The public is the silent investor in a $1.9 billion convention facility — carrying all the risk with none of the return. Here's how two simultaneous moves change that.
| Party | What they get | Potential blocker |
|---|---|---|
| SCC / Summit | Cash from Arch sale shores up reserves. Regional backing through King County Conventions. Cleaner balance sheet going into 2029 backstop negotiations. Leaseback on the Arch for overflow convention space — no lost bookings. | Board and leadership whose institutional identity is built on the current structure. A sale reads as an admission the expansion didn't work. |
| City of Seattle | Year-round public asset at no bond debt. Seattle Center operating a civic anchor in the Pike/Pine corridor — markets, events, community programming. The building the city paid for in lodging tax, finally serving the city. | Capital cost of the purchase — not budgeted. Political will to engage with a state-level facility in a politically complicated moment. |
| King County | King County Conventions — a regional brand combining the Summit and Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue. One sales team, one booking calendar, one pitch to national convention planners. A marquee legacy infrastructure move for the KC Executive. | No formal proposal exists. KC Executive has to prioritize this. Meydenbauer has its own governance and may not want to subordinate its brand. |
| Hotels (non-Hyatt) | More equitable access to convention room blocks under a regional booking system — instead of competing against a three-property cluster that can fill a block from a single call. | Short-term: any change to the booking status quo looks like risk. Long-term inertia favors doing nothing, even when doing nothing disadvantages them. |
| The public | Stops the reserve burn before it becomes a crisis. Future rescue asks — Arch renovation, backstop extension — are smaller and more defensible. The public gets equity: a building, not just a guarantee. | Awareness. No one is making this case at scale yet. |
Heads they win, tails we pay. That's the deal structure at the Washington State Convention Center — and it's worth naming before anything else.
The hotels that fill their rooms from convention bookings don't fund the infrastructure that generates those bookings. Hotel guests pay the lodging tax. The tax flows to the bondholders. The hotels capture the demand; the guests fund the facility. The convention center is, in effect, a $1.9 billion subsidy for hotel revenue — financed by the people who stay in those hotels.
The state backstop — embedded in the WSCC enabling statute, due to expire in 2029 — extends this structure. If lodging tax revenue falls short of debt service, the state covers the gap. The state holds no equity in the facility, no claim on future upside. It is an unlimited guarantee in exchange for nothing except the hope that the convention center stays solvent.
This is the arrangement a restructuring could change. Not overturn — conventions are real economic activity and the Summit is a real public asset. But the public currently absorbs all the downside risk with no claim on upside. The question is whether anyone wants to change the terms before the clock runs out on the 2029 backstop.
The convention center is not in crisis today. It is on a trajectory toward crisis. The audit is clear: $16.3 million in reserves as of December 31, 2024, declining annually as operating losses exceed revenue. The rate of decline depends on hotel market conditions — the sensitivity model on the financials page shows just how sensitive that trajectory is to occupancy and ADR. What isn't sensitive is the direction.
| When | Event |
|---|---|
| Now | ~$25M liquid reserves (CEO LeMaster, Feb 2026); balance sheet shows $16.3M operating reserve + $6.1M debt service reserve (audited 12/31/24). $69.4M operating loss in FY2024. |
| 2026–27 | At current burn, reserves approach exhaustion. The PFD will need either a capital infusion, a restructuring, or a very favorable hotel market to avoid crisis. |
| Jan 2, 2027 | Aramark food & beverage contract expires. The contract covering both buildings is the natural restructuring hinge. Each entity needs its own food service model from day one — convention-grade catering for the Summit, a market-hall or food-court model for the Commons. A deal should close before this date. |
| 2029 | State lodging tax backstop expires. The legislature will face a choice: renew unconditionally, renew with conditions, or let it lapse. A restructuring in progress is a very different ask than business as usual. |
| TBD | Arch renovation. The original building is over 30 years old. HVAC, ADA upgrades, meeting room reconfiguration — a meaningful renovation runs hundreds of millions. The PFD has no capital. A public ask is coming. The question is whether the public gets something for it. |
Each item on that timeline is a hand extended to the public. The Arch renovation ask, the 2029 backstop renewal, the reserve rescue — all of them land on the same balance sheet as the current $69M/year loss. The restructuring doesn't make these asks go away. It makes them smaller, more defensible, and structured so the public gets equity rather than just the tab.
The SCC institution — leadership and board whose authority is built on the current structure — is the genuine source of friction. They've spent a decade defending the expansion. Restructuring is an institutional identity crisis, not a business decision. That inertia is real and should be named.
The hotel industry is a different story. It is not a monolith. The properties closest to the Summit do not all have the same interests.
The Sheraton is not losing business to a Commons food hall. It's losing convention room blocks to a brand that can answer the planner's call with three properties in one conversation. The pitch to the non-Hyatt coalition isn't ideological — it's operational. A regional booking system that doesn't default to the nearest three-property cluster is worth more to them than defending a structure that already disadvantages them.
The King County Executive is the natural broker for this. Not Seattle's mayor — the city's claim is on the Arch, and that's a real-estate transaction, not a convention strategy. The county executive's play is bigger: a regional convention brand that changes Seattle's competitive position nationally.
The Summit (Seattle) and Meydenbauer Center (Bellevue) are both publicly operated convention facilities within 15 minutes of each other. Today they operate separately, with separate sales teams, separate booking calendars, and no coordinated regional pitch to national convention planners.
King County Conventions would bring them under one brand with one sales team and one booking calendar. A convention that needs 80,000 square feet of exhibit space and 1,200 hotel rooms gets a single call that covers both sides of the lake — options, flexibility, regional variation. That's a pitch Denver can't match, and Nashville can't match it either.
The county executive who makes this happen owns a legacy infrastructure play. A regional convention brand is the kind of institutional move that outlasts administrations. It requires no state appropriation and no new debt — just a governance agreement between existing public facilities.
King County Conventions also changes the political geometry of the 2029 state backstop conversation. The legislature is much more likely to extend — or restructure — a backstop for a regional convention authority with demonstrated governance reform than for a single-facility PFD that's been burning reserves for five years with no structural response.
Can Move One happen without Move Two? Yes. King County Conventions doesn't require Seattle to buy the Arch — it's a governance agreement between two public facilities on opposite sides of the lake. It could be proposed and implemented regardless of what happens with the Arch. Can Move Two happen without Move One? Also yes — the Arch purchase is a real estate transaction between the City and the SCC PFD. But the two moves reinforce each other: KCC gives the Summit a regional revenue case that makes the Arch sale easier to close, and the Arch sale gives the SCC the balance sheet room to engage with KCC from a position of stability rather than desperation.
The restructuring model on this site walks through the financial mechanics in detail. The short version: the City of Seattle purchases the Arch building from the SCC for cash. That cash goes directly onto the SCC's balance sheet — shoring reserves audited at $16.3 million as of December 2024 — and whose current level is unclear (the CEO cited ~$25M in February 2026, a gap the 2025 audit will resolve). The SCC retains the Summit and continues operating conventions. The Arch is then operated by Seattle Center as a year-round public commons.
A leaseback agreement means SCC doesn't lose the Arch's convention capacity entirely. When a major convention needs both buildings — the Summit's exhibit halls and the Arch's ballrooms — SCC can book the Arch through the leaseback. No bookings lost. The SCC's pitch to national planners doesn't change.
What changes is who operates the building day-to-day, who carries the balance sheet risk, and who captures the value when the Arch is used for anything other than a convention. Markets, concerts, community events, public programming — that value currently goes uncaptured because a convention center has no business model for year-round public activation. Seattle Center does.
The Arch — opened in 1988, 434,988 square feet in the Pike/Pine corridor — is one of the most active pedestrian corridors in the Pacific Northwest. Seattle Center has operated the city's civic anchor for sixty years. This is not a new capability. It's an existing operator taking on a building that finally matches its mission.
Political arguments almost never have real deadlines. This one does.
The 2029 state backstop expiration is the second deadline. It is more distant and more political — the legislature can extend it, restructure it, or let it lapse based on what the PFD looks like in three years. But the choices made before January 2027 set the terms of that 2029 conversation. A restructuring underway looks very different from a restructuring promised.
| Decision | Decides | Timeline |
|---|---|---|
| King County Executive proposes KCC | Whether there's a regional convention authority to anchor the Summit's future | 2026 |
| Seattle Mayor + Council authorize Arch purchase | Whether the City captures the Arch or cedes it to a rescue scenario | 2026 |
| SCC board accepts deal | Whether institutional inertia gives way to financial reality | 2026 |
| Deal closes, Aramark negotiates separately | Whether each entity starts with a clean operating structure | Before Jan 2, 2027 |
| Legislature faces 2029 backstop | Whether they're renewing a reform or rescuing a failure | 2028–29 |
Verified from public documents: Reserve figures and operating loss from WSCC PFD Audited Financial Statements FY2024. Aramark contract expiration from the public contract record. State backstop expiration from WSCC enabling statute. CEO LeMaster quotes from public statements, February 2026. Arch opened 1988 (425 Magazine, January 2023). Hotel proximity — Grand Hyatt, Hyatt Regency, and Hyatt at Olive 8 are all within three blocks of the Summit; the Hyatt Regency is directly connected via skybridge — is observable and confirmed by map.
Structural inferences, not sourced claims: King County Conventions is a concept originated here, not an official King County policy proposal. The Arch renovation cost estimate ("hundreds of millions") has no primary source — it's an informed inference based on building age and scale. Hyatt room-block dominance is a structural inference from proximity and portfolio size, not a claim about SCC's actual booking practices or data.