By now everyone knows that after months of debate and study, the citizen panel known as the Century 21 Committee has recommended renting the former Fun Forest space at Seattle Center to the Space Needle LLC for the Chihuly Glass Exhibition. Far from ending the fist fight though, the decision has actually exacerbated the throwdown between the Chihuly exhibition and the other lead option for the site, indie radio station KEXP.
There is a way to make all sides happy, while also making Seattle Center a better place than either option by itself would. The visionary solution? Do both.
C21 chose Chihuly for several reasons, including the fact that (unlike KEXP) it gelled with the Center’s master plan which doesn’t include being an office park, and Chihuly’s proposal credibly penciled out on rent and being revenue neutral for the center. (It didn’t hurt that their proposal also included $2 million to build and maintain a children’s playground, and that it will generate far more revenue for the City and bring in more people.)
What C21 didn’t consider, but is also true is that the Chihuly exhibit will bring the most income to the City (about $1 million per year between rent, direct admissions and B&O taxes and even more if secondary business activity is taken into consideration), drive the most people to the Center, and most benefit the neighboring small businesses.
But the most interesting part of the C21 report that seems to have been missed by most of the reporting on the proposals, is that even with its criticism of KEXP’s bid, the C21 committee still recommended Seattle Center find an alternative location for KEXP on campus.
Unfortunately, the high-pitched coverage has characterized the whole thing as a black and white choice between KEXP or the Chihuly museum, with each group now lobbying to have their supporters flood the Council and Mayor’s office with letters encouraging the city to go with one or the other.
I say put the Chihuly exhibit in the former Fun Forest space as C21 recommends (it’s the financially responsible thing to do). But also move KEXP into either some of the Northwest Rooms, activating that corner of the Center bordering on a new lower Queen Anne development, (while finishing off the redevelopment there with the recent addition of Vera and the upcoming addition of a permanent space for SIFF). Or, another good spot, put it in the warehouse space just North of the monorail line, between EMP and the Center House. There is already a great new stage right next that area which could easily host the KEXP summer concert series, just as it hosted a great new stage for Bumbershoot this year.
Consider a Seattle Center campus with: an exhibit of Seattle’s most popular visual artist at the foot of the Space Needle; cutting-edge online radio leader KEXP—command control of Seattle’s always-booming music scene; a great new children’s playground; an increased summer concert series—all with Washington’s most popular museum (true), EMP, on hand.
Join this jangle with the new SIFF space, and existing organizations like The Vera Project and McCaw Hall, and Seattle Center will start fulfilling its promise as it heads into its next 50 years. One that brings together great open space, institutions for both high and ‘populist’ art, live performance, film, and music. For all this we’d be able to largely thank one of the city’s most important families, the Wright’s and one of the City’s most populist institutions supported almost entirely by public donations, KEXP. We’d get the money the Center so desperately needs, the massive draw of the Chihuly exhibit and great partnerships between KEXP and the events and resident institutions at the Center.
But to make this happen, we need the council and Mayor to work together with a common vision, and find a deal maker inside the city to get KEXP and Space Needle LLC to work it all out. That’s a high goal for a group that seems to be in a constant sandbox pissing match, who can’t seem to get deals done that require groups with different goals to come together for what’s best for the future of Seattle.
We have a chance to do something visionary in Seattle that will cost the city almost nothing, while improving one of our most valued spaces for the next several decades. Let’s hope vision and what’s best for the city will win out over the current shortsightedness and territorial pissings currently plaguing our decision making.
