Les Carpenter / Times staff columnist
Welcome to the smartest stadium in the world

	KOJI SASAHARA / AP Saitama Stadium, completed in 2000 at a cost of around $700 million, can convert from a stadium to an arena to a concert hall in a matter of minutes.
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TOKYO — About 10 years ago, the people of the Tokyo suburb of Saitama decided they wanted to remake their city center. A plan was conceived to build blocks and blocks of gleaming towers.

And in the middle would stand the most technologically-advanced sports facility in the world.

This week, the Sonics open their season in what the architects and designers call "the smart arena." But it might as well be called "a genius," because no other stadiums in the world can do as much as this one.

No other 35,000-seat stadium can turn itself into a 20,000-seat arena, then a 6,000-seat concert hall in a matter of minutes. Until now, it's never been possible.

Sure, the Kingdome had movable stands that could make a 60,000-seat dome feel something like an arena. Some domes even use curtains to close off whole sections and create a general sense of intimacy. But Saitama Stadium actually moves stands, ceilings, concourses and restrooms to legitimately change a stadium into an arena.

"It's totally unique," says Gordon Wood of Ellerbe-Becket, the Kansas City firm that designed Saitama Stadium and also designed and built Seahawks Stadium.

Sonics in Japan Thursday: vs. L.A. Clippers, 2:30 a.m. Friday: vs. L.A. Clippers, 7 p.m., KONG (Ch. 6/16)

It's also expensive. The final price for Saitama Stadium (completed in 2000) was around $700 million, but this is what the city wanted. Because conceivably, the building can be used every day of the year, for events ranging from football to soccer to basketball, to boxing, to concerts and conventions. Some at the same time.

The trick is in the seating sections. Saitama Stadium is built in an elongated oval with arcing grandstands at each end and a long, straight grandstand on the side. It is fully enclosed, but since the roof is flat, it is not considered a dome. When workers want to convert the stadium into an arena, the stands on the side fold into the walls, and the block of seats at one end moves across the floor to meet up with the other end section.

At the same time, a sub-ceiling drops down from the roof, closing off the arena from the rest of the stadium.

"You don't want to have a feeling like you're playing basketball in a stadium the way you do with domes," Wood says.

The whole process takes about 20 minutes rather than the hours it took to transform a building such as the Kingdome.

Which raises a good question. If the technology existed to make Saitama Stadium the world's ideal multipurpose facility, why couldn't Seattle have used such science to replace the Kingdome? This way it would have had a stadium for football and soccer (World Cup matches were played in Saitama last year), an arena for the Final Four and an exhibition hall.

The reasons it wouldn't work are linked in cost and practicality. For all of its versatility, Saitama Stadium is small. The maximum number of people it can house for an event is about 35,000. A more workable number for football and soccer games is 30,000. And $700 million is a lot to spend for a 35,000-seat indoor stadium.

"I don't think there is an American city that would want a 30,000-seat stadium and a 20,000-seat arena," Wood says. "We talked to Singapore about something like this, but they wanted a 50,000 to 60,000-seat stadium and the scale changes and the economy changes.

"At some point, you get to the place where you're just better off building a new stadium and a new arena."

In short, it would cost a lot more than $700 million.

And while it might seem absurd to have spent about $1 billion on two stadiums south of Pioneer Square, it would have been more expensive to build a baseball stadium and an all-in-one replacement for the Kingdome.

This is why the world's first smart arena might be the world's only smart arena. Better look closely when watching the Sonics this week, because it's unlikely we'll ever see something similar to Saitama Stadium in the United States.

Still, it's a work of ingenuity. The stadium, in its arena mode, even has a floor that drops down, allowing for more seats to be placed close to a boxing or wrestling ring. Special partitions can be moved around a section of stands to create a small theater ideal for concerts and plays.

There isn't much they didn't think of.

Except for a way to make it work over here.

Les Carpenter can be reached at 206-464-2280 or lcarpenter@seattletimes.com. More columns at www.seattletimes.com/columnists

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