Update: Major update in Seattle Arena saga

The dream of having an NHL team in the city of Seattle is looking more and more like reality. With news emerging in the past few weeks that the city has come to a partnership with Tim Leiweke’s Oak View Group (OVG) on a $660 million renovation of the KeyArena, plans look to finally be in place.

Now, Leiweke is sharing details of OVG’s plans for the renovated building and it may come as a surprise to some hockey fans. 

“What we’re doing is we’re keeping the outside of the arena as is because this is 1962 and the World’s Fair and so there’s a great deal of history and tradition but we’re going down and completely gutting the bowl and completely gutting the concourses and doubling the size of the arena to 660,000 square feet,” Leiweke explained. “Imagine, essentially, it will look an awful lot like the Air Canada Centre and like the Air Canada Centre we’ll have an atrium that essentially gets people down—so you’ll enter on the top level and then go down to the rest of the building and the bowl.”

Interesting. Toronto’s Air Canada Centre is one of the most lauded buildings in the NHL, so any semblance of it with the new KeyArena would be impressive indeed. In fact, OVG released some artist renderings of what the building may look like. 

Check it out:

What do you think? Pretty cool?