Seahawks have grand plans for new headquarters
By DANNY O'NEIL
SEATTLE P-I REPORTER
KIRKLAND -- The image depicts a boat pulling away from a modern and angular facility sitting lakeside.
It's a computer-generated image sharp enough to be mistaken for a portrait. There are even birds gliding above the boat, and on Tuesday, Seahawks CEO Tod Leiweke gave voice to the vision behind the graphic.
"As we say, the boat pulling away from the site depicts the most coveted free agent in the NFL pulling away to get on a seaplane having just signed a contract to be a Seahawk," Leiweke said.
That is one of the hopes on which the Seahawks' new headquarters is built, put on the 19-acre site that sits between I-405 and Lake Washington. Paul Allen acquired the land with hopes of locating his technology companies, and in less than two years it will be the home for his football team.
The plans were officially announced Tuesday in Kirkland in a presentation that began when the lights dimmed for a slideshow. It showed the team's original training facility, which was on the water at Carillon Point in Kirkland. Then it displayed the present facility on the Northwest University campus, and finally, the plans for the future facility in Renton, which will be on twice as much land as the current headquarters and include five times as much square footage.
It's a project designed to take the franchise in the upper-left corner of the country and put it in the center of the league's landscape with a facility attractive enough to counteract the handicap of Seattle's geography in the NFL.
"We have to work harder than some other teams because of where the flow of players are and where they're coming from," president Tim Ruskell said. "We have to go above and beyond, do a little bit more in that regard, and we do that for the most part.
"I think the last part of the puzzle was the facility. Not only to attract them, but to keep players here."
Construction will begin in October. The timeline for completion is about 20 months. Training camp will be held at the facility beginning in 2008 instead of at Eastern Washington University in Cheney.
Logistics still need to be worked out as to what access fans will have to watch training-camp workouts. Leiweke pointed out that because Qwest Field is fewer than 10 miles from headquarters, it will make it easy to hold preseason events such as a scrimmage at the stadium.
The seeds for a new headquarters can be traced to when Ruskell was hired as president in February 2005. One of Ruskell's first observations, Lieweke said, when he took over was the possibility of expanding the current facilities.
"We realized there weren't a lot of opportunities to do that so we started dreaming the first day Tim was here," Leiweke said.
Ruskell has seen what the lack of a new facility can mean for a franchise. In 17 years with the Buccaneers, the team stayed in the same headquarters. He spent one year in Atlanta before coming to Seattle, and that season showed him the boost a state-of-the-art facility can provide. Falcons owner Arthur Blank modified the Falcons' practice facility in Flowery Branch, Ga., to make it one of the best in the league. A dining room, players' lounge and dormitory all were added to the construction project.
The result was higher participation in offseason training programs, said Ruskell, improving from somewhere around 40 percent to more than 90 percent.
The headquarters became a magnet that didn't just attract players to the team, but pulled guys already on the roster closer.
"It was a facility that players wanted to go to and you had more and more players living in the community," Ruskell said.
Ruskell said he was initially surprised the Seahawks did not have a permanent indoor practice facility given the frequency of precipitation in the area. The team had a practice bubble, a tent-like, inflated structure. The bubble blocks the view of nearby apartment units, and the team can only use the bubble during designated periods.
"That hurt our offseason program in terms of players would have to go over to the University of Washington to make sure they got their workout in in the offseason," Ruskell said.
Ruskell first saw the site for the new facility from the water. He was in a boat with Leiweke.
"I think we were pulling his kids on a 'tube,'" Ruskell said. "We weren't looking for land. It wasn't like we were Lewis and Clark."
But it was clear that even before the Seahawks played in their first Super Bowl last season they were looking at a new frontier of expectations.
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