Kingdome

nickname	The Kingdome The Dome
location	201 S. King Street Seattle, Washington
Broke ground	November 2, 1972
opened	March 27, 1976
Closed	January 9, 2000
Demolished	March 26, 2000 (24 years)
owner	King County
Operator	King County Department of Stadium Administration
Surface	AstroTurf
Construction cost	$67 million
Architect	Naramore, Skilling & Praeger
Structural Engineer	Skilling, Helle, Christiansen & Robertson, Inc.
General Contractor	Peter Kiewit Sons Construction Company
tenants	Seattle Seahawks (NFL) (1976–January 9, 2000) Seattle Sounders (NASL) (1976–1983) Seattle Mariners (MLB) (1977–1999) Seattle SuperSonics (NBA) (1978–1985) NCAA Final Four (1984, 1989, 1995)
seating_capacity	Baseball: 59,166 Football: 66,000 Basketball: 40,000

This 1996 map of the Pioneer Square-Skid Road Historic District shows the location of the Kingdome (at the lower right in the map).

The Kingdome (officially King County Multipurpose Domed Stadium) was a multi-purpose stadium in Seattle, Washington, located in the city's SoDo neighborhood. Owned and operated by King County, the Kingdome opened in 1976 and was best known as the home stadium of the Seattle Seahawks of the National Football League (NFL), the Seattle Mariners of Major League Baseball (MLB), and the Seattle SuperSonics of the National Basketball Association (NBA). The stadium served as both the home outdoor and indoor venue for the Seattle Sounders of the North American Soccer League (NASL) and hosted numerous amateur sporting events, concerts, and other events.

Concept and construction

In 1959, Seattle restaurateur David L. Cohn wrote a letter to the Seattle City Council suggesting that the city needed a covered stadium for a major professional sports franchise. A domed stadium was thought to be a must due to Seattle's frequent rain. At the time, the city already had Husky Stadium and Sick's Stadium for collegiate football and minor league baseball, respectively, but both were deemed inadequate for a major league team.

In 1960, the city council placed a $15 million bond issue measure on the ballot to fund construction of a stadium, but voters rejected it due to doubt that the stadium could be built within that budget, and lack of a guarantee that the city would have a team to play in the stadium. By 1966, the National Football League and the American League were both considering granting the city an expansion franchise, and as a result the King County Council placed another bond issue measure on the ballot, which was also rejected by voters.

In 1967, the American League granted Seattle an expansion franchise that would later be known as the Seattle Pilots. The league clearly stated that Sick's Stadium was not adequate as a major-league stadium, and stipulated that as a condition of being awarded the franchise, bonds had to be issued to fund construction of a new domed stadium that had to be completed by 1970; additionally, the capacity at Sick's Stadium had to be expanded from 11,000 to 30,000 by Opening Day 1969, when the team was scheduled to begin playing. The Pilots were originally supposed to begin play in 1971 along with the Kansas City Royals. However, when Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri got wind of those plans, he demanded that both teams begin play in 1969. The American League had birthed the Royals and Pilots as a result of the Kansas City Athletics moving to Oakland, and Symington would not accept the prospect of Kansas City waiting three years for baseball's return.

In February 1968, as part of the Forward Thrust group of bond propositions, King County voters approved the issue of $40 million in bonds to fund construction of the "King County Multipurpose Domed Stadium." That year a committee considered over 100 sites throughout Seattle and King County for the stadium, and unanimously decided the best site would be on the grounds of Seattle Center, site of the 1962 World's Fair. Community members decried the idea, claiming that the committee was influenced by special interest groups.

The Kingdom pictured behind USS Leahy (DLG-16) in 1982.

The Pilots began play as planned in 1969, but Sick's Stadium proved to be a problematic venue for fans, media, and visiting players alike, and it soon became apparent that it was inadequate even for temporary use. The Pilots only drew 677,000 fans that season, not nearly enough to break even, and a petition by stadium opponents brought the Sick's Stadium project to a halt. The Pilots' ownership group ran out of money by the end of the season, and with the stadium plans in limbo, the team was forced to declare bankruptcy. Despite efforts by Seattle-area businessmen to buy the team as well as an attempt to keep the team in Seattle through the court system, the Pilots were sold to Milwaukee businessman Bud Selig, who relocated the team to Wisconsin and renamed it the Milwaukee Brewers a week before the start of the 1970 season.

The push to build the domed stadium continued despite the lack of a major league sports team to occupy it. In May 1970 voters rejected the proposal to build the stadium at Seattle Center. From 1970 to 1972, the commission studied the feasibility and economic impact of building the stadium on King Street adjacent to Pioneer Square and the International District—a site that ranked at the bottom when the commission originally narrowed the field of possible sites in 1968. This drew sharp opposition primarily from the International District community, which feared the impact of the stadium on neighborhood businesses located east of the site. In 1972, a groundbreaking ceremony was held on the King Street site on November 2. Several protesters attended the ceremony, disrupted the speakers, and at one point threw mud balls at them.

On December 5, 1974, the NFL awarded Seattle an expansion franchise to occupy the new stadium; the team was later named the Seattle Seahawks. Construction lasted another two years, and the stadium held an opening ceremony on March 27, 1976. It hosted its first professional sporting event two weeks later on April 9, an exhibition soccer game between the Seattle Sounders and New York Cosmos of the NASL. It set a record for the largest soccer audience in North America at 58,120.

Basketball

Seattle SuperSonics

Besides the Mariners and Seahawks, the stadium also hosted the NBA's Seattle SuperSonics for a number of years. The 1978–79 season was the first year the Sonics played in the Kingdome on a full-time basis with the addition of portable stadium seating added onto the floor of the arena as well as additional scoreboards and a new basketball court. Fred Brown and Gus Williams led the team that year to their first and only championship. At the time it was known in the NBA for being the noisiest arena for basketball as well as the largest crowds with stadium vendor Bill the Beerman taking the duties as cheerleader. In the 1979–80 season, the SuperSonics set an NBA record average attendance of 21,725 fans per game (since broken). The SuperSonics also set NBA records for single-game playoff attendance in 1978 and 1980 with crowds of 39,457 and 40,172 respectively (also since broken). The Kingdome record attendance for a regular season game was in 1991, with 38,067. The SuperSonics hosted the 1987 NBA All-Star Game there.

Logistics would be a problem during the playoffs, as the Mariners (the Kingdome's primary tenants) objected to letting the Sonics play there in the spring. Most of the games would be played at Seattle Center Coliseum, and a few of the games had to be played at Hec Edmundson Pavilion at the University of Washington.

Sonics owner Barry Ackerley made the decision to leave the Kingdome and to build a new basketball arena. Plans were underway to build a new arena south of the Kingdome (where Safeco Field stands today) to be called Ackerley Arena, but after financing fell through, the team went back to the Coliseum, which was later rebuilt as KeyArena, reopening for the 1995–96 season. The Sonics played there until the team was purchased by Oklahoma City businessman Clayton "Clay" Bennett before the 2008-09 season.

College

The NCAA Final Four of college basketball was held three times at the Kingdome - in 1984, when Georgetown defeated Houston, in 1989 when Michigan beat Seton Hall in overtime, and in 1995 when UCLA won their first championship since the retirement of coach John Wooden, defeating Arkansas.

Final years

Relocation threats

By the 1990s, the stadium's suitability as an NFL and MLB venue came into doubt. Neither the Seahawks' nor the Mariners' respective ownership groups saw the shared stadium arrangement as economically feasible. After several years of threats to relocate the Mariners due to poor attendance and revenue, owner Jeff Smulyan sold the team to an ownership group led by Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi in 1992. Almost immediately, the new ownership group began campaigning with local and state governments to secure public funding for a new baseball-only stadium. In March 1994, King County Executive Gary Locke appointed a task force to study the need for a baseball-only stadium.

1994 ceiling collapse

The Kingdome's roof had been problematic from the beginning. Leaks were discovered in the roof two months before the stadium opened, and several attempts at repairs made the situation worse and/or had to be undone. In 1993, the county decided to strip off the outer roof coating and replace it with a special coating. Sandblasting failed to strip the old roof material off, and the contractor changed its method to pressure washing. This pressure-washing resulted in water seepage through the roof, and on July 19, 1994, four 26-pound (12 kg), waterlogged acoustic ceiling tiles fell into the seating area. The tiles fell while the Mariners were on the field preparing for a scheduled game against the Baltimore Orioles, a half-hour before the gates were to open for fans to enter the stadium. As a result, the Kingdome was closed.

Demolition

The Kingdome imploding in March 2000

Controlled Demolition, Inc. demolished the Kingdome by implosion on March 26, 2000 (approximately the 24th anniversary of the Kingdome's opening), setting a record recognized by Guinness World Records for the largest building, by volume, ever demolished by implosion. The Kingdome was the first large, domed stadium to be demolished in the United States and the demolition of the Kingdome was the first live event covered by ESPN Classic. The Kingdome was demolished before the debt issued to finance its construction was fully paid and as of September 2010, residents of King County were still responsible for more than $80 million in debt on the demolished stadium. As of January 2015, the debt was expected to be retired by March 2015, nine months ahead of the original bond maturity and 15 years after the demolition in March 2000. The 2 percent of the 15.6 percent hotel/motel tax earmarked for the Kingdome debt not longer needed will instead go to the county's 4Culture program for arts, heritage, and preservation.

Successors

Two separate facilities replaced the Kingdome. Safeco Field, a purpose-built baseball park for the Seattle Mariners, broke ground in 1997 on a site located adjacent to the Kingdome, across Royal Brougham Way, and opened in 1999. CenturyLink Field, a multipurpose stadium built primarily for the Seattle Seahawks was built on the Kingdome's former site beginning after the demolition of the Kingdome in 2000. CenturyLink Field (previously known as Seahawks Stadium and Qwest Field) has been the home field of the Seattle Seahawks since it opened in 2002, and has been home field for the Seattle Sounders FC of Major League Soccer since 2009.