This may go absolutely nowhere in the end, but the city of Seattle is certainly giving it the old college to see if it’s feasible to renovate Key Arena instead of building a whole new one, issuing a request for proposals for private developers to do so with no public money:

Under terms of the 25-page document, the city would maintain ownership of KeyArena, and any developer with an accepted proposal would pay a rental fee and assume all costs for maintenance and arena operations. The developer could sell naming rights for the upgraded venue as well as sponsorships and gain additional revenues via ticket sales and other routes. “The assumption is that the city would be leasing the facility to the entity that would invest in it,’’ said Ben Noble, city budget director.

This sounds like exactly the sort of deal that private developers would turn up their noses at — you want us to put how much of our own money into renovating an existing arena and pay a rental fee and operating costs on top, what? — and yet two entertainment companies, AEG and Oak View Group (run by former AEG honcho Tim Leiweke), have said they’d be interested in bidding. So, if you’re the Seattle city council, why the hell not?

At worst, this will give the city more leverage to demand concessions from would-be arena developer Chris Hansen, which has already worked once. At best, just maybe they get AEG and Oak View into a bidding war for the rights to operate an arena in Seattle, which while not lucrative on the surface may matter a whole lot in the ongoing battle for arena management market share. Either way, it’s exploring your options rather than bidding against yourself, so preliminary kudos to the Seattle council for doing the right thing on that front.