Hi, I'm Randy Corman, Renton City Councilmember. I am the most senior member of the council, currently in my 25th year (I have been elected seven times). I pay for this website with my own funds. Please recognize that all views expressed in my journal entries are my own, and not the official position of Renton City Council, other councilmembers, nor the city of Renton. Thanks for reading.
The grass field in the center lower-half is the site of the proposed Logan Six development. The site was a former railroad easement, that has utilities buried in it.
It’s rare in Renton for neighbors to actively picket a new property development, like North Renton residents have with the new Logan Six project. Even Renton’s Hearing Examiner has said“The proposal has drawn more opposition from neighbors than any project the City has seen in several years”. So what has made Logan Six so controversial, even while Renton has so many apartments going in with few complaints in many other areas?
The answer springs from new policy interpretations that are unmanaged and unchecked by Renton City Council. And because of new “Missing Middle” zoning that is currently in work, this failure on the part of Renton Council to provide needed oversight, if not corrected, will soon grow until we see similar protests city-wide.
Renton voters approved a new Renton High School at a new location, with this concept drawing illustrating the school potentially at the former headquarters of Wizards of the Coast on Lind Ave. Some of the office buildings are repurposed in this rendering. This was estimated to cost $441 Million. The School Board is instead implementing a rejected (not voter-approved) concept of a new school at the current high school site, for a cost of $568 million plus rapidly escalating land acquisition and other costs.
Following the Uvalde Texas School Shooting in May 2022, Renton School District prepared a School Bond Proposition to pay for prudent safety and security upgrades, to protect our children. $182 million would be spent district-wide on entry point access controls, security systems, and video cameras, along with earthquake improvements and overdue heating and ventilating system replacements. The District also felt it was time to make a major upgrade to Renton High School, and they proposed relocating it as the cost-effective option that also preserved the historic Renton High buildings for other purposes. 64% of Renton voters ultimately approved this measure, including me and my extended family.
Everyone who’s enjoyed the Universal Studios Tour in Los Angeles can tell you about the Hollywood magic that can make you believe a facade is a whole building. The Courthouse in “Back to the Future” is a good example.
Our historic Renton High School will soon be another example of this type of illusion, with engineers and architects working to figure out how to support the front facade of the building while tearing down the building behind it.
The “Back to the Future” courthouse, seen from above
But voters did not ask for our century-old Renton High School building to be reduced to a Hollywood false front. Voters clearly wanted the building saved. The November 2022 ballot directed voters to the School District website for details about the ballot issue, which explicitly read “We will not take down the current Renton High School (we will continue to find uses for this building).”
Renton High Grad Ron Hicklin, class of 1956, was performing with his quartet ” the Eligibles” when he recorded the very-familiar Gilligan’s Island theme song that is used in all the color seasons of the TV show.
Renton High grad Ron Hicklin, second from left, singing tenor in his group “The Eligibles” before their Gilligan’s Island recording
As I learn more about the plans to tear down our century-old Renton High School, I was preparing to write a post about the school’s incredible history and distinguished alumni.
Then I decided that one of Renton’s High’s talented distinguished graduates had such a miraculous music career that he deserved his own introduction. We’ve all heard him singing countless times, and yet many might not recognize his name because his music was often uncredited by design. Ron Hicklin, 1956 Renton High grad, and his studio singers were the voices of the Partridge Family, the Brady Bunch, and other TV and cartoon bands that we heard as we were growing up.
The top floor of the Science building in Renton High was remodeled in 2024 at a cost of 11.5 million dollars, and is now scheduled to be torn down as part of Renton High School replacement
Renton School District just used taxpayer bond proceeds that we approved in 2019 to complete a $11,500,000 upgrade in the science building of Renton High School. The School Board is now making plans to tear this building down.
There are about 1,300 students at Renton High, attending for four years. So during the approximately four years this Science Center will have a chance to be used, it will have cost about $8,800 per student to make this upgrade (11.5 million/1300 students). Along with other pictures below, I’ve included a photo of the “before” condition of the science classrooms; they were remodeled in 2000 and certainly still look serviceable.
By state law, Renton has to complete a city-wide rezone by June 30th to include duplex, 4-plex, and 6-plex options in many single family zones. The closer the property is to transit and the city core, the greater the potential density.
As described in my previous post, Renton School District is actively pursuing property adjacent to Renton High School to relocate their baseball facility (at a possible cost of 100 million dollars). The targeted property owners describe the School District’s agents like bill collectors– phoning them at all hours, knocking on their doors, and mailing them urgent and frightening messages. The District hopes to complete their acquisitions soon, in April.
While some property owners have capitulated under the pressure and accepted a District offer, other property owners say they are being low-balled, and have vowed not to go down without a fight. These fighting-residents are seeking appraisals to counter what some describe as dismal or even predatory offers from the district.
The Renton School District is on a buying binge, going after 42 business properties and single-family homes to amass ten acres to move their baseball field. They’re apparently surprised by the high prices, and are starting to use eminent domain to take properties. With many multi-million dollar properties in the mix, one of them reaching 6 million dollars, the school district could potentially end up spending 60-80 million dollars on this property before they are through. Then they will have to pay to close several city streets, relocating all the utilities. They’ll also have substantial demolition costs, and environmental cleanup costs for some of the properties. And they will have archaeological preservation costs, as this former Black River riparian zone may have significant historical artifacts. All told, they could spend 80-90 million on site procurement and preparation before they even start work on the baseball field.
This means Renton High’s new baseball field could exceed the costs of our nation’s most over-the-top high school football stadiums, even before we install the first bleacher. That almost certainly makes it the nation’s most expensive high school baseball field.
North Renton will soon be overwhelmed with cars and no parking on the west on Logan Ave, while to the east on Garden Ave they will have a four-story derelict, unusable parking garage
What the Public Safety Chair didn’t say in her statement was that the four-story parking garage on the site is not part of the demolition plan, and will be left in place after the demolition is complete. The sky bridges that connected the garage to the office building will be demolished along with the buildings.
The demolition permit covers the building on Park and the building on 6th. The parking garage, which is the large square in the center, will remain, as shown in this traffic plan.
I’ve not seen or heard of any structural, plumbing, electrical, or fire permits to restore this garage to usability. If these permits are not applied for and issued, it will mean the garage will probably remain unusable, hazardous, and abandoned for years to come after the demolition is complete.
You pay taxes for city representation, and your elected officials need to be focused on your needs. You have hired them to fulfill your agenda, not some third-party’s agenda in Seattle or elsewhere. You are their boss, and your needs are important.
So how do you remind your officials what your needs are, and make sure your officials remain focused on them during the four years between elections?
You speak to the Council and Mayor, send letters and emails to the Council and Mayor, phone the Council and Mayor, contact the media, and stage rallies and protests if necessary.
And you don’t do it just once. You do it as many times as it takes to get your message across. Summon the same conviction you would if you paid someone to fix your car, and they took your money but didn’t fix your car.
Speak to the Council and Mayor:
Speaking at a Council meeting is the best way to ensure that the Council and Mayor get your message without interference or miscommunication. Renton Council Meetings are generally held the first four Mondays of every month, and each regular meeting typically has an audience comment section near the beginning of the meeting. You need to sign up to speak in advance of the meeting.
You’ll typically only be given three minutes to speak to the Council, so it’s a good idea to have your comments prepared and possibly even written out in advance.
Rainier Flight Services aircraft, previously flown by Renton flight school students, are now based at Boeing Field. A hundred other pilots were in line for these aircraft tie-down spaces near the Museum of Flight.
At a coffeehouse meeting on Wednesday, Public Works Director Martin Pastucha was reportedly not forthcoming about where he was getting the information that seems to disagree with Renton’s 1988 and 2020 scientific wellhead protection studies (such as the extent of Renton’s aquifer). At one point he said only that it was his “hydrologist.” My wife who was in attendance specifically questioned Mr. Pastucha about his assertion that there was minimal risk to our water system because monitoring wells would let the City know of problems before people drank the contaminated water. “Yes, but how would you then clean it out?” she asked, according to the accounts of her and two friends. “You can’t just stick a sponge down there and pull the contaminants out” my wife said.
Mr. Pastucha assertively replied that yes you can indeed clean it out (as if it is routine).
He never offered a name, report, or company that was giving him his information, beyond saying a hydrologist. When I heard about this conversation, it reminded me of the “top men” scene from “Raiders of the Lost Ark” that I have linked above.
I wasn’t born yesterday, and I realize Mr. Pastucha might be able to find a subordinate employee who submits to telling him what he wants to hear, and it’s not my intent to throw such an employee under the bus. But if we are going to put Renton’s wellfield at risk, after all the time and money we’ve put into them, I would like to see published technical reports, with data similar to the wellhead studies, instead of stories and memos from Martin Pastucha. Mr. Pastucha has Business and Public Administration degrees, but not the engineering degree held by his predecessor when the wellhead studies were commissioned.
For those who have never seen the results of contamination in a wellfield, suffice it to say getting the toxins out of a wellfield is like trying to get pee out of a pool. It’s not going to happen overnight. Some asphalt toxins like benzene are dangerous at six parts per billion, and are not able to be filtered out.
Cleaning will typically rely on flushing, often for months or years, and this obviously only works if the source of the pollution has been removed. I remember a time on Council when this happened in a downtown well due to a dry cleaning chemical, and it took months to get the source eliminated and the well back on line.
Bob Baker, who has dedicated years to organizing the “save the Cedar River campaign,” became wistful when I asked him about Renton’s vanishing “amicus brief” that would have protected the Cedar River Valley. Hearing Bob report on the difference this would have made in the Court of Appeals trial is like listening to a die-hard Seahawks fan discuss the fateful decision to try a pass instead of giving the ball to Marshawn Lynch on the one yard line at the Super Bowl. Like Marshawn reports about his teammates at the Superbowl, the reaction of everyone close to the “Save the Cedar River effort” was “What the f….?
Mr. Baker had spent years raising the tens of thousands of dollars required for the Court of Appeals to hear the case, and Bob reports that at the trial two out of the three judges said that if Renton had submitted an amicus (friend-of-the-court) brief expressing municipal concerns about the plant, they would have found in favor of “Save the Cedar River.”
This blog post looks a little like a picture book, but is actually an important and easy-to-understand scientific description of where our drinking water comes from.
Renton’s newish Public Works Director, Martin Pastucha, is in over his head when it comes to understanding Renton’s aquifer. The aquifer was extensively studied in 1987, five years prior to my 28-year service on Renton Council, and then again in 2020 (when I was Council President pro-tem), in a 400-page study that built on the 1987 work.
Both of these studies confirm that much of our drinking water comes from many miles up the Cedar River Valley, and that this water can travel half a mile per day in an underground river.
Instead of accepting this reality, Mr. Pastucha has engaged in trying to convince our Mayor, our Council, and the public that it would be impossible for water in our aquifer to travel as far as three miles underground, and therefore asserts that the proposed asphalt plant could never affect our wells.
To help Mr. Pastucha understand our aquifer better, and for all those interested in where our water comes from, I’ve prepared a simple high-level overview using scientific sources.
A fun and easy lesson about where Renton’s water comes from:
Cedar River water is not drinkable in Renton
First, we need to know that the water in the Cedar River unfortunately contains street and agriculture runoff in Renton. It is not drinkable, and we work to keep it’s clay bed from being punctured so that it does not spill into the deep aquifer. For instance, we’ve ensured pilings for I-405 are not driven through the river bottom and into the aquifer. We work hard to keep it clean enough for wildlife, but not for human consumption.
Renton’s drinking water comes from rain, which falls in our aquifer recharge areas and percolates into our underground aquifer. Renton gets about 40 inches of rain per year.
Here is the Hearing Examiners Final Decision regarding the file Logan Six – LUA-22-000283 dated 3/3/2025. You can also find the Hearing Examiner’s decision at this link – LUA-23-000283. Also here is the HEX folder with the Land Use link (LUA-23-000283)
North Renton residents were protesting on Logan Ave yesterday. They’ll be doing it again today, starting at 3:30 PM.
North Renton residents have taken the unusual step of organizing protests after being denied an opportunity to work with Renton City Council on their concerns over two years.
Because of Renton City Council’s last minute change to their Hearing Appeals process, residents feel like they’ve never had a proper opportunity to discuss their concerns with the council, and may never get one. The residents consequently asked the Council this past Monday night to implement a moratorium to buy some time for Council and the community to work together on the North Renton concerns, but the Council rejected the motion in a 5 to 1 vote.
Residents feel the planned 100-unit Logan Six apartment project is oversized for its site, has inadequate parking, and should be using the Logan Ave arterial for access as opposed to residential side streets. For over two years City Council had said they were going to review the project on appeal if the residents had concerns following the Hearing Examiner’s review, but then the Council changed their minds on the eve of the Hearing Examiner’s review.
Everyone is currently awaiting the Hearing Examiner’s decision, due for release any day.
