My wife Cathy enters the new home of Renton Historical Society and Genealogy Center at 1025 South Third Street, Renton, WA

Renton Historical Society and Genealogy Center has completed their move from Renton Technical College to the historic Snoqualmie Power building they purchased in downtown Renton, across the street from the Renton History Museum. I wrote about their new building purchase in this April blog entry here.  My wife and I dropped into their new office for a visit yesterday and were given an update by their friendly and informative Office Manager, Jennifer Douwes.

The Society’s artifacts, photographs and historical documents have been moved into their new location, and are being unpacked and organized.  In the near term these are available for research and study.  Longer term, the Historical Society will put many of these back on public display, either in the Renton History Museum, their own building, and/or other secure locations that will benefit Renton residents..

Office Manager Jennifer Douwes, right, visits with us in the entry lobby of the new Renton Historical Society headquarters.

Anyone interested in learning more about Renton’s history can visit the Historical Society from 1:00-4:00 PM Tuesday-Friday, or by studying their growing online content and reaching out to them through the contact information on their website at RentonHistory.org.

A 220-foot stretch of Logan Avenue South is being closed for four months. The closure requires 21 traffic signs, 7 barricades and 25 traffic cones.

This 220 foot closure of Logan Ave between the Piazza Park and Legacy Square has necessitated the detours.

A two-hundred twenty foot closure of Logan Avenue South begins tomorrow.  The closure requires the placement of 21 traffic signs, 7 barricades, and 25 traffic cones that will remain in place for the next four months.

The closure will allow “festival” use of Logan Avenue between the Piazza and Legacy Square.

While this “festival street” concept was proposed in the Downtown Civic Core Action plan, the implementation being used today is different than what was described in the plan.  The downtown core plan called for South Second and Third Streets to be converted to two-way traffic, which would have made the Logan Ave detours much simpler to implement.  In addition, the downtown core plan called for the street to only be closed for “events” like the farmers market, and then reopened when the event was finished.  The plan envisioned hours-long events, not four-month events.

Since South Second Street is still a one-way street, and has a four-block-long center divider, the detour route is complex and has an abrupt 60-foot-long , three-lane crossover for motorists driving from the Landing or Boeing into downtown Renton.  Logan Avenue is the main corridor connecting these commercial zones.  With this closure, southbound motorists who want to go to Legacy square or patronize businesses on South Third Street like Boon Boona or Common Ground Coffee will need to turn right on Second Street and then quickly get left of the divider in order to follow the detour route, or else they must drive all the way to Rainier Avenue.  The lane shifts necessary on Second Street don’t facilitate the multiple checks and typical advanced signalling that we all learned in driver’s training– so drivers will have to be on high-alert to make this maneuver.

These detours will add to traffic congestion in Renton at a time when Renton School District is asking Renton to permanently close the nearby South Tobin Street.  Since traffic is often bad in this area even without these closures, I anticipate traffic jams to form in these detour routes during the summer.

Logan Ave South was designed to serve as the main connection between the Landing and Downtown Renton

Normally, southbound drivers on Logan can either proceed straight to reach businesses on the east end of downtown, or turn right on (one-way) Second Street here to reach businesses on the west end of downtown.  The straight path is being closed for four months, so all motorists will be forced to turn right.

After motorist turn right on South Second Street, they’ll have about 50-60 feet to shift two lanes left to avoid being on the wrong side of the center-island/divider. They’ll have to even move left one additional lane to turn left for the detour route.

This overhead view shows how quickly Logan Ave South southbound drivers (coming from top in this view) will have to switch lanes to the left to be on the left-turning lane of South Second Street and not get blocked by the center divider

One block after their forced right turn motorists need to be in the far left lane of South Second Street here, driving west, in order to follow the detour route to the east end of downtown where Legacy Square events and many popular local businesses are located.  Cautious drivers and out-of-town drivers will set a slow pace for these three lane changes and the detour route.  Fast drivers that cut off the slower drivers may cause accidents.

Festival description from Downtown Civic Core Action Plan. “When not used for events, Logan Avenue S. would be open to vehicles.”

Also from Downtown Civic Core Action Plan: South Second Street and South Third Street would both be converted to two-way streets, making it easier to close Logan Ave South between them without consequences.

The Downtown Civic Core Action Plan calls for special pavement and no curbs in the Logan Festival Street. This has not been done.

This is a screenshot from a City of Renton social media announcement about the pending closure.

Renton’s Community Center stack-up of activities reminds me of this memorable scene from the Marx Brothers “A Night at the Opera.”  Many classes, meetings, performances and activities are getting moved from other city buildings that have all been closed at the same time.  Schedules are being altered frequently to fit everything in, and conflicts are still arising.

Since I retired from Council in 2021, our Renton Public Works Director Martin Pastucha has closed numerous public buildings, typically without replacing them.  And with current temporary closures, Renton has nine fewer public buildings currently in service than we did when I retired.  They didn’t all have to be closed.

We’re currently coping with temporary or permanent closure of the Pavilion Event Center, 200 Mill Avenue, the Don Persson Renton Senior Center, Carco Theater, the Renton History Museum, the former Chamber of Commerce building, Rainier Flight Services airport classrooms, the Landing Gear Works historic tower building, and the Landing Gear Works installation hangar.

While a few of the individual closures are understandable, in the big picture we can’t lose nine public buildings simultaneously without harming the quality of our city services.

In my household we’ve seen city class times changed from one week to the next and kids performances rescheduled or canceled, often with little notice, as our Parks workers do their very best to try to fit everything in with too few facilities.  This evening two of my family members noticed each of them has an event scheduled in the same room of the Community Center at the same time, even though the events are not compatible.  They’ll contact the parks department tomorrow to try to work it out.

Renton leadership should analyze how this happened on one of Renton’s biggest summers ever.  We’re celebrating 125 years as a city, our 40th River Days, our 25th Farmers Market, and hosting a World Cup soccer team– but without our Senior Center, Pavilion, Carco Theater, our History Museum, Mill Avenue Building, or our former Chamber of Commerce building.  And our airport has lost vitality with the abandonment of three key facilities at the same time that it’s being marketed to World Cup fly-in visitors.

Maintaining buildings and keeping them in service is hard. I get that. But past Public Works Directors were able to do it, and we should expect our current Public Works Director to do it to.

The following nine buildings are OUT OF SERVICE:

This is a soil cell being installed to grow a tree in the newly revised Piazza Park. It will hold planting soil for the tree’s roots, and be covered with concrete.

This is the location of the soil cell in above photo, as it appeared in 2023.  The 2000 Piazza design interspersed pavement with natural planting areas throughout.  This was done to create a “Garden Piazza” feel, and support a dense tree canopy to beat summer heat.

As I was walking past the Piazza Park in downtown Renton recently, I came across a friend who asked me about the unusual plastic honeycomb being installed in two locations near South Third Street.  Before I could answer her definitively, I had to come home, search the City website, and check the plans.

These black plastic structures are soil cells, a 25-year-old invention to help trees grow in heavily-paved urban landscapes.

Street trees and other trees surrounded by pavement sometimes struggle to thrive because of compacted soil and shortages of water.  Soil cells can help solve these issue by holding uncompacted garden soil and accepting drip irrigation water.

The downside is that they can cost about $10,000 each installed (which is a lot for one tree), and no one has more than 25 years of experience with them so there is no proof of their long-term life expectancy.

Most of Renton’s street trees still get planted the old fashioned way,  by designing reasonably wide 4-foot or 6-foot planting strips, choosing a species with deep roots that does well in urban street settings, excavating a hole more than three times larger than the root ball and filling it with good planting soil, and using a water bag while it is getting established.  Ideally the adjacent pavement is installed on “structural soil” –a mix of crushed rock and sandy loam– to accommodate mature root growth of the tree.

But the Piazza has recently seen two dozen of it’s significant trees cut down,  and is going to be widely paved over with just small areas of grass and plants here and there. Its two water features have also been removed.  So on hot summer days, visitors will flock to any shade they can find.  Hopefully these soil cells work to grow at least a couple of big replacement trees.

(As I’ve covered before, I would not have chosen to spend $3 million rebuilding our 25-year-old Piazza Park, including taking out trees and water features.  And even if directed to do so, I would not have started the project just ten months before we’ve asked the world to come see our downtown. But we are where we are, and I hope it is successful.)

A second soil cell is being installed for a new tree in the Piazza near South Third Street.  This hole is just a few feet away from a 52-inch diameter water main owned by Seattle Public Utilities.

As can be seen from the permit drawing, the above excavation for the soil cell is a few feet from Seattle’s 52-inch diameter water main.  The water main has approximately four feet of soil covering it. There is little margin for error.  If either pipeline was ever errantly broken by heavy equipment, it could release 100,000 gallons per minute of water into downtown Renton, quickly flooding nearby properties.

Soil cell details shown in the permit drawing

Goodbye to the shade.  Most of the tree canopy in this photo has been removed. (Photo looking South in 2023)

The trees and plantings in the background have all been removed. So has the fountain.

In this map of significant trees in the Piazza, the 23 trees with red dots were scheduled for removal. From my photos it appears that two or three additional trees may have been removed near the center of the Piazza.

This map from Renton’s Six-Year Transportation Improvement Plan shows South Second Street being reworked to carry two-way traffic. South Tobin Street (already a two-way street) is immediately north of South Second, and would be an important detour during construction. (South Third Street only carries eastbound traffic.)

South Second Street currently has four lanes running westbound past Renton High School. They are oddly separated by a planted median that dates back to when the street was a two-way street prior to the 1960s. The Renton Six-Year Transportation Improvement Plan calls for this street to be returned to two-way.

One of the many bright suggestions from residents at last night’s hearing on South Tobin Street was to at least keep the street open until South Second Street gets its two-way conversion that the City has been planning for over a decade.

The South Second Street conversion has been part of Renton’s Downtown Civic Core Vision and Action Plan for years, and it has received over a million dollars in grant funding.  It has appeared in Renton’s Six Year Transportation plan since at least 2018, and maybe earlier.

South Second Street has been one-way westbound since the 1960s.  When the street is converted to two-way, it could carry some of the eastbound traffic currently carried by Tobin, which would be especially important when Airport Way gets blocked from accidents.

Furthermore, the conversion of South Second Street will require that every intersection on the South Second street be reworked, requiring significant lengthy closures of South Second Street.  These closures would be much more painful to motorists without South Tobin Street.  South Third Street is a one-way westbound street, and can not relieve South Second’s eastbound traffic during construction.

Project Sheet from Renton’s Six-Year TIP

At least two Councilmembers at last night’s Council Meeting wanted to explore this idea further, and they made a motion to delay consideration of vacating Tobin Street until after the Second Street conversion was complete.   During the debate on their motion, both Renton’s Mayor and Public Works Director indicated that they had no knowledge of the Renton High School rebuild schedule; this was surprising to many of us, since the schedule has been widely publicized for at least a year and shows the School’s construction continuing until mid-2030.

Renton’s Public Work’s director did say that South Second Street could potentially be converted within the next five years.  These timelines give even more credibility to the residents’ suggestion that Tobin remain open, at least through completion of South Second Street.  At that time a new transportation study could be completed with the new street patterns, and a better assessment made regarding whether Tobin could be closed.

As a side note, the additional five years of keeping South Tobin Street open would make it more clear whether a potential mandatory airport runway extension would permanently close Airport Way, shifting traffic to Tobin.  I’ve described this concern in this comment on one of my earlier blog entries on this topic.

Delaying the vacation of South Tobin Street at least until after South Second Street is converted would not prevent completion of the new Renton High School, and it seems like the preferred, rational solution that prevents any irreversible errors in Renton’s transportation planning.  I thank the three Councilmembers that appear to support this plan, Councilmembers Rivera, Van, and O’Hallaron.  I also thank downtown resident Sarah Becker, who was the first person I know to point out that South Second should be converted to two-way before there is any talk of closing Tobin.  (Ms Becker had also been an outspoken advocate of saving the Tobin neighborhood from destruction.)

As I covered in my previous blog post, the School District and Mayor do not currently have enough Council votes to pass an ordinance immediately vacating South Tobin Street.  The idea to table the vacation request until after the South Second Street conversion, and ideally a subsequent traffic study following conversion, could be a the sensible and necessary compromise on this issue.

South Second Street two-way conversion is project number 22 in the Six Year TIP, and is shown in yellow because it is partially funded already.

This excerpt from the Six-Year TIP includes South Second Street two-way conversion as project number 22, partially funded.

This diagram from page 47 of the Downtown Civic Core Vision and Action Plan describes the conversion of South Second Street to two-way as a “bold move to improve circulation” that will have “dramatic and positive effect on the area.”  Since circulation already needs to be improved, Renton residents feel this project should be completed before there is any discussion of closing the two-way South Tobin Street.

For over 80 years South Tobin Street (shown above looking west) has provided an important east-west connection through downtown Renton, and important access to many local homes and businesses. The Renton School District is asking Renton Council to vacate this section of Tobin Street and two other streets so that the School can use them for internal circulation and play fields.

South Tobin Street currently runs east-west on this site plan just below the baseball diamonds, between the proposed “Staff Entrance” and (gated) “Event Exit.”

Renton City Council quietly stood on the sidelines this past year as Renton School District used eminent domain to take 40 homes and businesses in Renton’s South Tobin neighborhood.  When distraught residents asked for help at Council meetings, Council members either sat silently or in rare instances claimed that there was nothing they could do,  “since it was a school board action.”

Renton School District has been obliterating Renton’s South Tobin neighborhood, demolishing 32 homes and 8 businesses

But there was a lot that Council could have done, as residents informed them at the time, and as I described in a blog post here. The School Board was presumptuously repurposing three city streets in the northern part of the project that they don’t own and don’t have power to condemn: South Tobin Street, Shattuck Ave South, and South Tillicum Street.  Council could have passed a resolution saying these century-old streets, which are part of Renton’s original road network, would not be available to become School District property. If Council had passed such a resolution, the new Renton High School could still be built, but its baseball diamonds would not be on top of the former South Tobin neighborhood, and people would still occupy the homes and businesses.

Now that the School District is applying for building permits, the District must get their formal city permission to add these streets to their newly expanded school property.  To do so, the Council must hold a public hearing, and then finally formally weigh in on the topic.  The Council can’t dismiss the issue any longer.  The hearing is set for May 4th, 2026, 7:00 PM at Council Chambers, Renton City Hall.

The five-member Renton School Board has aggressively moved to tear down historic homes and businesses in what appears to be an effort to force the Council’s decision.  Even though no school building permits have been issued, the District has largely made waste of the forty recently-occupied structures, tearing them down long before the District needs the land for construction.  Lovely homes, manicured gardens, and popular businesses have all been leveled, as well as the future location of a community-focussed Chihuly glass studio and a highly-anticipated Asian restaurant in the freshly renovated building in which Red Robin’s founder learned the restaurant business. (The School District paid $6 million dollars for just this one restaurant property, which will become a corner of the outfield of a baseball diamond.)

Even with the neighborhood gone, the streets –particularly South Tobin Street– remain valuable to Renton’s residents.  In a downtown that is already divided by a river, a railroad, a freeway, an airport and a lake, Renton does not need to close more streets.

There are only two streets that carry traffic from east to west in the northern 1.45 miles of downtown, and South Tobin Street is one of them.  Tobin provides important redundancy to Airport Way during accidents, closures, and traffic jams, which have been frequent in recent years.  South Tobin also gives motorists important access to local businesses without having to make difficult left turns on and off of arterials, or having to broadly circle their destination on one-way streets through downtown Renton.

The red “X” marks where the east-west running South Tobin Street is proposed for closure. This would leave only Airport Way for eastbound traffic within the northern 1.45 miles of downtown Renton.

The School District paid for a traffic study which essentially concludes that the loss of these streets is no big deal, but the study focuses on normal traffic conditions.  It does not delve deeply enough into redundancy during accidents and closures (which is a Renton Comprehensive Plan requirement), or the safety and convenience of drivers who don’t want to make risky left turns from arterials (which is also a Comprehensive Plan requirement).  Remember, it won’t be these traffic engineers sitting in traffic after an accident on Airport Way– it will be you.

Airport Way is fast and busy. As an arterial it is not very suitable for access to the local businesses that still exist on the west side of Renton High School. Tobin Street South provides a local backup now, but its western half is proposed to be closed by the District.

Airport Way has been partially or fully closed many times in the past few years, due to accidents and other emergencies. This October 7, 2023 closure was for a fire. As usual,  Tobin Street was an important detour.  Airport way and it’s intersections see about 15 accidents per year.

Accident data submitted by the School District engineers shows the high rate of accidents on Airport Way and its intersections. Tobin Street provides an alternate route during these accidents.

Renton High School has about 1259 students now, but the School District is sizing the school for 1600 students based on planning for a future population boom in this area.  But traffic in this area is already bad with our current population density.  It’s worrisome to consider 30-50% population growth with only one east-west connection between downtown and Lake Washington.

South Tobin Street carrying bumper-to-bumper detour traffic six weeks ago following an accident on Airport Way. (This photo courtesy of “Commuter,” who included it in a comment.)

No one, including a school district, has the right to close a street just because they acquired the land on both sides of it. In 1971 Paccar had acquired land on both sides of Houser Way North and convinced the city to vacate the street between the two parcels, converting the once public street to a private street that only served Paccar buildings and parking lots. Two decades later this street vacation led to so much traffic congestion in North Renton that we had to construct a multi-million dollar “Houser Way Bypass and Tunnel” in the 1990s to compensate for the missing public connection.  If the Council votes to close Tobin, let’s hope that we don’t have to spend hundreds of millions installing a Tobin Street bypass tunnel 20 years from now.

Renton Council vacated a section of Houser Way North at the request of Paccar in 1971. Two decades later there was so much resulting congestion in North Renton that Renton had to construct the Houser Way Bypass, including an expensive tunnel under the I-405 offramp.

What does Renton’s Comprehensive Plan say?

Renton’s Comprehensive Plan Policy LU-57 says “provide complete streets arranged as an interconnecting network or grid. “Policy TR-9 says “increase and maintain the resiliency of the transportation system by incorporating redundancies and preparing for disasters and other impacts.”  Policy TR-25 says “Design for and maintain connectivity throughout and within the street network by avoiding cul-de-sacs and dead end streets.”   Policy TR-11 says “Limit direct access onto arterials when access opportunities via another route exist.”  There is no policy suggesting these policies should be abandoned to build an additional baseball field.

The bottom line:

Since the Council Members took no action when they had many opportunities to avoid the loss of the South Tobin neighborhood, I suspect they’ve already made up their minds to hand over the streets– even before they hear from the public.  I would encourage them to remain open-minded and listen to the testimony, and don’t automatically reward the behavior of tearing down houses before the project had full approval.

And if Council does agree to vacate the streets, they should insist on fair market value for the land.  The School District boundaries are larger than the City boundaries (with about 35% more taxpayers) , so it would unfairly penalize Renton City taxpayers to bear all the burden.  The School District wants Renton’s precious 80-year-old streets, and if granted the chance to get them they should pay fair market value for them.

May 4th Public Hearings details; from city website here

Renton’s wonderful Don Persson Senior Activity Center will be closed for some much-needed refurbishment starting on April 15– just 6 days from now.  Presumably, many of the activities will be moved to the Community Center, but the specifics have not been shared at this point.  This could come as a surprise for anyone who has not visited the Senior Center in the last week, since signs at the center have only recently been put up, and the city website does not mention the closure anywhere that I could find.   In addition, the Senior Center calendar remains unchanged from previous months.  I recommend that the City’s communication department get some announcements posted, preferably to the City’s home page and the Senior Center page.

The beautiful and popular Don Persson Renton Activity Senior Center sits on the banks of Cedar River, just across Logan Way from Renton Stadium and Renton Airport. The roof needs replacement, and all of the HVAC equipment on the flat roof section is also due for replacement. The work will deactivate the cooling and ventilating in the building during the construction period.

The City Council has briefly discussed the closure in a Committee of the Whole meeting in March, but even during that meeting it wasn’t clear that that the closure would last over six months.  And few residents watch these meetings. Unless a resident watched that meeting and took notes, they likely won’t know this closure is coming.

The refurbishment is described as a new roof, siding, windows, and HVAC system (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system).  These will all be desirable improvements that are arguably overdue on this building. I’ve had some residents ask me if I know why the Senior Center would have to close down entirely for these changes since much of the work is external to the building.  And the answer is that the HVAC system will need to be deactivated during the roof replacement since much of the equipment is on the flat part of the roof.  Without air conditioning and ventilation, the building may not be a safe environment for its normal activities in the summer.  In addition, the windows will be replaced which will require interior work in all the rooms.  And the refurbishment also includes updates to fire and communication systems, and other systems that run throughout the building.  Having contractors working on all these systems at the same time classes are going on could be a safety risk and a logistical challenge.

Unfortunately, the work has come at a time that the city has many other buildings out of commission, undergoing repairs or refurbishments.  This will add to the scheduling challenges.  The Pavilion Event Center is being converted into a Market, Carco Theater is being repaired after the December Cedar River flood, the Mill Avenue building (old city hall) is being repaired after it was flooded by a broken 16 inch water main, and the Renton Historical Museum building was abruptly closed about a year ago for refurbishment. In past years, these building might have offered extra space for classes and events.   With all these closures, the Community Center will be working to absorb as many of the Senior activities as possible, which will be a challenge in the building and in the adjacent parking lots.  The parking often gets packed in the summer from the Henry Moses Aquatic Center.

In summary, I’m glad that City Council authorized the refurbishment of the Senior Center. While the work requires a closure, I recommend the closure be communicated to the public more urgently and thoroughly, and I hope the contractor can get the job done swiftly– early if at all possible.

Banners should be added to this Senior Center page and the City’s home page advising of the upcoming closure

As of today, the posted schedule looks like all activities are happening normally

The website’s April lunch menu gives not hints that the Senior Center will be closing

This chart was shown during the March 2nd Committee of the Whole meeting, where Council was told in general terms about the upcoming work and schedule disruptions.

This is one page from the thousand-page construction contract that was approved by Renton City Council at their April 6 meeting. This drawing shows the replacement roof and the new high-efficiency HVAC heat pumps being installed on the flat roof section.

My wife Cathy and I attending a fun painting class at the Don Persson Senior Activity Center last week. Senior Center activities are offered to everyone age 50 and above.