Seattle's Climate Pledge Arena celebrates 5 years

Five years ago this week in 2021, the opening concert featured local legends Foo Fighters and Death Cab for Cutie, and the first Seattle Kraken home game was played just a day after that grand opening. And John Harperstad is live at Climate Pledge this morning telling us what the five-year celebration is looking like. John, good morning. Good morning, Bill. Yeah, they're going to host the Utah's hockey team tonight here, the Kraken are. But, you know, in five years, they have held over 1,000 events here at Climate Pledge Arena, which is just amazing here. Eight million people have come through the doors of this place. Construction began. They had to, of course, build while keeping the original historic roof. You mentioned the first concert ever was the Foo Fighters, the second public concert, Coldplay. That was live-streamed as well. And, of course, this is home to the Seattle Kraken. and hopefully maybe one day being home to a basketball team here that starts with the letter S. But let's join Andrea Buckmeyer right now to talk more about this. You're VP of Marketing, and actually we're watching work here on the ice, and I'm always amazed because all of this ice comes from rainwater, right? It does, it does, yeah. This is where the only arena where we gather 15,000 gallons of water in a big cistern, and that is what we use to make our ice. So we're the greenest and cleanest ice. Well, we call it Climate Pledge Arena, makes sense, right? Yeah. Tell me about this because you were here from day one as far as when this place opened. And that was very challenging, right? Because right in the midst of the pandemic. Yes, I mean, we were in a global pandemic and it was 2021, the fall, and we were racing to get this building ready. There'd been some delays because of that. And we knew we had a hard date, we had to match. And so we were just following all the regulations, wanting to make people feel safe, of course. And when we opened in, I think our first game was October 23rd, 2021, we were still cleaning the seats off and putting the final bolts in. But welcomed our first fans in with masks on and with vaccination cards and all those things. But it was just such a great moment to have people finally gather. And I think you could just feel the joy of having, I think we had 13 or 14,000 people early days coming in and having our players be able to play in front of fans again and all of those things that were just all of those nods that people were really wanting to get back to and so it was such an amazing time to launch the team like just launching the team without that would have been crazy but doing that within a pandemic and within this time where the world just everybody was really unsure of what was going on um it was it was really incredible it's crazy times. Now, you know, you had to build under a historic roof. So a lot of challenges came in around building this place. But what are some of the more amazing parts of Climate Pledge Arena to you? I mean, I think the thing is with this building is that it's so intimate. Because we had the constraints of the roof, we dug down. So it's one of the only buildings that I think when you come in, you're on the top floor. And so you go down actually into the bowels of the arena to be ice side or where your seats are and it's still very small when you think about arenas so you just really feel like you're part of the action the sound in here is incredible for concerts and you see that just everybody's so excited to be here people have memories of what it was with the coliseum what it was with key arena and so sometimes they're still like well where's that corner where's that thing that i used to know and then they just get impressed by what we have here to offer. The concessions are all new. We have an incredible staff. I think it's world-class. And it's just, it's such a fun place to be. And it holds a lot of memories for a lot of Seattleites. Absolutely. Now it was built obviously for hockey, also built for basketball. You worked for the Sonics back in the day. So how are you feeling here? There's been a lot of talk about a decision maybe being made by the end of the year. How are you feeling right now about potentially bringing a basketball team in here to Climate Pledge? Well, personally, my fingers and toes are both crossed um there would be nothing better uh i think you know we're excited the building's ready like that's for sure i think there's this city is ready we're more than ready and you know of course it's up to the commissioner it's up to the nba what they want to do but i think i think the city is going to go crazy if we get that chance to bring the sonics back and i will be the first in line for tickets yeah and we've got the perfect spot for it right perfect spot yeah i mean this building was built for it we've had already a lot of basketball here with ncaa finals we've hosted some nba games the storm plays here so it's it's basketball ready for sure um i think we have maybe a locker room tucked in the back that's ready that might have you know a blank name on it so um we're excited okay andrew thanks so much so we're celebrating five years of Climate Pledge Arena we've had the Kraken so far maybe when we celebrate 10 years of Climate Pledge we'll be also talking about the return of the Sonics guys we'll send it back to you and that game at Climate Pledge Arena tonight. We have Utah taking on the Kraken and Climate Pledge celebrating a birthday. They officially opened on this day in 2021, and the opening concert featured the Foo Fighters and Death Cab for Cutie. The first Kraken home game was played just a day after the grand opening. And FOX 13's John Harperstad at Climate Pledge this morning talking about what this five-year celebration is looking like. John, good morning. Good morning, Bill. Yeah, we're right next to the living wall, so one of the most popular places in all of Seattle to take a selfie with your phone you come to Climate Pledge this is pretty much the first place you come to and we're joined with by uh nick varwick who is ahead of mark is ahead of booking here you book all the shows for Climate Pledge but i do want to ask you about this first because we mentioned it's such a popular spot to come to but five years ago when you opened up these plants and these trees didn't look like this right no grown out yeah they were in these tiny little receptacles which are still there they've all grown out through there but you can just kind of see the growth you could see each one of those individually when we first opened and now the growth has just kind of taken over all of it so there's over 47 different species of plants that are within this wall gets water from the top down someone takes care of it every week trims it moves out plants that are too big you know I don't understand the physics behind some of these that they're able to fit in there but they make it work at the end of the day but This is Amazon's kind of activation for what is the Climate Pledge, which is ultimately what we're named after here. Now, you've been here since the place opened, and you've been booking concerts and, of course, all the sports events here as well. What's changed or what has been kind of a surprise for you over the five years of some of the events that you've hosted here? I think the quantity has just gone up. I mean, there's some things that we've been excited about that have exceeded what we thought they would do. You know, we've done a lot of live music. We've done a lot of K-pop shows that have come through here. That's been a great addition to the diversity of our calendar overall. And just the number of events just keep increasing year over year. Yeah, you just heard about a couple. Give us the announcement. There's a couple that you just heard about. Yeah, we just announced the second Calvin Harris show yesterday. So we've got two shows of that. That goes on sale today at noon for May dates. We just announced Queens of the Stone Age for May 7th. That'll go on sale next week. And then Garth Brooks, we just announced a third show with him. That'll go on sale tomorrow at 10 a.m. That one's set for November 13, 14, and 15. Well, we know that's going to sell out pretty quick, probably. Okay, Nick, you've got all these concerts, you've got all these events happening here. The big question a lot of people have, though, is can you handle an additional 40 nights a year or more for NBA basketball? Absolutely. We're ready for it. This building was built to do everything. So any event that comes through, we're ready to do it. So we've got an amazing operations team, the conversions team here, housekeeping. being they're all amazing the way that they flip this building night after night to get ready for the next event uh they're doing heroes work every single night so um it's amazing so you just put that hardwood right over the ice and you're good to go right yep yeah just that easy yep no they work very hard and uh work long hours overnight but they make it work every single day are you optimistic Sonics are returning i'm always optimistic you know yeah yeah gotta put it out there so you heard it here first all right nick thanks so much five years five year birthday here climate pledge and yes they say they can handle all those dates if an nba team comes back when an nba team comes back guys yeah that's that yeah that's what we're talking about when the pledge arena officially opened on this day in 2021 and the opening concert featured local legends foo fighters and death cab for cutie the first seattle kraken home game was played just a day after the grand opening and fox 13's john hopperstad is at climate pledge this morning telling us what the the five-year celebration is looking like. John, good morning. Good morning, Bill. Well, you mentioned they're going to start the celebration with Utah coming to town tonight versus the Kraken. They hope, though, in the next year or two, there will be a celebration maybe around basketball. And certainly, if you come outside of Climate Pledge Arena here, you see this wonderful statue of the great Lenny Wilkens here, a Sonics star as a player and as a coach, took us to a championship, won it. And then, of course, Sue Bird with the Storm over there as well. We're going to need more statues along here. I'm thinking maybe Gary Payton, Detlef Schrempf. But we're joined once again with Nick, who is in charge of booking here. And you were mentioning earlier that the commissioner has said some very positive things when it comes to Climate Pledge Arena and basketball, right? Yeah, absolutely. He made a comment a few weeks ago about how this building could be ready within five weeks. And arguably, we're ready now. We're ready for any event that comes through here. This building was built for anything technology-wise, everything that you could think of, we're ready to do in this building. I know you're ready to go, but have you been in kind of a readiness mode ever since this opened up? Because we never knew when or if the Sonics would return. You've got an actual locker room down here for an NBA team already, right? Yep, yep. We built the building with space in mind and all the technology and all the things that we would need to host another tenant in this building like an NBA franchise. I know that you've had a lot more concerts than you could have ever imagined here over the last several years. I mean, this is one of the most popular venues for shows around the country. But you're telling me you can handle an NBA regular season, right? Yeah, absolutely. we've got an amazing operations and conversions team here including housekeeping that they turn over this building every single night event after event after event and and you know this is why we we built this building we knew that it could handle that kind of load we knew that Seattle could support it and we've got a great team that can keep this building busy 365 days a year all right uh Climate Pledge Arena was built for sustainability obviously they use rain water for the ice rink and what i love about this place is you've got the original roof here the historic roof, but you were saying that this glass is all from the original arena as well. Yeah, the whole roof and the glass is a national landmark. It was deemed that during the construction of the building process. The roof was built in 1962 for the World's Fair. The glass during the construction process, we obviously suspended the roof with all these temporary columns that help support us get all the dirt out and build a new building underneath the roof. This glass was cataloged off site, stored and then brought back in to be reinstalled and look like it did back in 1962. And finally, when we talk about a zero-carbon footprint, you guys take that pretty seriously, right? We do, yeah. We're certified at the highest levels. We're the only building to be certified by the International Living Future Institute. And what that essentially means is that we get audited every single year on our sustainability. Every event that happens at Climate Pledge Arena is zero waste and zero carbon, which means we divert all of that waste from the landfills. The carbon is certified at the highest level, like I said and people can attend the event with their ticket that gets them a light rail ride on any public transit in the city of Seattle at no additional cost so yeah we do a lot of things to offset that to be you know sustainable but it's it's an amazing thing and it's a thing that helps us attract events to Seattle too. All right Nick thanks so much for being with us here on the fifth anniversary of Climate Pledge Arena it's such a cool place to come for a show a Kraken game a Storm game. And with Lenny here, maybe someday soon, a Sonics game. Guys, we'll send it back to you. That would be great. Yeah, win the Sonics. Win, win. That's the key statement.