Yakima's Sundome Is Open For Business

YAKIMA - The state's third domed stadium made its debut last week when the $14.8 million SunDome was unveiled after more than a year of construction.

The building, at 90 feet, is one of the city's tallest, and is expected to be a boon to tourism and entertainment for Yakima County's 186,000 residents.

``I think what we're looking at is an opportunity to broaden our spectrum,'' said Kathy Coffey, general manager of the Yakima Valley Visitors and Convention Bureau.

``Yakima right now is a state convention city. We want to go into more of a regional market,'' she said.

The dome was financed with $8.5 million in state money, the rest coming from hotel-motel tax receipts from Yakima County and the cities of Yakima and neighboring Union Gap.

The dome will initially seat 7,500, and plans are for it to expand to more than 8,000.

In addition to conventions, the dome will bring entertainment and trade shows to Yakima.

Acts during the grand opening week included country crooner Kenny Rogers, the rock band B-52s and a team of Soviet acrobats.

With 56,000 square feet of usable space, the SunDome is one-third the size of the Kingdome in Seattle and one-half the size of the Tacoma Dome.

It and the Kingdome are the only domed stadiums in the world with concrete sectional roofs.

While it is new, the SunDome already has brought controversy:

-- Former Kingdome and Tacoma Dome manager Ted Bowsfield was hired to run the SunDome, but was fired after just a few months. Bowsfield and dome officials have refused to discuss why.

-- Greenpeace Foundation volunteers traveling with the B-52s were barred from setting up their customary information table during the group's concert Thursday. Representatives of the environmental group objected.

``If you do it for one person, then you do it for everyone,'' said Bob Glasgow, SunDome manager. ``Pretty soon there would be no room in the building for anything else.''

-- There were also concerns about spending so much money in a relatively poor county beset with drug problems. The poverty will be on display to SunDome visitors because the stadium is in the heart of the city's downtrodden southeast side, on the Central Washington State Fairgrounds.

-- There are also questions about how to prevent the dome from competing with the city's 13-year-old downtown convention center.

But boosters insist the dome will pay dividends through increased tourism, with its related boost to hotels, restaurants and other businesses.

The building can accommodate sports events, but not football and baseball. Conventions remain its main purpose.

``The convention business has the greatest economic impact on the community,'' Coffey said.

Yakima already books more than 300 conventions a year, because of its central location, its hot, dry climate and its low costs. Officials hope to draw larger conventions and trade shows to the dome and an adjacent 25,000-square-foot convention center to be built this year.

The convention emphasis is so strong that Greg Stewart, who will oversee the building for the Central Washington State Fair board, rejected a bid to place a Western Hockey League franchise in the dome.

Stewart said he did not want the building tied up 40 times a year during the winter months, when the city needs convention business to fill its 1,400 hotel rooms.

Officials have said they need about 127 event days a year to break even on the $400,000 annual operating costs for the nearly debt-free building.

Washington has relatively few large-scale exposition halls, and two of them are in Central Washington, Coffey said.

They are the Kingdome, the Tacoma Dome and some smaller facilities in the Puget Sound area, several facilities in Spokane, the Tri-Cities Coliseum in Kennewick and the SunDome, she said.

Getting state money for the dome required considerable arm-twisting over several years, including some political hardball by then-state Sen. Alex Deccio, R-Yakima.

Deccio, who has since been elected to the Yakima County commission, convinced skeptical lawmakers to appropriate the money, in part by pointing out the SunDome will cost less than what the state paid in sales tax alone to purchase equipment for the $220 million convention center in Seattle.

``Why shouldn't we get our share?'' Deccio told the Yakima Herald-Republic. ``Yakima needs a new image and this will help give us that.''