Seattle NHL team breaks ground on practice facility

SEATTLE (AP) — The foundation for Seattle’s future NHL franchise continued to take shape Thursday as the team broke ground on its practice facility just a few miles from the arena it will call home.

The team’s practice facility, which will eventually house three full ice sheets, and its headquarters are the centerpiece of a larger redevelopment project on the site of a former mall.

Seattle President and CEO Tod Lewieke said the practice facility is on a similar timeline as the team’s arena, which is being constructed on the Seattle Center campus. Leiweke said the goal is to have the practice facility open in the summer of 2021 in the hope of holding the club’s first rookie camp and training camp there.

The facility will house the only ice hockey rinks inside the Seattle city limits.

“There were some days I wondered, could we have gone to an existing rink, build locker room space, put up some paint and banners and checked the box? I’ve done that in a prior life,” Leiweke said. “Here we said it’s really a shortcut because how could you be playing in a city with no sheets of ice? The city of Seattle did not have a sheet of ice. Now they’re going to have four —- one at the big house and three here. It gives us a chance to grow the sport. It gives us a chance to make a statement to players and so it’s the right thing to do.”

While primarily serving as the practice facility for the yet-to-be-named team, Seattle intends to make all three rinks open for public use and hopes it can become a destination for hockey and figure skating events in the Pacific Northwest. The main rink will have seating for 1,000 spectators with the other two each able to hold up to 400. The facility will be 180,000 square feet.

“For our players to be in the heart of the city, for our players to be 10 minutes away it makes a huge difference,” Lewieke said. “It was a scary thing initially and we knew we had to solve it, and it’s worked out fantastically.”