Tag: Showbox

Development, Historic Preservation, land use

Downtown Condo Owners Seek View Preservation Via Landmark Designation

Top to bottom: The one-story Hahn Building in 1902; present (pre-COVID) day; a rendering of the proposed 14-story hotel.

By Erica C. Barnett

On Wednesday, the Seattle landmarks board will hold its final hearing on the latest proposal to grant landmark status to the three-story Hahn Building on First and Pike Street, a former single-room occupancy hotel across the street from the Pike Place Market and just outside the market boundaries. The board has already rejected landmark status for the building, which now houses the Green Tortoise Hostel, a coffee shop, and a T-shirt store, twice—in 1999 and again in 2014—but that hasn’t stopped efforts to preserve the building, which stands just to the west of the 240-foot tall Newmark Tower condo building and its expansive views of Elliott Bay.

Unsurprisingly, owners of condos at the Newmark are behind the latest petition, which seeks to prevent the construction of a 14-story hotel that would block their views. And although the petition is couched in the language of historic preservation—it claims the Hahn building meets two criteria for landmark status, cultural heritage and neighborhood prominence—the effect of landmark status would be preserving the views of condo owners who have repeatedly dipped into their pockets to challenge the construction of any building to their west.

If the name of the building seems familiar, that’s because the owners also sought to “save the Showbox” building on the same block. The city zoned the block for a 145-story tower more than 20 years ago.

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One of the debates that emerges in the competing narratives from landmarking proponents and opponents is whether the Hahn building contributes to the overall “feeling” of the Market. The landmark application features an image of the building at sunset, taken from some point several stories above the street, that highlights Elliott Bay, rooftops, and the neon Pike Place Market sign below. The competing narrative, from landmark opponents, presents the experience most actual Market visitors would have of the area—photos taken at street level, showing the Market sign and wide, cobbled streets, along with more recent additions like the City Target and the 55-story Russell Investment Building, constructed in 1988. (The Newmark Tower itself wasn’t built until 1991.)

Historic Seattle and a number of other preservation groups, including Vanishing Seattle, have bolstered the condo owners’ status as concerned, historically-minded citizens, promoting both a Change.org petition and a nonprofit, Save the Market Entrance, that were created by residents of the Newmark. Save the Market Entrance even has the Newmark listed as its address. Eric Lacitis of the Seattle Times first reported on the Astroturf petition.

The board meets tomorrow at 3:30pm to consider the landmark nomination. According to the “do not landmark” recommendation, “staff does not recommend designation of Hahn Building/Hotel Elliot at 103 Pike Street as it does not appear to have the integrity or the ability to convey its significance as required” by the landmarks preservation code.

City Council, Development, Elections, headliner, Historic Preservation, Morning Crank

Afternoon Crank: Showbox Landmarked, “Freelance Bill of Rights” Booster Uses Freelance Labor

1. The Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board voted unanimously last night to designate the downtown Showbox building a historical landmark, after dozens of speakers spoke in favor of the move using the usual combination of hyperbole (one speaker compared the two-story building on First Avenue to “the manger where Jesus was born), cheeseball sincerity (the crowd sang backup while singer Mark Taylor-Canfield went way over time with his “Save the Showbox” song), and insistence that the building, which has been heavily altered throughout its history, is an “irreplaceable” cathedral of music along the lines of the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville or Carnegie Hall.

Jack McCullough, the attorney for the Showbox building owners, argued during his presentation opposing the landmark nomination that the “history” that “Save the Showbox” proponents want to preserve took place in very recent history, during the late ’90s, rather than in the preceding 60 years, when the building was heavily altered and frequently shuttered. “If we were sitting here 20 years ago would we be having this conversation?” McCullough asked rhetorically. “The building had been a pastiche of other things for the past 60 years. … Really, what we’re talking about here is what has occurred in this reconstructed building in the last 20 years.”

The vote was a foregone conclusion—one board member, Russell Comey, showed up with a poem he’d written that began “Showbox forever” and bowed to the applauding audience after the vote—but the future of the Showbox building is not.

Although many of the (unanimously pro-landmarking) public commenters made a point to mention Duke Ellington’s stint there during the segregated 1940s (according to the Seattle Daily Times archives, Ellington played at several other clubs in town during that decade, including the Civic Ice Arena and the Palomar), many of the speakers also inadvertently proved McCullough’s point, by name-dropping bands that played there during the grunge era, like Soundgarden and Nirvana. “That thing you’re feeling is a combination of hopes and dreams, milestones and history,” one commenter told the landmark board. “It’s impossible to replicate these kinds of spaces.”

The vote was a foregone conclusion—one board member, Russell Comey, showed up with a poem he’d written that began “Showbox forever” and bowed to the applauding audience after the vote—but the future of the Showbox building is not. As I reported  last month, the owners of the building (who originally planned to build apartments on the property, which the city recently rezoned for that explicit purpose) have terminated Showbox operator AEG Presents’  lease when it ends at the beginning of 2024,  and recently won a major victory in their lawsuit challenging legislation that put the Showbox building inside the Pike Place Market Historical District, severely restricting its future use. Landmarking places controls on the building, but not on its use; a landmarked building can still be torn down or used for a different purpose. To “Save the Showbox,” at this point, will likely require a group to raise tens of millions of dollars to purchase the land from its owner, who has valued the property at around $40 million. Historic Seattle, which has expressed an interest in buying the property, has not yet indicated how or whether it plans to raise that kind of money.

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2. Shaun Scott, a Democratic Socialists of America member running for city council in District 4 (Northeast Seattle), has proposed a “freelancers’ bill of rights” that would guarantee  new rights to independent contractors and gig workers, including a written employment contract, pay within 30 days, portable benefits, and a ban on non-compete clauses guaranteeing that they won’t work for a competitor within the same market. “Gig economy workers deserve the same rights as unionized employees and laborers in traditional fields,” Scott said in the announcement.  In addition to the issues that would be addressed by the “bill of rights,” freelancers also pay both employer and employee taxes, usually pay for health care out-of-pocket, and don’t have access to unemployment benefits or L&I compensation. (Full disclosure: As a freelancer, I know all of this from experience.)

It was somewhat surprising, then, to learn that instead of hiring his campaign staffers on a permanent basis and offering them all those benefits, Scott himself is using independent contractors for much of his campaign work. Scott says his staff are all paid “at least $16 an hour” and are currently “in the middle of unionizing, having just submitted their letter of recognition asking me to recognize their bargaining unit in affiliation with the Campaign Workers Guild.”

It was somewhat surprising, then, to learn that instead of hiring his campaign staffers on a permanent basis , Scott himself is using independent contractors for much of his campaign work. Scott says his staff are all paid “at least $16 an hour” and are currently “in the middle of unionizing, having just submitted their letter of recognition asking me to recognize their bargaining unit in affiliation with the Campaign Workers Guild.” (The election is on August 6.)

Scott says that all his campaign staffers are paid “at least $16 an hour,” that the two full-time campaign workers have vacation benefits, and that “everyone is eligible for transit and data reimbursements that will hopefully become even more robust after demands are presented and we agree on a contract.” Scott’s campaign finance reports only show one expenditure on transit (a $10 Sound Transit light-rail ticket), and none for data reimbursement or cell phone costs. They do include more than $2,200 spent on Lyft.

“Campaign work can be just as grueling and uncertain as freelance work in the arts, tech, and journalism,” Scott says. “If progressive campaigns can’t support their own workers, they will be in no position to truly advocate for the broader labor community.”
City Council, City Hall, Elections, endorsements, homelessness, Mayor Durkan, Morning Crank, Parks, Police

Morning Crank: Seattle vs. Broken Windows, Burgess vs. “Ideology,” Showbox Contract Suspended

 

In SODO and Georgetown, lots of arrests and a focus on clearing out RVs, and just one referral to Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion, for 1,500 hours of emphasis patrols.

1. On Wednesday, the city council’s public safety committee got into a philosophical discussion about the”broken windows” theory of policing with representatives from several city departments, during a presentation on Mayor Jenny Durkan’s decision to extend “emphasis patrols” in seven neighborhoods beyond the initial 30-day period announced at the end of April. The patrols have been controversial, with critics contending that the seven neighborhoods—which include Ballard, Fremont, and Pioneer Square—were chosen based on the volume of complaints from residents rather than the presence of actual crime. (The mayor, for her part, said that she was unaware of any such criticism).

Council members Lorena Gonzalez and Teresa Mosqueda pushed SPD strategic advisor Chris Fisher and assistant chief Eric Greening to explain the difference between “broken windows” (the widely debunked theory that graffiti, panhandling, vacant buildings, and other types of “disorder” create an atmosphere that leads people to commit more crime), and the theory behind the emphasis patrols. The theory, popularized by George Kelling and James Q. Wilson, was implemented in cities across America throughout the 1980s and 1990s and has become synonymous with zero-tolerance policing and Rudy Giuliani’s New York City.

Fisher called this a misinterpretation. “Different people have different interpretations of broken windows,”  Fisher said. “I think the original theory involved working with the community… [and] I think some departments, some other researchers or practitioners, took it as meaning zero tolerance. [They] didn’t involve the community, and they just decided they were going to arrest everyone for everything, but that wasn’t the intent of broken windows.”

Highfalutin theories aside, it’s notable that the Durkan administration appears to be explicitly embracing the broken windows theory, in the form of ramped-up arrests for low-level crimes in the emphasis areas (broken down by neighborhood in the report) and neighborhood “cleanup” efforts that include removing graffiti, getting rid of newspaper boxes, and cutting back vegetation as well as removing more encampments without prior notice or offers of outreach or services.

Christopher Williams, the parks department director, pointed to a skatepark in South Park where workers have picked up litter, gotten rid of graffiti, and cut back vegetation, all “things that really emphasize that broken window theory—the quicker we can clean it up, the more that gives a message to the community that this is a cared-for, loved space and the community tends to treat it that way.” Williams also said his department is “treat[ing] single tents and encampments like stand-alone obstructions and we will have those removed immediately, for the most part,” rather than providing 72 hours’ notice and offers of shelter and services to encampment residents.

Council members, including District 4 representative Abel Pacheco, still seemed unsatisfied by SPD’s explanations for how the seven neighborhoods were chosen, an issue Fisher seemed to chalk up to the way the information was being presented, rather than the information SPD has provided to the council itself. “I asked for data about why these specific neighborhoods were chosen, and I believe the answer I got from you was that it was [a] combination of data … and calls and complaints that were generated from neighbors,” Mosqueda said. “To me, that’s not a quantitative way of explaining why we’re going into certain neighbors.”

In Ballard and Fremont, lots of calls for service from neighbors contributed to the decision to add patrols.

Fisher (essentially repeating what he told the council back in May) said the neighborhoods were chosen based on “an increase in calls and crime and complaints.” For example, “Fremont was our hottest neighborhood … in terms of an increase in reported crime and calls for service. It was sort of the clear winner,” Fisher said.

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Sorry to interrupt your reading, but THIS IS IMPORTANT. The C Is for Crank is a one-person operation, supported entirely—and I mean entirely— by generous contributions from readers like you. If you enjoy the breaking news, commentary, and deep dives on issues that matter to you, please support this work by donating a few bucks a month to keep this reader-supported site going. I can’t do this work without support from readers like you. Your $5, $10, and $20 monthly donations allow me to do this work as my full-time job, so please become a sustaining supporter now. If you don’t wish to become a monthly contributor, you can always make a one-time donation via PayPal, Venmo (Erica-Barnett-7) or by mailing your contribution to P.O. Box 14328, Seattle, WA 98104. Thank you for keeping The C Is for Crank going and growing. I’m truly grateful for your support.

2 . Former council member and mayor Tim Burgess sent out an email Wednesday telegraphing which city council candidates his blandly named political action committee, People for Seattle, will be supporting in the August primary elections. Not too surprisingly, they overlap 100% with the candidates endorsed by the Civic Alliance for a Sound Economy (CASE), the political arm of the Seattle Metro Chamber of Commerce, with the exception of Districts 6 and 7, where People for Seattle did not make a recommendation. The candidates People for Seattle (and CASE) support for Districts 1-5, in order, are: Phil Tavel, Mark Solomon, (former Burgess aide) Alex Pedersen, and council incumbent Debora Juarez.

Burgess’ group, in other words, is snubbing two of Burgess’ own former colleagues, Lisa Herbold (D1) and Kshama Sawant (D3) in favor of candidates who, as Burgess put it in his email, can “best lead our city forward and change the current approach at the City Council.”

People for Seattle currently has about $220,000 in the bank, much of it raised in $5,000 chunks from developer and tech industry folks like Clise Properties CEO Al Clise, Amazon senior vice president Doug Herrington, developer Richard Hedreen, telecom moguls Bruce and John McCaw, and billionaire Mariners owner John Stanton. So far, they owe EMC Research $40,000 for polling, presumably to test messages like the one Burgess underlines in his email: “Please spread the word that we need a new City Council that gets back to basics and focuses on our city’s most pressing challenges. We want the next City Council to bring us together with solutions and not divide us based on ideology.”

Because there’s nothing “ideological” about calling Seattle a “Mecca [for] homeless,” opposing the streetcar and Sound Transit 3, or denouncing the Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda as a “backroom deal for real estate developer upzones.”

3. Last month, a King County Superior Court judge dismissed every one of the city of Seattle’s arguments in favor of recently adopted legislation that prevented the owners of the downtown Showbox building from selling the property to a developer. The legislation, which supporters pitched as a way to “save the Showbox,” added the two-story unreinforced masonry building to the Pike Place Market Historic District across the street for an initial period of six months; that period was later extended until December of this year because two consultants hired by the city’s Department of Neighborhoods said they needed more time to evaluate a proposal to make the building a permanent part of the Market. The consultants were charged with doing public outreach and determining whether it made sense to include the Showbox building, which the city recently upzoned twice in an effort to encourage density downtown, in the Market.

DON now tells The C Is for Crank that the department has suspended its contracts for the two consultants, Stepherson and Associates (a communications firm) and AECOM (an engineering firm). Although the firms were hired back in February, it appears that they didn’t do much work until very recently; according to a Department of Neighborhoods spokeswoman, the city has only paid out about $24,000 of their original $75,000 contract—$12,000 to Stepherson and $12,554 to  AECOM.

City Hall, Historic Preservation, Media, Morning Crank

Morning Crank: Showbox Operator Doesn’t Own “The Showbox”; Hair-Touching Times Columnist No Longer Columnist
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Image via HistoryLink Seattle.

1. One wrinkle in the news, which I reported yesterday, that Showbox building owner Roger Forbes has terminated the venue’s lease: Anschutz Entertainment Group, which operates the Showbox, doesn’t own the rights to the name “The Showbox”—Forbes does. (Through an LLC that he controls, Forbes registered the trademark in 2008, and renewed it again last year). That means that Forbes retains the ultimate authority over who gets to use the Showbox name, which is also associated with both the Showbox SoDo (a larger venue on First Ave. South, owned by Lyle Snyder of Mercer Island) and “Showbox Presents,” which promotes shows at other venues, such as McMenamins Crystal Ballroom in Portland.

If Forbes develops the Showbox property before the end of AEG’s lease, in January 2024, the trademark will reportedly revert to AEG. If Forbes retains the trademark and the venue at 1426 First Avenue continues to operate after 2024, it could always revert to one of its previous names, such as the Kerns Music & Jewelry Company; the Talmud Torah Hebrew Academy Bingo Hall; the Happening Teenage Nite Club; or, perhaps its original name: The Show Box.

Anschutz Entertainment Group, which operates the Showbox, doesn’t own the rights to the name “The Showbox”—the building’s owner, Roger Forbes, does.

2. Andres Mantilla, the director of the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods, says the city is not—contrary to what some council members and public commenters suggested yesterday—considering the addition of more properties along First Avenue to the proposed expansion of the Pike Place Market Historical District. Rather, Mantilla says, DON’s consultants (engineering firm AECOM and PR firm Stephenson & Associates) are studying other properties inside the boundaries of the original proposed expansion (which would have also “saved” a strip club, two parking lots, a new hotel, and a Starbucks) “for context.”

“What’s currently on the table is the study of the Showbox,” Mantilla says. “Any expansion on the table right now would be limited to that. There’s overlap with [the] properties” in the original proposed expansion area, but “the analysis is not meant for any sort of particular inclusion of those properties” in the historical district, he says.

That’s news to the Friends of the Market, who assumed the city’s consultants would be looking at other potentially historic properties along First Avenue for possible inclusion in the historic district. Friends of the Market president Kate Krafft, who testified in favor of landmarking the Showbox building at a meeting of the city’s Landmarks Preservation Board last night, told me she had expected the city’s consultants to contact the Market to discuss other buildings that might be appropriate for including in the historical district, but hadn’t heard from anyone at the city. (The landmarks board voted unanimously to nominate the structure for landmark status, a process that is separate from the legislation expanding the Market to include the Showbox property. Read all my tweets from the meeting here.)

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“I was under the impression that they were going to have a cultural resource specialist and that they would look at the rationale” for expanding the Market based on the historical properties of each property, Krafft said in an interview yesterday. The Friends of the Market oppose the current zoning on First Avenue, which allows buildings of up to 44 stories, like the one originally planned for the Showbox site. Krafft says historic designation wouldn’t preclude new development—it would just preclude new development that doesn’t fit in with the Market.

“Historic districts evolve,” she said. “Seven new buildings have been built in the district since 1971 and they’re in character with the district.” As for parcels included in the original proposed boundary expansion area that aren’t historic—like the two surface parking lots, or the modern, glass-walled Thompson Hotel on First and Virginia, or the Deja Vu Showgirls strip club—Krafft says they could be considered “non-contributing” properties and grandfathered in. But to do that, she says, “we need a thorough study”—and one does not appear to currently be forthcoming from the city.

3. In the wake of a widely publicized incident in which she asked to touch (and then apparently did touch) the hair of a young African American artist, the Seattle Times’ longtime metro columnist Nicole Brodeur has lost her weekly column and been reassigned to a new role covering “newsmakers” as a general assignment reporter.  Lindsay Taylor, a spokeswoman for the Times, confirms that Brodeur is now a GA reporter and that her column has been “retired.”

Crosscut and the South Seattle Emerald reported on the hair-touching incident, which the artist, Alexis Taylor, wove into an installation called “Black Among Other Things,” in May. Taylor, Crosscut reported, was “assigned to write a profile on a local journalist for a journalism class” at Seattle University. “She reached out to Brodeur more than a year ago, after the columnist apologized for writing a story about Columbia City that was called racist.” In that column, Brodeur opined that Columbia City had been a dangerous “pass-through” zone until white-owned places like Molly Moon’s, Rudy’s, and Pagliacci moved in. (In a followup column that began, “Sometimes being called a racist is just the jolt you need,” Brodeur interviewed several people of color who are quoted in a way that implies they praised her just for trying to improve).

The Columbia City columns weren’t even the only times Brodeur wrote pieces that could be considered racially insensitive. After a 2010 incident in which security officers stood by and did nothing while an African American girl was beaten in the downtown transit tunnel, Brodeur wrote a column titled “Parents, Get Ahold of Your Kids, lecturing parents of color (“there’s a racial element here that I think needs to be acknowledged”) to “set some rules for decency and public behavior” for their kids and keep them from “running wild.”

On another occasion, she wrote an uncritical single-source column about a pair of First Hill pizza shop owners, the Calozzis,  who claimed to have been victimized repeatedly by deranged, heroin-addled patients at a nearby methodone clinic. Some facts Brodeur failed to mention included the pizza shop owner’s long, colorful, and sometimes violent history of conflicts with neighbors, business rivals, and just random people that included a number of shocking racial incidents. A Vietnamese America neighbor who sued the Calozzis for damaging his property said Jennifer Calozzi called him a “gook,” and the mother of a student who attended school with the Calozzis’ son accused Jennifer Calozzi of going on an N-word-laced  “tirade the likes of which I have never seen nor heard before in my life.”

Times spokeswoman Taylor did not respond directly to a question about whether Brodeur had been demoted due to the hair-touching incident. “It is not uncommon for us to assess the best use of our resources and change focus of the staff,” she said.

City Council, City Hall, Development, Historic Preservation, housing, zoning

Showbox Building Owner Terminates Lease Amid Preservation Discussions

Earlier tonight, the city council’s Civil Rights, Utilities, Economic Development, and Arts Committee voted to extend a temporary expansion of the Pike Place Market to include the Showbox, with new council member Abel Pacheco abstaining. Tomorrow afternoon, the city’s Landmarks Preservation Board will hold a hearing on a proposal to designate the building—which was deemed inappropriate for landmarking back in 2007—as a historic landmark.

Perhaps more consequential for the future of the Showbox, however, is the fact—being reported for the first time here—that the owner of the Showbox building, Roger Forbes, has terminated the Showbox’s lease.  In a letter written in April and obtained exclusively by The C Is for Crank earlier today, Forbes’ representative, Eric Forbes, told the Showbox’s owner, Anschutz Entertainment Group, that he is “writing to advise you in advance that your lease of the Showbox at 1426 1st Ave. in Seattle will not be extended or renewed at the expiration of its term.”

AEG’s lease on the Showbox expires in January 2024, and includes a clause that allows the owners to end the lease early if they decide to develop the property. That was the plan until council member Kshama Sawant got wind of a proposal to build a 44-story apartment building on the property last year and launched an effort to “stop corporate developers” by “saving the Showbox.” In the months since, “Save the Showbox” has turned into a polarizing rallying cry, pitting a mostly white, middle-aged crowd of music fans and historic preservationists against urbanists who want more housing in dense neighborhoods (and downtown is the city’s densest). Those same urbanists point out that the council voted just two years ago to upzone the Showbox building for precisely the kind of development Forbes proposed, and is now trying to walk back that decision.

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In addition to the various efforts to landmark or otherwise designate the building as historic, the owners are also locked in a lawsuit against the city, which is scheduled for trial later this year. Late last month, the city and the building’s owners filed motions for summary judgment—the city seeking dismissal of the case, and the owners seeking to void the Market expansion ordinance. King County Superior Court Judge Patrick Oishi will hear oral arguments from both sides on Friday, June 21.

Also last month, the nonprofit group Historic Seattle expressed their interest in buying the building from the current owners, asking them to put their lawsuit on hold for a year while the group cobbled together funding from philanthropists. In exchange, Historic Seattle offered to call off its efforts to landmark the Showbox. It appears that those conversations, too, are deadlocked.

If Forbes holds on to the property, the Showbox will have to close down or move by the beginning of 2024 at the latest. Two events could change that timeline. In the first scenario, the landmark effort and the effort to permanently expand Pike Place Market and subject the Showbox building to the Market’s restrictions on development could fail and Forbes could sell to a developer as originally planned, shortening the timeline. In the second, one or both of the preservation efforts could succeed and Forbes could decide to sell the property, either to Historic Seattle or another group that has not yet emerged. Both those scenarios involve a lot of hypotheticals. Forbes has said he’s open to a serious offer, but he has also made it clear what kind of offer he considers “serious”—something right around $40 million, the amount his ownership group was set to earn from the sale to Onni, the Vancouver developer that had planned to buy the building, and the amount for which he originally sued the city.

Another fact worth considering is that Forbes appears to be fired up at the idea that AEG is working against the owners of the Showbox building by working behind the scenes to support the “Save the Showbox” effort. “From discovery in the litigation to which the City is a party, it has come to light that the City in part became an advocate for the business interests of AEG, a major corporate entity,” the letter says. “Through various efforts, it also appears that Historic Seattle acted at the behest of AEG.” And every Showbox employee who shows up to public hearings in a Showbox shirt and talks about the need to save the Showbox is, of course, an AEG employee.

In a letter to committee chair and “Save the Showbox” advocate Lisa Herbold this past Monday,  Forbes’ attorney, John Tondini, wrote that every council member who has discussed the Showbox legislation with AEG, its employees, or Historic Seattle should recuse himself or herself from voting on the historical district extension, and that “any councilmember who has voiced support for retaining the current use of the property or met with local music group promoters, artists and the like, is not a neutral, unbiased decision maker and should step aside and not participate.”

Also today, Herbold mentioned that Mayor Jenny Durkan and the Department of Neighborhoods (which is overseeing the study of the Pike Place Market expansion, which was supposed to be complete in March) argued in public comment tonight that the city should add more properties besides the Showbox to the Market expansion—raising the specter of an earlier proposal that would have put most buildings along First Avenue from Virginia to Union Streets inside the Market. (I wrote about that proposal, which would have imposed strict controls on what kind of businesses would be allowed in buildings within the expansion boundary, whether they could be remodeled, and how and whether they could be redeveloped, last August). It’s unclear which specific properties the preservation advocates want to include in the Market.

The legislation to extend the Market expansion goes to the full council next Monday.

 

City Council, Courts, Historic Preservation, housing, zoning

Dueling Motions Filed as Both Sides Prepare for Preliminary Hearing in Showbox Case Next Month

The owners of the Showbox building on First Ave. downtown filed a motion for partial summary judgment in its ongoing case against the city today, seeking to void an ordinance passed last year expanding the boundaries of Pike Place Market to include the two-story, unreinforced masonry building, which also houses a pawn shop, a Chinese restaurant, and a pub.

The motion argues that the ordinance, which halted the owners’ plans to sell the land to the Canadian apartment developer Onni,  violates the land owners’ due process and equal protection rights and constitutes an illegal spot rezone of a single property, and seeks to have the ordinance overturned immediately, whether or not the case goes to trial.

Back in 2017, as part of the pro-density Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda, the city council upzoned the Showbox property, along with others on First Ave, to encourage housing development downtown. The original plan for the property—a $40 million, 40-story apartment building—was exactly the kind of building the new zoning on First Avenue was meant to facilitate. When the plans became public, however, music fans—joined by council member Kshama Sawant and her supporters, who tagged Onni as a “greedy corporate developer”—rallied to “Save the Showbox” and the city council adopted legislation that prohibited the owners and Onni from moving forward with their plans.

The Showbox itself is owned by Anschutz Entertainment Group, and is a tenant in the building. AEG’s lease expires in 2021, and the company is under no mandate to renew.

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Also today, the city of Seattle filed its own motion asking a King County Superior Court judge to dismiss the case, arguing that the city council was within its rights to call “a brief time-out to preserve the status quo in light of news of the Showbox’s potential destruction” last August. That “time-out,” which was supposed to expire in July ,has since been extended another six months. Among other claims, the city’s motion argues that because the Pike Place Market extension doesn’t change the underlying 440-foot-high zoning (it just prohibits any changes to the existing, two-story building and the use of the building as a live-music venue  without the approval of the Pike Place Market Historical Commission), it doesn’t constitute an illegal spot rezone.

Neither the city’s nor the Showbox owners’ motion includes much that’s substantively new, but they do lay out some of the arguments that both sides are likely to raise if the case goes to trial.

One point that has not come up in previous court arguments is that if the reason people want to “Save the Showbox” is to preserve live-music venues (as opposed to, say, preserving a nostalgic set piece for people who miss how Seattle used to be in the ’90s), then they ought to be arguing to “save” the Triple Door, or Tula’s, or El Corazon—the latter two already threatened by redevelopment, and the former at risk by virtue of its prime downtown location.

For its part, the city is now arguing that the ordinance—which effectively prohibits the development of the prime downtown site as housing and preserves it as a two-story music venue in perpetuity—”is beneficial, not detrimental to the community and is consistent with comprehensive planning goals and policies.”

King County Superior Court Judge Patrick Oishi will hear oral arguments from both sides at 10am on Friday, June 21.

 

City Council, Development, Elections, human services, Mayor Durkan, Morning Crank, Politics

Morning Crank: “Madame Chair, I Agree With You Completely.”

1. After a two-and-a-half hour meeting Wednesday night, city council member Kshama Sawant cast the lone vote for her own resolution to send interim Human Services Department Jason Johnson’s nomination as HSD director back to the mayor’s office. However, since no one on the human services committee, which Sawant chairs, voted “no,” the resolution will move forward to the full council.

Sawant’s resolution calls for a formal search process by a search committee that includes nonprofit human service providers, people experiencing homelessness, and HSD employees. The resolution does not explicitly express opposition to Johnson or make the case that he is unqualified for the job. However, Sawant—who is up for reelection this year—has made little effort to hide the fact that she is not a fan of the interim director, who took over after former director Catherine Lester resigned almost a year ago, and many of the people who showed up to testify last night expressed their explicit opposition to his appointment.

Prior to last night’s meeting, as she did prior to a last-minute public hearing on Johnson’s appointment in January, Sawant sent out a “Pack City Hall!” rally notice, urging her supporters to show up and “Hold Mayor Durkan accountable to the community and Human Services workers!” Perhaps as a result, the overwhelming majority of the testimony was in favor of Sawant’s resolution.

(In a somewhat novel twist, a few of the speakers opposing Johnson did so because they felt he was too supportive of groups like the Low-Income Housing Institute and SHARE, whose members also showed up to oppose Johnson’s appointment, but for completely different reasons; one of these speakers called Johnson “incompetent,” and another blamed the city for “an extremely drunk woman” he said had been “terrorizing Magnolia.”)

In addition to inviting her supporters to show up and testify, Sawant took the highly unusual step of inviting eight people who supported her resolution  to sit with the council at the committee table as they deliberated and took a vote. This setup gave the advocates an opportunity to echo Sawant’s statements and respond whenever council members Bruce Harrell or Lisa Herbold said anything contrary to Sawant’s position. (A quote from one advocate that paraphrases many others made around the table over the course of the meeting: “Madame Chair, I agree with you completely.”)  The result was an atmosphere in council chambers even more circus-like than most Sawant rally/hearings, with Harrell, in particular, barely able to disguise his frustration when advocates at the table talked over him (“I feel like I have to raise my hand here,” he said) or accused him of being “afraid” of doing a national search.

The advocates, including representatives from the homeless advocacy group SHARE, the Human Services Department,  the Seattle Indian Center, and the Seattle Human Services Coalition, argued that the council should open up the nomination process and, in the words of Tia Jones with the Seattle Silence Breakers, “just make [Johnson] apply—post it on the site and make him apply like everybody else.”

Herbold and Harrell responded that if the process for appointing Johnson was inadequate, the appropriate thing to do would be to revisit the process after Johnson’s nomination moves forward, given that the nomination took place legitimately under rules the council established in 2007. “Those are the rules that we all agreed to,” Herbold said. “I’m appreciative of the idea that the status quo isn’t acceptable.” But, she added, “I’m inclined to consider the individual when we have an individual before us,” and to make that process transparent and accountable, rather than rejecting Johnson’s nomination out of hand. “I feel like sending [the nomination] back is making it about the person,” Herbold said.

Sawant countered that the rules delineating the council’s role in considering mayoral appointments have to be a “living body, meaning, when we hear from hundreds of people, we can’t tell them, ‘These are the rules, so we can’t do what you’re asking us to do.’ … Clearly, we’re hearing loud and clear from people that they want to do something different. How can we ignore that?”

In a final bit of political theater, Sawant opened up the question of whether she should call for a vote on her own resolution to the audience, most of whom had already spoken in favor of the resolution. “All here who are not on council or staff, do you think we should vote for this resolution?” Sawant said. Herbold pointed out that she had received many letters from people who support Johnson and want to move the process forward. “Where are they?” shouted someone in the crowd—suggesting, it seemed, that either Herbold was making up the emails or that the people who showed up in person should count more than the people who wrote emails or called their council members on the phone.

Sawant addressed her supporters again: “Should I call this for a vote? I’m asking members of the public because that’s who I’m accountable to.” After a chorus of “Ayes” from the audience, Sawant called the vote. It passed by a vote of 1, with both Harrell and Herbold abstaining.

The resolution now moves on to the full council, where it faces long odds.

2. Steve Daschle, with the Human Services Coalition, said that the thing he found most “irksome” about Durkan’s human services approach was that she still has not met with the coalition after more than a year in office. “In the 30 years I’ve been involved in the Human Services Coalition, this is the first mayor who has not met with the coalition in a full year and two months of her term, and we think it’s imperative that the chief executive of the city take the time to come and talk to one of the key constituencies that would help shape that decision, and it wasn’t done,” Daschle said.

3. In City Council news, two more candidates entered the race for District 4, the seat currently held by Rob Johnson: Abel Pacheco, a STEM education advocate who sought the same seat in 2015 and received 8.4 percent of the vote, and Cathy Tuttle, the founder of Seattle Neighborhood Greenways. Pacheco sent out an announcement that he was running Tuesday; Tuttle confirmed that she was running to The C Is for Crank yesterday afternoon.

Also, as I noted on Twitter Monday, nonprofit director Beto Yarce, who was one of the first candidates to challenge Sawant in District 3 (Capitol Hill, the Central District, Montlake), has dropped out of the race. Yarce drew criticism early on for the fact that he and his partner live in Mill Creek, not Seattle. Yarce said he and his partner, who owns a house in the Snohomish County suburb, were planning to move to Capitol Hill; during his campaign, Yarce was renting a space in the neighborhood from a friend on a short-term basis, his campaign consultant confirmed.

4. The city has finally hired a consultant to conduct outreach on a proposal to make the building that houses the Showbox nightclub a permanent part of the Pike Place Market Historical District. (The city council adopted “emergency” legislation making the Showbox a temporary part of the market last year, in order to prevent the property, which was recently upzoned to allow very dense housing, from being developed as apartments. In response, the owner of the building sued the city). The consultant, Stepherson and Associates, has also done outreach work for the city on the First Hill Streetcar, the downtown seawall replacement project, and the Move Seattle levy. Because the contract is for less than $305,000 and Stepherson and Associates is on the city’s consultant roster, the contract did not have to be bid through an open process.

The city’s schedule calls for all of the outreach work on the Showbox proposal, as well as a full environmental review under the State Environmental Policy Act, to be done by March, with a council vote this June. As I noted when I reported on the search for a contractor in January, that’s a remarkably quick timeline for an expansion of the Market, at least by historical standards:

To put this timeline in historical context, the Market Historical District has been expanded twice before: Once, in 1986, to include Victor Steinbrueck Park, and again in 1989, to add a parking garage and senior housing. Seattle Times archives show that the debate over the latter addition lasted more than three years, and archival records at the city clerk’s office show that the council was receiving letters on the draft legislation fully nine months before they adopted the expansion.

AEG Live, which owns the Showbox, is free to close or relocate the venue when its current lease runs out in 2021; the question at hand is whether the building itself is historic, and whether the city can require that it remain a live-music venue in perpetuity.

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Affordability, City Council, Density, Development, Historic Preservation, housing, Morning Crank, Transportation

Afternoon Crank: Density Opponents Sharpen Their Pencils, City Seeks Consultant for Quick-Turnaround Showbox Review

1. As the city council begins what could—could—be the final round of discussions about the Mandatory Housing Affordability proposal (the plan, in the works for two years now, would upzone 6 percent of the city’s exclusive single-family areas and require developers to fund new affordable housing), density opponents are sharpening their pencils.

The Seattle Coalition for Affordability, Livability, and Equity (SCALE), which blocked the plan for a year with environmental appeals, produced a list of proposed amendments to the plan that would effectively gut the proposal, by forcing the city to charge developers to pay new “impact fees” to offset the perceived negative impacts of new housing, instituting minimum parking requirements for new developments, quadrupling the fees developers would pay toward affordable housing under the ordinance, and rolling back many of the zoning changes entirely.

The proposed amendments include things like increasing tree canopy requirements (thereby reducing development capacity) in low-income neighborhoods; changing the definition of “family-sized” housing to exclude two-bedroom apartments; requiring large open spaces or even yards for new multifamily developments; and reducing the MHA rezones to reflect the affordable housing targets in existing neighborhood plans, which did not contemplate the massive population growth nor the rise in inequality that Seattle has experienced over the last ten years.

SCALE’s Toby Thaler, who argued the group’s case against MHA before the city hearing examiner, did not respond to an email with questions about the document. While some of the amendments the group is proposing are obviously fanciful—no one is seriously talking, for example, about blowing up the “Grand Bargain” with developers by requiring them to fulfill 50 percent of their affordability requirements with on-site housing—they could serve as a kind of Overton window (or, if you prefer, opening gambit) for the upcoming discussion about neighborhood-specific changes to the plan, which begins next week.

Housing advocates will want to keep an eye out for what citywide and block-by-block changes council members (and Mayor Jenny Durkan) propose, and whether those changes track with the proposals put forward by SCALE. (The amendments aren’t available yet, but I’ll post about them as soon as they are.) Durkan has said in the past that she believes “neighborhoods” should have more input into the city’s development decisions; whether that means acceding to homeowner advocates’ demands during the final stretch of the MHA debate will become clear in the coming weeks.

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2. The city will spend $75,000 this year (of $100,000 allocated in last year’s budget) on a contractor who will advise the mayor and council on whether the Showbox should become a permanent part of the Pike Place Market Historical District. According to the scope of work for the contract, obtained through a public records request, the contractor will “Review the historic significance of the Showbox theater, study the relationship between the Showbox theater and the Pike Place Market, consider amendments to the PPMHD Design Guidelines related to the Showbox theater, draft legislation, conduct outreach to stakeholders, and conduct State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) review on permanent expansion of the Historical District, as appropriate.” According to a spokeswoman with the city’s Department of Neighborhoods, DON has not chosen a consultant yet, but remains on the schedule outlined in the work plan.

The contractor will have to get all that work done quickly; the city’s schedule calls for any SEPA findings to be published in March, with all the work wrapping up in April, and a council vote to permanently expand the historical district in June. Two to three months is a remarkably short time frame for a single contractor to conduct a full public outreach process, do a thorough environmental review, and draft legislation for the council to consider and pass. To put this timeline in historical context, the Market Historical District has been expanded twice before: Once, in 1986, to include Victor Steinbrueck Park, and again in 1989, to add a parking garage and senior housing. Seattle Times archives show that the debate over the latter addition lasted more than three years, and archival records at the city clerk’s office show that the council was receiving letters on the draft legislation fully nine months before they adopted the expansion.

Under the city’s current schedule, the Showbox building would become a permanent part of Pike Place Market three months before a trial is scheduled to begin in a lawsuit the property owners filed against the city; that suit charges that the city violated the Appearance of Fairness Doctrine, which requires council members to remain neutral on so-called quasi-judicial decisions like historic district boundary expansions, as well as the owners’ First Amendment and due process rights.

The debate over the Showbox’s fate began when a developer, Vancouver-based Onni, filed plans to build a 44-story apartment building on the property, which the council had recently rezoned to allow just such a development. The Showbox itself is owned by Anschutz Entertainment Group, and is a tenant in the building, which is owned by strip club magnate Roger Forbes; AEG’s lease expires in 2021.

3. After pushback over the fact that its original “service area” was confined almost exclusively to  neighborhoods north of I-90 (including many north of the Ship Canal), Uber announced today that its JUMP bikes will be available in South and West Seattle. The company, which launched its bikesharing service in Seattle late last year, got some bad press last week when the Seattle Times reported that riders who left bikes outside the service area could be charged $25. (An Uber spokesman says the company has not imposed the fee on any riders.) Lime Bikes, Uber’s competitor, launched citywide in the summer of 2017.

The red outline on this map shows the new service area, which includes three of four “equity areas” (low-income communities and communities of color) designated by the city. The original, blue-outlined area included just one of the equity areas, which includes the Central District and a sliver of South Seattle that extends down to the Mount Baker light rail station.

This is hardly the first time a “sharing economy” company has decided to serve the wealthier, whiter areas of the city first. Six years ago, Car2Go launched with a service area that excluded the entire South End and West Seattle while serving areas as far north as Bitter Lake.

Affordability, City Council, Elections, homelessness, housing

“F the Showbox!” Emails Reveal District 3 Discontent With Sawant’s Club Crusade

Although crowds of music fans showed up to cheer city council member Kshama Sawant’s efforts to “Save the Showbox” earlier this year, emails obtained through a public disclosure request reveal that many of Sawant’s District 3 constituents and longtime supporters were baffled by or outright opposed her decision to prioritize a downtown club owned by a billionaire Republican over other pressing needs, including affordable housing and promoting small, minority-owned businesses in her own district. Sawant, whose district includes the Central District, Capitol Hill, Montlake, and part of Beacon Hill, is up for reelection next year.

Back in October, Sawant led a successful effort to “Save the Showbox” by adding the Showbox to the Pike Place Market Historical District, preventing the development of a planned 44-story apartment building on the property. (The Showbox, which is owned by the Anschutz Entertainment Group, is a tenant; AEG’s lease expires in 2021.) The move sparked an immediate lawsuit by the owners of the property, who argued that the legislation represents an illegal spot downzone of prime real estate that the council has already upzoned twice specifically to encourage residential development on First Avenue.

In the weeks leading up to the September vote, Sawant gave the Showbox the full Sawant treatment, with hundreds of red-and-white posters, multiple City Hall rallies, a sizeable ($1,325) ad buy in the Stranger, and even a concert on the plaza outside City Hall, held to coincide with the council’s vote inside. But as music fans and Showbox employees signed petitions and testified in favor of the legislation, some of Sawant’s constituents wondered why she was spending so much time and political capital “saving” a club that wasn’t even in her district. “I’m not interested in saving the showbox,” one District 3 constituent wrote. “I’m interested in building affordable housing. We/You are burning political capital on a fight we should not be in.”

What’s interesting about the emails, which came in response to two email blasts urging Sawant’s supporters to show up for an “organizing meeting” on September 11 and a “FREE CONCERT & Public Hearing” on the 19th, is that most of them aren’t from diehard Sawant opponents, but from people who say they support Sawant but oppose her single-minded focus on the Showbox.

“We’re spending a lot of energy and political capital on one building. It won’t create more housing or prevent people from being driven out of Seattle,” another District 3 resident wrote. “It won’t reduce Seattle’s climate impact. It won’t help our problems with homelessness, congestions or anything else. We could be spending this energy on the Mercer Megablock, but we’re not. How much staff time is being spent on this rather than more pressing issues?”

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Another District 3 resident wrote: “I’m a big fan of yours, but this is such a waste of time and energy. …  The city will be fine without the showbox- it won’t be fine without lots and lots of serious investment in housing.” And another, which I’ve taken out of all-caps: “You and your office team are failing to help black folks in the Central District!!!! Fuck the Showbox! You can count on one hand the persons of color who actually make a living by working for the Showbox! Save black and persons of color owned places in seattle too!!”

Caveat time. Emails from constituents represent the views of an unrepresentative sample of people motivated to write their council member. And Sawant, who won her last election with nearly 56 percent of the vote, hasn’t drawn an opponent yet. (Nor has she officially said whether she’s running for reelection.) However, it’s not hard to see Sawant’s focus on the Showbox emerging as a campaign issue, especially after a year in which the council’s lone socialist logged few major wins. The head tax is dead, Sawant’s lengthy speeches denouncing her colleagues for failing to support a series of hastily drafted affordable-housing proposals played to a mostly empty room, and the most noteworthy gains for low-paid workers—modest wage increases for social-service providers who contract with the city—were sponsored this year by council freshman Teresa Mosqueda, as part of a budget Sawant cast the lone vote against. None of this necessarily spells trouble for Sawant’s reelection chances. But it does suggest that she’ll have to do more than hold cheering sessions for citywide causes like the Showbox to rally the troops who actually matter—the 92,000-plus residents of her own council district.

Addiction, Business, City Council, Courts, Drugs, land use, Morning Crank

Morning Crank: A Dramatic Turnaround

1. All Seattle Public Library restrooms will soon be equipped with containers for needle disposal, following a six-month pilot program at the library system’s Ballard, Capitol Hill, University, and downtown branches. The library initiated that pilot after an employee at the Ballard branch was stuck with a needle while removing the trash from the women’s restroom, as I exclusively reported in March.

The decision marks a dramatic turnaround in library policy from just seven months ago, when library spokeswoman Andra Addison said that the library had no plans to install sharps containers for drug users (and diabetics) to dispose of used needles, because “We don’t allow illegal drug use in the library.”  The King County Public Library system preceded the Seattle library in installing sharps containers at branches in Burien, Renton, and Bellevue—branches where library staffers kept finding used needles on the floor, in toilets, and in trash bins.

Addison says it will cost about $2,000 to install the containers—the same ones used in the King County system—in all 60 library restrooms., and about $7,000 to empty and maintain them.  “The Library has ordered the additional sharps containers and we hope to have them installed over the course of November,” Addison says.

According to data provided by the library, the sharps containers at the downtown, Capitol Hill, Ballard, and University branches continue to be the most heavily used. Between the week of April 20 and the week of October 12, 912 sharps were discarded at the Central branch library, 348 on Capitol Hill, 234 in Ballard, and 194 in the University District.

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2. The city of Seattle won on two counts in the lawsuit filed by the owners of the Showbox on Friday, when King County Superior Court judge Mary E. Roberts ruled that legislation expanding the Pike Place Market Historic District to include the music venue did not constitute an illegal land use decision or a taking of private property. However, Roberts did agree to hear claims on two other, arguably more substantive, questions: Did the “Save the Showbox” legislation violate the state appearance of fairness doctrine, which requires officials to keep an open mind on so-called quasi-judicial land use decisions (like zoning changes for a specific property)? And did the city violate the property owners’ constitutional rights by dictating the use of the building as a music venue?

The owner of the building in which the Showbox is located, Roger Forbes, sued the city last month after the city council passed, and Mayor Jenny Durkan signed, “emergency” legislation making the two-story building part of the Pike Place Market Historical District. (The Showbox itself—that is, the venue that rents the building—is owned by the international behemoth Anschutz Entertainment Group).  The law, known as the “Save the Showbox” bill, prevented Forbes from selling the property to a developer, Onni, that had planned to build a 44-story apartment tower on the block. (The city had in fact just upzoned the block, along with the rest of First Avenue, specifically to encourage this type of development).

If the city violated the use of fairness doctrine, it will mean that all the public hearings and rallies and open discussions about the importance of  “Saving the Showbox” as a music venue—of which there have been many—were illegal, because the council should have remained neutral and refrained from holding public hearings. (Not only did the council hold public hearings, its members made signs, staged concerts, and even drafted public comments for private citizens in favor or the proposal.) If the court finds that the city violated Forbes’ rights by dictating the use of the Showbox property it will mean that the legislation thwarting Forbes’ plan to sell and develop the property was unconstitutional, and could open the city up to monetary claims.

The city is arguing that the “Save the Showbox” legislation—whose first section calls the Showbox “a significant cultural resource to Seattle and the region” whose loss “would erode the historical and cultural value of the Pike Place Market neighborhood”—in no way prevents Forbes or any future owner from shutting the Showbox down and using the property for another purpose. Forbes, pointing to the plain text of the legislation and the fact that the law gives the Pike Place Market Historical Commission the right to dictate every aspect of how the building is used, from the tenants down to the font, size, and materials used in its signage, says that’s absurd.

Forbes’ attorney noted that the city has only responded to one of the attorney’s ten public disclosure requests, making it difficult, he argued, to know “all the violations of the appearance of fairness doctrine.” For example, he said, “we just learned by happenstance that the cc staffers were writing public comments”—because of information that I obtained through my own disclosure request and reported on this site.

In dismissing the Showbox owners’ takings and land use claims, Roberts said that neither claim was ripe for consideration—in the case of the land use claim, because the owner of the property and the developer, Onni, had not filed a permit to develop the property by the time the legislation passed, and in the case of the takings claim, because the city has not issued any final decision about what kind of development is allowed on the property.

Roberts also rescheduled the remaining counts for early next fall.