SEATTLE — The Seattle Center's and Seattle Kraken's top leaders apologized for the miscommunication regarding the cancellation of an annual free healthcare clinic, while also saying the complications were 'materially misunderstood.'
In an interview with KING 5, Seattle Center Director Robert Nellams and Kraken CEO Tod Leiweke vowed to make the Seattle/King County Health Clinic bigger and better than ever when it returns to Climate Pledge Arena.
The clinic became a staple of the old KeyArena site, serving 3,000 to 4,000 people over four days, providing vision, medical, and dental coverage they could not otherwise receive. It was such a big deal that its inclusion into the calendar of a new arena was part of the Memorandum of Understanding with the city back in 2017. A final integration agreement, which was part of the ordinance allowing for the private construction, said the organizers and the Oak View Group would schedule the clinic on "mutually agreeable dates" at least 12 months prior to an actual event.
It is just one of the nuances to the complicated agreement. Seattle used to own and operate KeyArena, but does not own the Climate Pledge Arena facility, and was able to use KeyArena as an annual host because there were no NBA or NHL teams in the building. The WNBA and NHL have contractual holds to game nights, reducing availability, and Nellams said the pandemic limited the ability to secure the needed equipment and establish the staging for such an event.
Yet, Nellams said a week in October was part of a "soft hold" until everything could be figured out. Then, OVG booked the Zac Brown Band and The Who to fill the week in question.
"We didn't do everything that we could to communicate to the Climate Pledge about what we were ready to do when we were ready to do it," Nellams said.
He added that OVG, and conversely the Kraken, offered up the Kraken Community Iceplex as a solution, but Nellams said the building's footprint wouldn't work for the clinic. The Iceplex is 172,000 square feet. KeyArena was just under 400,000 square feet, and Climate Pledge is 800,000 square feet.
"The biggest misunderstanding is the complexities of the clinic itself and what it takes to put on a clinic and how many pieces have to be aligned and in place for the clinic to go forward," said Nellams, who added the late opening of Climate Pledge in October made it tougher to establish the logistics, like where and how to get the dental equipment. "We rent that. You have too much equipment, too many things. Too many people that work there."
Nellams continued, "There's playoff games for the WNBA, there's preseason games, you know, the building has to keep moving forward, and there was uncertainty on this date. I think both sides might have been able to communicate better, but realize there's a sea change that's happened here."
The scheduling snafu was criticized by clinic leaders.
"The fact that (the Zac Brown Band and The Who) are playing there means close to 4,000 people aren't going to get health care this year. If I were those band members I think I might want to know that," said Karen Hays, one of the clinic organizers.
Dr. Rick Arnold started a petition to save the clinic.
"They've taken advantage of people who have very little voice," Arnold said.
Leiweke said he knows there is "a lot of emotion around this."
"The clinic is in fact coming back, we're going to be deeply involved," he said. "We're going to continue to do what we've always done, which is to be community activists and serve this community. Our track record speaks to that. So I think somebody's taken a one-off shot. It's disappointing."
Nellams and Leiweke said a free vision clinic will be held at McCaw Hall this year. The healthcare clinic will be held, with medical, dental, and vision care, in April of 2023 at McCaw Hall, the Exhibition Hall, and other Seattle Center offices. Both leaders said they are working on a specific week for a return to Climate Pledge, which will be an annual date, beginning in 2024.
"Instead of having a debate about all of this stuff that we're talking about now, Who did this? Who did that? We should really be having a debate about how come we actually need to do a clinic in the first place," said Nellams. "It's a sad commentary on our society right now. That's why we're doing a clinic. Our hope is that one day in the future, we won't need to do clinics because we'll be able to take care of our people in way that they deserve to be taken care of."