True Love? Not Between Behring And The Northwest -- Seahawk Owner Ken Behring Has Never Made Much Effort To Prove He Was Anything More Than A Rich California Developer, And The Northwest Has Never Given Him Much Of A Chance.

David Behring never heard the boos.

On the day last August when the jersey of former Seattle Seahawk receiver Steve Largent was retired, Behring stood on the green Kingdome carpet and basked in the moment. When Behring's name was announced, a vague howl filled the stadium, but what it was he could not tell.

And no one had the stomach to tell him. He knew nothing until the next day, when he read about it in his newspaper. There, he finally saw the boos, in a small report.

"Oh," Behring sighed, "it's come to this."

Indeed, it has come to this. Seven years after his father, Ken Behring, arrived in Seattle with the ownership papers to the National Football League franchise and the three worst adjectives possible - rich, California, developer - the Behrings are more resented than ever.

They have made no progress with the community. Politicians are reluctant to champion their cause. Fans detest them so rabidly they took time to mix jeers with cheers on a night that should have belonged exclusively to Largent.

Many professional sports teams have unpopular owners. But the Behrings, exhausted by public criticism, are threatening to take the team out of town unless the Seahawks get a new lease and $150 million in Kingdome renovations. Concern is growing that they may try to do just that.

"I see the seeds of that, and I hope we can nip that in the bud," said Jack McMillan, Nordstrom executive and a member of the family that previously owned the Seahawks.

Personality has become a major issue in the debate over whether the Seahawks deserve a new lease and the stadium renovations - just as it was before Bill Bidwill took the St. Louis Cardinals to Arizona and before Bob Irsay spirited the Baltimore Colts to Indianapolis.

Bidwill and Irsay both had generous financial packages waiting for them in their destination cities. But they spurned Baltimore and St. Louis in the 1980s only when they had no luck getting stadium upgrades, and they took a public beating in the process.

McMillan and other local business leaders have started trying to bridge the gap between the Behrings and Seattle. But the parties are similar to distrusting strangers on opposite sides of the same lawn, neither of whom cares to walk over and get to really know the other.

A proud and content city, Seattle expects outsiders to make the first effort. Natives will embrace newcomers, even Californians, but only after they pledge allegiance to the area and show due citizenship.

David Behring said some people have treated him and his father well in Seattle, but "there are frequent times when you feel like an outsider.

"You have many old-time families that stay in very close communication," he said. "They belong to the same organizations and clubs, they socialize very strongly together on a frequent basis, and it is difficult for people coming into the area to be rapidly assimilated into those groups."

Son has made inroads

The notion applies more to father than son, who since taking over the team's administration 2 1/2 years ago has made inroads into the community. He bought a condominium on the Eastside, is a member of the 101 Club, a private social organization, and serves on the board of the Muscular Dystrophy Association.

But his success is the result of effort. There is little evidence that Ken Behring - the majority owner and the man still most identified with the team - has tried very hard to make allies in Seattle. He flies up for NFL games but otherwise spends little time in the area.

What effort Seattle's power brokers have made has not been reciprocated. Introductory parties were thrown for Behring in Seattle and Tacoma after he bought the team, and some influential citizens showed up. Behring smiled and accepted congratulations. But that was the last most of them heard from him, except through the media.

For the most part, Behring just set up shop as the new Seahawk owner and expected a continual flow of corporate and fan dollars, simply because people liked the team.

"The Behrings need to get better situated here," said Bob Gogerty, a veteran political consultant who helped to direct the campaign last summer for a new baseball stadium. "I don't believe Ken Behring is an owner who can't relate to the community, although I'm probably in the minority on that one."

The only way to understand Ken Behring, say those who do business with him, is from a Bay Area perspective. That is where he lives and learns.

Old-time families? There isn't a second-generation family in Blackhawk, the golf-course community he built east of Oakland, because there wasn't a home there until he developed the area in the 1970s. Where once were dry hills, there now are manicured lawns and nouveaux riches driving around in Lexuses.

Things move faster there. Behring got involved in housing developments in Redmond and Issaquah not long after buying the Seahawks. But those projects were still far from approval when a California project that was started later got the go-ahead. Behring finally pulled his 50 percent share out of the Port Blakely projects in 1993, frustrated with King County officials.

In the Bay Area in the past year, Oakland lured the Raiders back from Los Angeles with a $225 million deal. The San Francisco 49ers began making noises about a new stadium. Fellow Bay Area developer Alex Spanos got $60 million in stadium renovations for his San Diego Chargers.

Even Seahawk minority owner Ken Hofmann got lease concessions for his baseball team, the Oakland A's, in exchange for sharing the stadium with the Raiders.

"You read about this stuff on a daily basis," said Michael DeBene, another one of the 10 Seahawk minority owners and an East Bay resident.

Corporations and wealthy fans are making the Raider stadium renovation possible by purchasing luxury boxes and expensive seats. Meanwhile in Seattle, Behring has seen the season-ticket base drop from 65,000 to 50,000, and the team this year could not sell more than 14 of 48 suites.

The Kingdome suites are below industry standards because of poor sightlines. But the club also sees the sales as a reflection of corporate respect for the Seahawks. Even Boeing canceled its suite, despite a personal appeal from Ken Behring.

"Earlier this year when I was up for the Seahawks golf tournament I found it interesting that there was no representative from Boeing or Microsoft," DeBene said. "I know that down here when things like that go on, there's a lot of support. I was really appalled, because this was for Northwest charities."

Ken Behring, however, has never embraced the notion that he didn't buy a sports team so much as he bought a set of emotions.

In tangible property, the Seattle Seahawks Inc. do not consist of much. They own a bunch of helmets and jerseys, and a training facility in Kirkland; they rent the rest (players, stadium).

A sports team produces joy and angst and debate, and on some level, a sense of community. It is one of the few vehicles that can bring as many as 65,000 citizens together, in one building, for a shared experience. People want to believe the team on the field belongs to them.

Behring shoots down that fiction. He made clear last month who owns the team when he said he would try to move the team before selling it to local investors.

Behring is all business

The flip side of Behring's aloofness is that there is no pretense. He is who he is, a wealthy guy (estimated worth $380 million) who wants to win games and make money but has no particular affection for Seattle. Unlike the Seattle Mariner owners, who parlayed the appeal of "local ownership" into a public commitment of

$280 million, Behring presents his stadium request strictly as a business deal.

The irony is that Behring is no less involved in the area's civic and charitable organizations than most of the Mariner owners, said Gogerty, who worked briefly for the Seahawks last fall when they first presented their stadium proposal to the public.

"John Ellis was a big player in the community, but once you got past him it wasn't that way," Gogerty said.

"If we could figure out who the Mariners' owners are, maybe we'd critique them," said Mike Malone, a local music-industry executive who knows Behring because of a mutual interest in collecting antique cars.

Behring's public-relations strategy is limited to trying to build a winning team. He has spent freely on free agents and top players, amassing one of the largest payrolls in the NFL. No one can call him cheap.

They can call him naive. He thought Tom Flores was the answer as coach. He pushed to draft Dan McGwire, a flop at quarterback. He lobbied as hard as any owner for the system of salary caps and greater free agency that is now at the root of the Seahawks' financial concerns.

And fans can call him unlucky. He paid $8.4 million for free-agent cornerback Nate Odomes, who has yet to play a game in two years because of injuries. Until this year, Behring's teams have been among the most injury-wracked in the NFL.

The team under new Coach Dennis Erickson is showing promise. But even with an improved record on the field, the Behrings need to go into the business community and sell their stadium proposal, Gogerty said. Like the Mariners did.

"If they go out and make their case, people will listen," Gogerty said. Remember, "the Mariners started off less popular than the Seahawks coming into the year."

The Behrings have resisted that advice so far. David Behring said the team has already tried to make its case, with presentations to media and King County officials a year ago. "We didn't get any response."

Since then, the signs of the Behrings wanting to stay in Seattle have not been good. The Behrings declined to endorse a September ballot measure that narrowly failed and would have provided them much of the money needed to renovate the stadium. Ken Behring said he has talked to Los Angeles and Cleveland about moving the team.

However, Ken Behring has watched with interest the troubles Art Modell has faced since announcing last month that he plans to take Cleveland's Browns to Baltimore.

"Moving is the last thing you want to do, the very last thing," Behring told The News Tribune of Tacoma last week. "Art Modell is going to be tied up in lawsuits for years. When teams move, there's litigation, anger, distrust, all of that. Believe me, the last thing I want to do is move the team. I want to stay here in a building that will allow us to compete financially in the NFL."

Away from the jeers

Earlier this year, Ken Behring was videotaped by animal-rights activists at the Campbell River airport on Vancouver Island, where he went bear hunting. But the size and choice of transportation - a DC-9 emblazoned with the Seahawk logo - got the protesters buzzing.

A few of them pressed their faces against a chain-link fence near the lone terminal. Off in the distance on the tarmac, Behring and several friends boarded the plane, oblivious to the commotion.

The farther from the jeers, the better.

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Should we keep the Seahawks?

Ken Behring says it will take at least $150 million in stadium improvements and a better lease to keep the Seahawks in Seattle and economically viable. What do you think? How far should the county or the state go to keep pro football? Would you pay more taxes to keep the Seahawks? Does Seattle need the National Football League? Let us know your thoughts in one of the following ways, and we'll publish some of the responses Wednesday in The Times.

-- Call 464-2290. You'll have 90 seconds to leave your comments, name (please spell) and phone number for verification.

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