Nellams says 18 months for arena rebuild

SEATTLE - Tuesday morning on 950 KJRam radio Tom Carr from the Seattle Center was interviewed by Mitch Levy (listen to the podcast here).
Mr. Carr stated that the settlement the city has agreed to with Clay Bennett's Oklahoma City (PBC) ownership group does not involved the case Howard Schultz has against Mr. Bennett. Mr. Carr said that if Mr. Schultz won his case that the settlement would go away, provided that the remedy of returning the team to Mr. Schultz to resell to an honest committed ownership group was granted by the judge in this case, Judge Marsha Pechman.
It is possible that the Sonics could relocate back to Seattle next year, a long shot, but it is possible. A trial date has not been set for the Schultz case.
Meanwhile the NBA has stepped in as a defendant with Mr. Bennett. They are claiming the remedy proposed by Schultz, if acted on by the judge, would not be within the NBA league rules.
Seattle Times has posted the court file: NBA's motion to intervene (PDF)
Percy Allen of the Seattle Times has written a story on the case and the filing (posted here).

Yesterday morning on 950 KJRam radio Robert Nellams from the Seattle Center was interviewed by Mitch Levy (listen to the podcast here).

Mr. Nellams is the director of the Seattle Center. He stated that there was a priority to rebuild while the team was playing in the building, now that they are gone he said the time required is 18 months. I recall that it was going to take two years to accomplish the same thing with the team in the building.
Let's do some scheduling, the money from the state of Washington, if approved, will not happen until next spring, 2009. Let's add 18 months to that: Winter of 2011, almost the season opener. they may be able to have the inside ready for basketball, I do not really know.

See the Seattle Center "Century 21" page here.