The Seattle Sounders announced Friday that they have begun exploratory conversations about the team’s USL affiliate playing its home games in a new stadium in Tacoma sometime in the next three years.
Sounders owner Adrian Hanauer and Tacoma Rainiers president Aaron Artman made the announcement via conference call with media members on Friday. Seattle Sounders FC 2 has trained and played all of its home games at the Starfire Sports in suburban Tukwila since making its USL debut in 2015.
The club will not relocate its training grounds, but the appeal of a new stadium and a partnership with the Rainiers was enticing enough for both organizations to begin conversations about a potential move roughly 25 miles south on S2 game nights.
Hanauer said the Sounders would continue to run the technical side of operations for S2, while the Rainiers would run the business side, similar to how Major League Baseball teams work with their minor-league affiliates. The Rainiers are the Triple-A affiliate of the Seattle Mariners, and currently average roughly 4,100 fans in their 9,600-seat Cheney Stadium.
“I’m very excited about the prospects,” Hanauer said. “As everyone knows in the stadium world, these things are complicated and there are a lot of moving parts, but we wanted to show our support and give everyone in Tacoma an opportunity to try and make this thing come to fruition.”
The Sounders played a Reserve League game at Cheney Stadium in 2013, and although conversations didn’t materialize in time for S2 to take root there, the game piqued the interest of Artman and the Rainiers about a potential partnership in the future.
Still, Artman said he knew fans would be skeptical of soccer games played inside a baseball stadium – “It wasn’t the best experience,” Artman admitted – and conversations between the Rainiers and Metro Parks Tacoma heated up roughly six months ago about the possibility of a sparkling new stadium and a new soccer team in the South Sound.
“I called Adrian and we began discussing how Tacoma could be the home of the Sounders’ USL affiliate, similar to how we are for the Mariners,” Artman said. “It’s my belief that this region would really embrace it …
“Now the real work begins. How do we get this project done, and how do we get a great soccer facility in the South Sound?”
Artman said it’s difficult to put a timeline on the move – the approval process from Metro Parks and City of Tacoma officials combined with development and construction of a new stadium will almost certainly take at least two years – but he indicated that the idea could likely become reality in 2019.
“There’s an outside shot at 2018, but 2019 would be the most realistic time to say we have the place open and ready for soccer,” Artman said. “We’re short on details and high on aspirations right now, and there are a ton of moving parts, but there’s a real interest, specifically with Metro Parks, in leading this from the government side and figuring out how we get this done.”
Artman said he’s unsure exactly where the new stadium would be located in Tacoma, but that he thinks a stadium that can house roughly 5,000 fans would be ideal for the team’s new home.
Hanauer indicated that the move would provide a benefit for the Sounders on the S2 side, where he admitted that drawing fans to Tukwila consistently for S2 games has been a challenge.
“The advantages are considerably on the business side …” Hanauer said. “We think there’s enormous potential to develop a strong fanbase for Tacoma, and certainly to mine fans for the Sounders.”
Hanauer said the Sounders have long considered running their USL affiliate in a peripheral market outside Seattle to avoid competition with the first team, but they never seriously looked outside the Puget Sound area when S2 launched. The club ultimately settled on Tukwila for the proximity to the first team and the use of Starfire Stadium, but the idea of S2 playing in a new stadium in the region is enticing.
“If there were a stadium solution in Tacoma, it’s really the best of both worlds,” Hanauer said. “We think it’s far enough from our prime market that we can build a really solid business, and it leaves all the technical benefits intact as well. It’s really a massive win-win for the organization if we can get this over the finish line.”
Earlier this week, Hanauer and other members of the Sounders leadership team met with the executive board of the Sounders Community Trust about the potential move and they “seem highly supportive,” and the organization will continue to use them as a sounding board if S2 does make the move. Hanauer has also discussed the move with members of the executive committee of Alliance Council.
There are still questions pending – including whether the Sounders rebrand S2 in some capacity to make it more specific to Tacoma – and Hanauer said the team will discuss those types of issues with the Alliance Council as the process moves forward.
