Sacramento residents drop Kings arena lawsuit against city

Soundly defeated in court, three Sacramentans gave up their two-year legal crusade to overturn the city’s subsidy for the new Kings arena Wednesday, enabling the city to move quickly on financing its share of the downtown project.

Two weeks after a Sacramento Superior Court judge emphatically rejected their claims that the city gave the Kings an illegal “secret subsidy” for the arena, the three citizens agreed to dismiss their lawsuit.

The settlement clears the city to contribute its $255 million subsidy to the new Golden 1 Center, 14 months after the City Council approved the deal and nine months after the Kings broke ground at Downtown Plaza.