State of the Sharks: President Becher

State of the Sharks: President Becher

here with Sharks team president Jonathan Becker. Let’s relate what just happened to hockey. Is this like winning a playoff game? Is this like getting a number one overall draft pick? Is this kind of like winning a Stanley Cup for our building? O, that’s right. I don’t know. That’s uh Look, I I wasn’t here in 1993 when the building opened. Um but my sense is it’s a little bit like that moment. It’s we didn’t we didn’t build a building from scratch. were not open yet, but we will touch virtually every element of this building as part of this renovation. And this that was probably five or six years in the making to get the building open in 1993. This was about five or six years in the making to get to this agreement as well. So there’s a sense of happiness, a sense of release, relief, a sense of optimism, etc. I don’t know which of analogy those are, but uh it’s a seminal moment. This is a top three moment for the building. I I remember it when it opened in 93. It looks so good. younger, weren’t you? I was about half the height. Well, or close. Uh, but if we’re talking about what $425 million does, will this building look completely different? There are renderings, and we will talk about that in a second. How much different will this upgrade make it look? Yeah. So, I the short answer, the the thorough answer is we don’t know yet because part of the next six to nine months worth of work is to actually take all the conceptual stuff, which we’ll talk about in a moment, and do details, but the building will look a lot different. you’ll still recognize that it is the SAP center. The we’re not changing the footprint of the outside of the building, although we may change some of the outside elements, but inside the building will be fundamentally changed. We won’t change everything we want. Uh we had a third party report that suggested we needed like 900 million to do all the potential changes, but you will instantly know that this is a different building when you go inside because it’s good enough to build on to right now. It’s good enough to give it the second life. The location’s good. the bones of the building are good. But that being said, there are some outstanding things to to tackle right here, right now. They are. In fact, one of the things we early on in this process said is, should we just build a new building? Yeah. I mean, maybe we should just find some land, go out there, a new building costs, I don’t know, 1.5 billion, two building, maybe two and a half billion billion, or should we extend the useful lifespan of that? And we did the analysis, and as you said, the building’s in a great location. It’s easy to access. The bones are still really good. The layout’s pretty good as well. So, it’s much more reasonable to invest in this building and make it maybe jaw-dropping. Again, I think I I think people are going to be surprised how new and fresh it’s going to feel. Well, the renderings caught my eye. They are conceptual by nature. I’ll say that so you don’t have to. But in terms of what we’re seeing, um there’s a lot of things like a second concourse level that’s been added. There are some seats that are missing, but I know you’re here to tell me they’re going to be seats added. So, there’s a lot of things that that people might go wo to. uh what do you have to say about just kind of the the first reaction of renderings? Yeah, so what I’ll say is the vast majority of changes to this building will not be immediately visible. They will be back of house stuff. They will be uh new elevators, uh pipes, electricity stuff like there’s a lot of work to that. Every single bathroom, every single toilet has to be changed. So that all happened. That’s the infrastructure, the main stuff. Yeah, having said that, we we did want to address some fundamental design things as well, which is as much as I love the building, it’s basically a single concourse building and the concourse gets crowded when there are 17,000 currently 400 at times 500 people there as well. And so we want to look at ways to reduce the crowding on the main concourse. And there are a couple ways to do that. Uh reimagine what we currently call the club level to be something a bit different. um to perhaps add another level at the arena level. So, we will open up the arena. So, the level there, which is a level that most people never been by before to perhaps add another level to the building. Some of the rendering suggests that there could be a new level between the concourse level and what’s called the penthouse level, right? And frankly, the penthouse level is probably underused right now as well and to find ways to to get more people in the penthouse level. So, I I believe we’ll go from a primarily onelevel building to almost a fivelevel building when we’re done. We’re going to geek out on these renderings some other time. This is not the time, but some other time. Couple more things. It’s at least a $100 million contribution by the Sharks. Correct. I think I have that right. And also, the Sharks are responsible for any overruns, anything that is going to cost maybe more down the road. The Sharks are covering that. Have you ever done a remodel for your house? And it was did you go over the original budget? 1.5 is pretty much how it goes whether you want it or not. So the 0.5 is ours. Yeah. Okay. Simple as that. Y there’s also an element of this that there’s two years for the sharks in the city to find maybe even a next site. If if we’re at tank 1.0 now, we’ll get tank 2.0 in 7 years when it’s all done. And then maybe tank 3.0 or two, whatever, we’ll we’ll be somewhere else. So explain a little bit of that and why that’s important. that almost should keep the sharks here for the rest of all of our lifetimes if a new site is identified and ultimately gets built on. Yeah, there there’s still a lot to be figured out there. So, as much as we don’t have all the details we want on this renovation, we have very few details on that because essentially what we agreed is to start a discussion that will hopefully be finalized by September 2027. This is as much about the city as it is about the Sharks and SAP Center. They need to do long-term planning. That’s what cities do. And if when you do long-term planning, you don’t look at 5 years from now or 10 years from now. You look at 25 or even 50 years from now. And so while the current arena could last till 20, we did generally agree it’s not going to go any further than that. So if there’s a new arena, and I’ll make this up in 2022, right? You got to start thinking about where that might be and what that means. Now, that doesn’t mean you break ground in a couple years, but you build a city long-term plan. So this is as much driven by them as driven by us. Last thing, let’s just take it to 201. right now I’ll be 70 years old. Yeah. Yeah. Um how will you feel on that day thinking about what happened on this day to asssure that the Sharks are staying in San Jose? Like I I don’t know that this has sunk in yet. The magnitude of keeping a team here, fixing up the building, and even working on the next steps. This is a big deal that hasn’t even been realized. I Brody, I’m I don’t know that I’ve had a moment to catch my breath since they voted on that. Uh you’re asking me how I’m going to feel in 25 years. uh tired. Uh no, I I um you know, we walked into this negotiation two years ago, seven years ago, depending how you think about it, with one goal primarily, which was stay in San Jose. And the fact that we’re still going to be in means we’ve accomplished that mission. So, I’ll feel proud that we’re still there in 2015. Well, and everything else, it was a unanimous 11 nothing vote. So, Jonathan, congratulations. Appreciate that, Brody. All right.

Brodie Brazil talks with Sharks President Jonathan Becher about the updated lease agreement for SAP Center and plans for the building.