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Vulcan Inc. Seahawks PGA 20 Years

BERT

13:25:21 Q:

13:25:27 A: Hi, I'm Bert Kolde. I'm Vice Chairman of the

Seahawks and a Senior Director at Vulcan.

13:25:27 Q:

13:25:27 A: Hi, I'm Bert Kolde. I'm Vice Chairman of the

Seahawks and a Senior Director at Vulcan.

13:25:32 Q:

13:25:50 A: Well, it seemed like things were really adrift and

there was no real direction forward. Ken Behring had

floated out a couple, some stadium ideas none of them

seemed to get traction for the community. And the

Kingdome was in bad disrepair. Just recently at that

time the tiles had fallen down from the Kingdome

ceiling and it was turning into an unsafe environment.

And so people didn’t know what was going to happen.

There was a lot of uncertainty.

13:26:26 Q:

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BERT

13:26:37 A: Some of the political leadership, the local

political leadership, particularly at the King County

Level was, King County Executive Gary Lock and Council

Member Pete Van Reich Bauer (ph.), they made a couple

of overtures to Paul to step forward and consider

buying the Seahawks. And I remember going to a

meeting at the Rainier (ph.) Club with Councilman Van

Reich Bauer and Bob Widsit (ph.) Allen Israel where we

talked about that the Behring’s might be willing to

sell the team to local ownership, but they needed some

viable local ownership to step forward.

13:27:15 Q:

13:27:17 A: Because local ownership would help keep, would

increase the likelihood that the Seahawks would stay

in Seattle and remain in Seattle. And that’s really

been important to long term stability in teams around

the country is when they have robust local ownership

they tend to stay in place for a long time.

13:27:39 Q:

13:27:45 A: I was one, a conduit between the government and

Paul. I was one conduit. There were a few others too.

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BERT

But I was a conduit and indeed over time I’d

ultimately register as a lobbyist to deal with all the

interactions with the different political operations

or political groups.

13:28:08 Q:

13:28:16 A: It was, there were a lot of unknowns at the time,

because we were looking for something that was a … I

should really say that Paul was looking for something

that would be a sustainable solution, a sustainable

stadium solution that would allow the Seahawks to

generate the resources so that they could compete on a

level playing field with the other teams around the

league.

13:28:44 And the Kingdome didn’t provide that. The Kingdome

didn’t provide all the level of fan experience, the

level of fan amenities and revenue streams like suites

and so forth that more modern up-to-date stadiums did.

And so the Seahawks needed an updated stadium to be

able to get the resources to compete with other

leading teams in the league.

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BERT

13:29:14 Q:

13:29:21 A: Because of those uncertainties around can the

Seahawks get to a long term stadium solution that

would provide them with a solid foundation to be

competitive with the best teams in the NFL long term

Paul decided on an option structure where he made a

deposit, a down payment or earnest money if you would

and bought time, bought 16 months to work with

temperature community, work with the state, the city,

the county, to help craft a public/private partnership

that would put in place a new stadium for the Seahawks

that would keep them competitive for years to come.

13:30:14 Q:

13:30:21 A: It was like a lot of third and long and fourth

long situations. We had, the polls two months before

the Election Day, the polls showed us down 32 to 57,

57 being the no. And we worked hard to get the

information out there so people could understand that

you didn’t pay for the stadium unless you used it and

all the benefits it would bring to the community. And

what turned out to also be a very important message

was that this stadium would be a world class soccer

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stadium as well and could bring major league soccer to

Seattle.

13:30:58 And so we got those messages out there and we worked

really hard and when we showed up that night, at the

campaign party that night, walked in the door and Paul

said we’re down by 30,000 votes and everybody was a

little bit nervous and that’s because the votes had

come in from some rural districts in eastern

Washington that were tilted against the stadium, but

some of our, you know, political strategists looked

and said, well, the Seattle votes and western

Washington haven’t come in yet. So things could turn

out well for us yet.

13:31:40 As it turned out those western Washington votes did

start coming in and they came in well enough that by

11 o’clock that night Paul I think was ready to pick

up his guitar and play some victory celebration songs

for the assembled group. And as it turned out it was

a tight vote. The stadiums prevailed by 35,000 votes

out a million and a half votes cast. So it was very

close. It was a squeaker, but it was a win. It was a

W.

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BERT

13:32:16 Q:

13:32:27 A: It was kind of like a microcosm of the whole

process, because it was, you know, it was a long shot

from the start, but we were always on an uphill

battle. We were always kind of behind the Barings and

the Seahawks, you know, had a period of kind of

mediocrity, so the level of fan support was not nearly

as intense as it is today. And so we had to do a lot

of heavy lifting there. And I think that night was a

microcosm in the sense that yet again we started out

behind, but we prevailed, you know, we made our case

and we prevailed.

13:33:13 And so there was a lot of, you know, a lot of people,

we were just, we were glad for the city. And I think

the real story was told ten years later when not only

did the Seahawks had they moved into their stadium by

that time, but then the Sounders, you know, were

formed in Seattle and became the most successful major

league soccer franchise launch anywhere and lead the

league in attendance and have won their own

championship as well.

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BERT

13:33:51 And then the Seahawks they definitely, this stadium

did help them remain competitive to the extent that

they were able to get to three Super Bowls and win a

Super Bowl and that, what it mean to the community I

guess was kind of epitomized by the parade, the

victory parade the week after the Super Bowl where

over 700,000 citizens came out and they were just in

such a good mood, the police said they’d never seen a

rally or a group that large with not one police

incident. It was incredible.

13:34:30 And the outpouring of emotion was heartfelt and it was

across all segments of society. I think another

metric of that was the TV rating for the Super Bowl

that the Seahawks won. The TV rating was a 92, so out

of every 100 televisions that were turned on, 92 were

watching the game. And so that cut across every

demographic from the top to the bottom, every

ethnicity. And it just shows how powerful sports and

the Seahawks can be in bringing communities together,

which was part of our message throughout this whole

campaign.

13:35:20 And that was just a tremendous proof point, because

when you have 92 percent of a community unified on one

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BERT

common shared pursuit that is awesome and it’s an

awesome feeling for everybody.

13:35:34 Q:

13:36:05 A: So the votes coming in and by 11 o’clock it was

looking like the votes from western Washington were

tipping the scales and moving the needle to the

positive and then Paul stepped up on stage and the

band was the Beatniks and he brought his, he strapped

on his guitar and started sort of playing along with

them and one moment of celebration released was we

decided to do Wild Thing, which is something we had

played from time to time at company parties and just

for fun on weekends and we did a rendition for the

group there. It was a lot of fun.

13:36:48 Q:

13:37:06 A: So what was it like at the time when the community

leaders were asking Paul to get involved with the

Seahawks? It was getting pretty dire. At that point

the Mayflower moving vans had packed up the Seahawks

from their headquarters in Kirkland and shipped

everything down to Anaheim, California and the

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Seahawks were actually starting to conduct off season

workouts in California. So they had moved and at that

moment in time they were actually turning into the

Anaheim Seahawks.

13:37:41 Q:

13:37:45 A: Once Paul agreed to the terms of an option where

he put in place a structure that allowed him 16 months

to work with the civil leaders to come up with a

public/private partnerships for the stadium part of

that agreement was that the Seattle would come back

and remain in Seattle for the duration of that option

period and give Paul time to put together a long term

stadium solution, which thankfully he did along with

the community.

13:38:19 Q:

13:38:28 A: I think people thought that this was a better

community with the Seahawks here than with the

Seahawks gone.

13:38:37 Q:

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BERT

13:39:00 A: Paul is such a good owner because he cares and he

cares about putting on the field the best team he can

to represent the community and to give them all the

tools he can to succeed. And as part of that he’s

made it a point to try to bring in the best coaches,

the best executives to help, you know, as part of

doing everything he can to maximize the probability of

success. So he’s tried to give the team everything he

can to make it successful.

13:39:43 Q:

13:39:52 A: Paul is a person who doesn’t just accept the

status quo. He tries to make it better. He tries to

be the best, to make the organization be as successful

and be the best it can be. And he will ask questions,

he’ll challenge people to think out of the box to not

always just keep doing things the same way they’ve

been done the last 20 years, but to look at doing

things in more innovative ways.

13:40:30 And he’s a synthecist, he’s a person with interests in

a lot of different areas; technology, medical

research, computer technology, media and culture. And

he tends to often connect the dots and do things that

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BERT

are multidisciplinary, come up with solutions that

draw on some of the best ideas and best practices in

those different areas.

13:41:02 Q:

13:41:15 A: I think Paul has put in place a championship

culture by bringing in some of the best people to help

implement that from bringing in great leadership,

investing and developing and retaining great players.

Developing a real strong connection with the fan base

through the 12s and reinvigorating the tradition of

the 12s, which had gone a little bit dormant and

fallow under the Behring regime.

13:41:50 So the community connection was reestablished, the

talent was improved, the leadership was put in place

and Paul helped orchestrate all that.

13:42:00 Q:

13:42:11 A: It’s a unique, the 12s are a unique fan

connection, because when a fan is a 12 they’re not

just a fan, but they are connected to the team, when

they’re there at the stadium as a 12 they’re helping

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BERT

to influence the victory with their cheering, you

know, creating a difficult environment for the

opponents. So they’re not on the outside looking in,

they are part of the team and they are part of the

victory. And you hear that many, many times in post-

game interviews, Coach Carol or Coach Holmgren saying

we want to thank the 12s for the victory today,

because they had such a big part and a big role. So

they are participants, they aren’t just, you know,

viewers, they are participants.

13:43:07 Q:

13:43:17 A: I think the Seahawks … I think the Northwest is

kind of a forgotten region, a little bit of an

underdog. And the Seahawks help kind of put us, put

Seattle and the Northwest a little more on parody with

some of the more established areas down in California

on the West Coast or along the East Coast. It puts

Seattle on the map as being able to compete with the

very best and to prevail and win. And Seattle is now

part of the ongoing dialogue every NFL season.

13:44:03 The Seahawks are in the conversation like hey have

been for the last half dozen years now, they’re in the

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BERT

championship conversation and in the mix. And they’re

not an afterthought. We’re no longer just south of

Alaska, we’re the great Pacific Northwest.

13:44:23 Q:

13:44:43 A: I think the Seahawks, in terms of unifying the

community I think the Seahawks have been a very

powerful unifying force and that’s never more apparent

than in the playoffs. When you can drive around any

neighborhood in Seattle and people have their 12 flags

and their colors, they’re wearing their colors and you

can just see that and it like permeates neighborhoods,

all demographics, everybody is part of the, you know,

the phenomenon.

13:45:22 Q:

13:45:25 A: Everybody is part of the 12 phenomenon.

13:45:26 Q:

13:45:41 A: Paul’s invested at a couple different levels in

improving the Seahawks game day especially. The

fundamental level he made a big investment in the new

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BERT

stadium and creating what is now Century Link Field,

in partnership with the state. And that’s provided a

wonderful place to watch a football game. And Paul

grew up watching Husky football in Husky Stadium. His

dad would take him to games.

13:46:16 And he borrowed some of the best design principles

from Husky Stadium, including what we call vertical

intimacy where the people in the upper decks are close

to the game in Husky Stadium and having one end of the

stadium be open so that where in Husky Stadium’s case

you can see Lake Washington in the Seahawks Stadium

you can see, it’s open to an urban vista on Pioneer

Square and the downtown area.

13:46:48 So you feel, there’s a visual connection to your

surroundings and to the community. So every seat is a

great seat for the game and you’re also really

connected to the Northwest. You know where you’re at.

You’re not sitting in a concrete donut like so many

other stadiums are where that could be anywhere.

13:47:07 Q:

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BERT

13:47:16 A: I think with the … I don't know if I got a lot new

to say beyond what I just said.

13:47:27 Q:

13:47:39 A: Every game at Century Link is like a major event.

And, you know, it starts, the buildup starts that

morning and people, you can feel the excitement just

continuing to build. People have a higher energy

level. They’re connecting with each other and with

their own social networks and their friends, their

families. So people are getting ready for their game

day experience, whether it’s at the stadium, whether

it’s at home, whether it’s at a friend’s home. But

it’s a big deal. You know where you were for each of

your Seahawk games, because those, it’s a very

important ritual.

13:48:34 And, you know, I know when I'm at the stadium then I

go down on the field before the game and I can get a

real sense of the crowd and the energy level and it’s

high, the players are getting amped up and getting

their game day faces on. And then, you know, the crowd

is just, gets this energy that just builds throughout

the day and it gets all pent up and they’re ready to

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BERT

release that, you know, come time for the game, to

help their Seahawks, to help confuse the opponents and

to do their part to help with the victory.

13:49:17 Q:

13:49:24 A: When we were designing the stadium another thing

we were very aware it’s wet in Seattle and we wanted

to cover the majority of the seats in the stadium.

And so we put in a roof system. Again it was kind of

inspired by the roof system at Husky Stadium. And by

making the seats as close as possible to the field and

by putting in a roof system we also knew that we were

maximizing the channeling of sound of the field so

that the crowd sounds were either coming directly on

the field or they were ricocheting off, being

reflected by the roof structure back down onto the

field.

13:50:15 So we wanted to give the 12th man every edge we could

and help amplify that in a natural way. And I think

we succeeded.

13:50:24 Q:

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BERT

13:50:55 A: The early years of the Seahawks were about getting

to learn the organization, getting to learn some of

the strengths, some of the areas to improve. And we

had to make some leadership changes and some changes

on the field over the first few years to try to

improve our chances of winning and getting to a

championship. So it was like a learning period.

13:51:19 Q:

13:51:34 A: The 2005 season was kind of like a magic carpet

ride. It was amazing to watch the Seahawks keep

winning and they were starting to fly at an altitude

that no Seahawk had ever flown to before. It was

getting up there. And when we won the, when the

Seahawks won the NFC title game in the conference

championship at Century Link Field that’s when the

reality sunk in that we are really going to go to the

Super Bowl, which no Seahawks team had ever done.

13:52:24 And that was a fantastic accomplishment and we were so

excited. And I think about when I saw the Seahawks

run out onto Ford Field before the Super Bowl 40, and

the loud speakers played Bittersweet Symphony, the

Seahawk theme song, that just, you know, that made the

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hairs kind of stand up on the back of my neck, I just

felt so emotional. It was like a kind of coming home

of this is why we all together tried to keep the

Seahawks in Seattle and this is what we were trying to

achieve.

13:53:07 Q:

13:53:36 A: In the 2013 season the Seahawks started to put

together a very nice run as the season unfolded. And

I think a difference from the 2005 experience was in

2005 it was the Seahawks had never been to a Super

Bowl and we were kind of just happy to be there. And

I think now when we saw, as the team continued to

succeed and show what it was capable of in 2013 we

were even more focused on winning the championship.

13:54:16 And just getting there again wasn’t … we’d experienced

that, now we wanted to bring the Lombardi trophy home

to Seattle for the Pacific Northwest. And the team

had a physicality to it, an attitude. They were kind

of the underdogs, they didn’t feel like they got a lot

of respect, a chip on their shoulder a bit. And they

carried that all the way through and beat teams that

were more established, had bigger reputations. And it

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was something when we got to New York and I remember

talking to… We had a lot of internal self-confidence,

the outside world kind of thought we were still kind

of an up and comer and who are these Seahawks anyway?

13:55:18 And I remember talking to some of the coaches before,

in the walk through the day before the game, and they

felt like we have a pretty good game plan here, we

could really take it to Denver. And as it turned out

they totally dominated the Broncos and there was no

doubt, the left no doubt and they won. There is no

ifs, ands or buts about that championship. That was

the Seahawks’ championship that year. They won it

hands down and brought it back to the Pacific

Northwest.

13:55:54 And I think every Seahawk fan and Pacific Northwest

resident woke up the next day, they were pinching

themselves, did that really happen? Thankfully it

did. It really did happen. And that championship was

brought home to the Northwest and everybody in the

Northwest was a champion.

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BERT

13:56:16 Q:

13:56:19 A: It felt great. And it felt great standing on the

podium in … what’s that stadium called? In Met Life

Stadium New York …

13:56:29 Q:

13:56:31 A: It felt great standing up on the podium Met Life

Stadium in New York and holding that trophy and

looking up at the big scoreboards around that had,

they had the Seahawk logo and they had champions. And

just seeing that brought home, just kind of helped the

reality sink in of what had just happened. And the

confetti flying all over the place. It was kind of

like living, it was living the dream. That’s what it

was.

13:57:00 Q:

13:57:13 A: It was really surreal being in the parade vehicle

and going, you know, going down all those, you know,

city block after city block and it’s lined with

hundreds and thousands of people and the outpouring of

emotion and connection and the celebration. It was

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BERT

such a positive vibe, a positive experience, a

positive sense of community. It was beautiful. And

it was wonderful. And, you know, I think everybody

there, you know, people pulled their kids out of

school, families, and it was just such a great shared

experience. It was just a celebration of sharing. It

was wonderful.

13:58:00 Q:

13:58:31 A: Paul, thank you for saving the Seahawks.

13:58:35 Q:

13:58:46 A: Thank you Paul. Thank you 12s. Go Hawks.

13:58:49 Q:

13:58:52 A: Thank you Paul. Thank you 12s. Go Hawks.

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