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With NHL team secured, work to begin on arena overhaul

SEATTLE — With shovels made from hockey sticks, dignitaries Wednesday broke ground for the new arena that will be home to a Seattle NHL team.

"I'm a little bit more broke," Tim Leiweke of Oak View Group joked after the ceremony.

That's because he said arena costs have already jumped to $850 million.

Add in the $650 million in NHL franchise fees, and a lot of money is being spent here.

"We're doing that without the taxpayers having to pay for it," Leiweke said.

The overhaul of the arena will save only the roof of the building, which dates back to the 1962 World's Fair.

Construction will begin next week.

Groundbreaking comes a day after the NHL awarded Seattle the league's 32nd team.

Competition will begin in the 2021 season, instead of the 2020 season that NHL Seattle executives first wanted.

The extra time takes off some pressure for building the new arena, which will be a complicated construction project to dig out beneath the roof.

32,000 fans paid deposits last spring for season tickets and another 5,000 joined a waiting list after the league's announcement.

PHOTOS: What the renovated arena could look like

The upgrade could not proceed until it was official that Seattle would get an expansion team.

At a South Lake Union watch party for the expansion vote Tuesday, KIRO 7 spoke to members of NHL Seattle about why it took so long to get an NHL team. The answer was simple.

“It's really the arena. We never had a facility that would be able to entertain the NHL and the requirements that they had. The existing arena is an offset rink -- a horseshoe configuration which isn't good for hockey, so until we had an existing arena for the league they were never going to come,” said NHL Seattle Senior Executive Lance Lopes.

A study predicting traffic impacts for the area around the arena said the traffic was likely to be congested with or without the renovation project.

It also predicts crowded transit, more traffic from Mercer Street backed up onto I-5, and more jammed intersections before, and especially after, events.

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