought: If you won't invest much in it, and you can't find anyone else to invest in it, why should we?

It's not just libraries that make this arena look like a boondoggle.

The $127 million ballet and opera hall? That was 57 percent private money. The $118 million symphony hall: 67 percent private. The $85 million Olympic Sculpture Park: 75 percent private.

Here's a good one: The $66 million basketball arena and practice facility at the University of Washington was 100 percent privately financed.

That's right — a public school figured out how to build a sports arena without soaking taxpayers. But a pro sports franchise cannot?

People say sports is as central to the city's soul as arts, parks and libraries. OK, I agree.

So why can't pro sports pay its way, as least as much as the arts, parks and libraries?

Maybe it's because the business of basketball is simply broken. It can't survive without being a ward of the state.

"They need to get their own financial house in order and if they did, they wouldn't have to ask for public help," Speaker of the House Frank Chopp said.

Or maybe it's because we've never asked them to pay their own way.

I was hoping for a little more do-it-yourself spirit this time around. These are sturdy Republicans from red-state Oklahoma. I thought they might come into socialist Seattle and show us how real libertarians get things done. At least offer to meet us halfway.

Instead, they want more taxpayer help than the Mariners or the Seahawks. Good grief, more than the public libraries.

After Bennett finished his presentation to the Senate last week, only one senator asked him a question. Then there was a long, awkward silence.

We're painfully polite up here in the Northwest. I think that was the sound of somebody finally telling the insane world of pro sports: "No."

Danny Westneat's column appears Wednesday and Sunday. Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.