Author: Randy Corman

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.

Renton City Council has discussed the artwork for Legacy Square at several public meetings. In their last meeting on this topic  (May 4th), they still had not agreed on the murals for either the side of the church abuting Legacy Square or for the stage doors.

The City’s “In Case You Missed it” summary of the May 4th Council Meeting says: “Following up from the April COW, the Legacy Square artwork was included in the consent agenda. During the meeting, council pulled the item for discussion; during which Community Economic & Development Administrator Gina Estep provided an overview of the community engagement and Arts Commission process over the past year that led to the proposed design. After discussion, the council did not approve the artwork and requested additional community engagement and council input in the final design.”

I was therefore surprised to see a professional crew painting a mural at Legacy Square on the side of the church today at 1:00. I don’t think the public has been informed what to expect in this mural.  And  since this is a three-day holiday weekend, I presume some type of overtime pay is involved.

I checked Council records for the May 11 and May 18 Council Meetings, and didn’t spot any further votes about this artwork.  I suppose I could have missed them, but I also have not seen any public messaging about this artwork.

It looks like a different design than the one that was officially proposed after the RFP, artist selection, Arts Commission review, and public council debate.

If anyone knows what this artwork will be, or when/how it was approved, I would appreciate your sharing it in a comment.  Thank you!

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:

On Monday I posted that Renton Mayor Pavone cast a controversial tie-breaking vote regarding the Tobin Street vacation; state law says that the votes of four council members are necessary to pass a vacation ordinance, and only three council members gave their support to proceed to the next step of the process.

The “For A Better Renton” organization has formally notified the city that they are challenging the legitimacy of the tie-breaking vote.  They’ve sent a letter to the Renton City Attorney, Renton elected officials, and staff.

They posted the letter on their Facebook page.  I’ve included a screenshot of their letter below.  (For background on this issue please see my Monday night blog post here.)

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.)

Dick’s Drive-in, the most popular local hamburger chain in the Seattle area, is formally exploring opening a restaurant in Renton.  They’ve come in for a pre-application conference, including making a formal submission to the City of Renton.  They are exploring potentially locating a restaurant in the Home Depot lot, near Renton City Hall.  This would be a great location. They have considered it in the past, even back when the Home Depot was a Sam’s Club.  The pre-application files have been posted to the City’s public website.

I’m very happy they are looking at Renton again. In addition to providing excellent working conditions for their employees and providing great food at a low price, there’s something uniquely comforting about a late-night stop at Dick’s Drive-In.

Dick’s isn’t just another hamburger stand; it’s become an integral part of the  the northwest itself.  Generations of local residents have enjoyed Dick’s burgers and fries after football games, concerts, first dates, and long shifts at work. In a region obsessed with reinvention, Dick’s remains largely unchanged from how I remember it on my first visit in the early 1980s.  It’s affordable, unpretentious, delicious, and woven into our everyday lives in the Northwest.

In recent years I’ve visited Dick’s Drive-in Seattle and other nearby cities.  And I’ve enjoyed visits from Dick’s food truck at special events in Renton.  I always advocated for encouraging the company to open a store in Renton while I was on Council.  This pre-application does not necessarily mean it will happen, but it is as close as we’ve come.

I wish them success as they go through the process, and hope to enjoy a new Renton Dick’s restaurant soon.

The pre-application submittal and the City’s report on the meeting can be found on the City’s public website here.

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.

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.

Tonight’s Public Hearing on whether Renton should give up South Tobin Street raised numerous questions and appears to not have resolved whether South Tobin Street will in fact be vacated. (See background on this issue here).

The hearing began with Councilmember Ryan McIrvin recusing himself because he is married to a school board member, which seemed to me and many others in attendance an appropriate choice.

Of the remaining six councilmembers, three Council members voted against advancing the vacation request, and three voted for advancing it.

The Mayor then stepped in to break the tie, voting to advance the vacation request to the next step:  appraisal and preparation of an ordinance.

But left unspoken was that Washington law requires FOUR COUNCIL MEMBER VOTES TO PASS AN ORDINANCE, including a VACATION ORDINANCE.  The Mayor can’t break a 3-3 tie to pass an ordinance.  The Mayor is now preparing an ordinance that he does not have the votes to pass.  RCW 35.23.11 says “No ordinance and no resolution or order shall have any validity or effect unless passed by the votes of at least four councilmembers.” Additionally, RCW 35.12.100 makes it clear the Mayor can’t vote on a tie to pass an ordinance:  “The mayor shall preside over all meetings of the city council, when present, but shall have a vote only in the case of a tie in the votes of the councilmembers with respect to matters other than the passage of any ordinance, grant, or revocation of franchise or license, or any resolution for the payment of money. “

So the School District is now on notice that they only have three Renton Councilmembers supporting their vacation request, and they should be careful about spending taxpayer money to further the design based on the closure of South Tobin Street.

The District and perhaps the Mayor might start approaching Council Members to change their positions, but this should be done in the light of day using a fair, open public process.  Many, many people will want to know why any Council votes gets changed at this stage, following a very public meeting and a very memorable vote.

Procedural errors tonight:

There were a few procedural errors tonight that kept the Public Hearing from going as smoothly as it should have, and might have denied some legitimate public comment.

The first error was not as significant but it got things off to an awkward start.  The Mayor first called on a speaker for  a public hearing that was scheduled later on the agenda, and that speaker gave his full testimony.  After this, the Mayor began calling names from the correct public hearing.

Then many speakers were surprised that the public comment was limited to three minutes, when it is typically five for a public hearing.  This surprise caused some speakers to rush their testimony.

I’ve been told by one resident that he had signed up to speak, and he was never called on.  There may have been others in this group as well.  It’s possible that the two signup sheets for the two hearings got mixed up during the sign-in stage. Such a mixup is unfair to the public and should have been corrected at the hearing.  The Mayor could have said “Is there anyone who signed up that did not get a chance to speak?,”  which is commonly done at public hearings.

Lastly, at the end of the hearing, there was a three-to-three voice-vote regarding advancing the vacation request, and the Mayor erroneously called it a win for advancing the vacation.  It took Councilmember Carmen Rivera firmly insisting on an accounting of each vote (essentially a roll call) before the Mayor agreed it was a tie.  That’s when he said he voted to advance it.

Strong testimony by public with many good ideas suggested:

There was strong testimony delivered by many residents tonight, and some of it deserves further discussion in a follow-on blog entry.  The full meeting with the public testimony can be viewed here.

Author’s note: I’m confident that both City and School District attorneys will be reading this blog entry, and I encourage them to correct me if I’m mistaken in my understanding of Washington State Law on these issues.  You can leave a comment here on this blog entry, or contact me at my first and last name at gmail dot com, or phone me at 425-271-6913 and leave a message.

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.”

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

The City of Renton celebrates our 125th birthday on September 6th, two months after our nation celebrates its 250th birthday on July 4.  Renton will become half the age of the USA.

This milestone occurs the same summer that world-wide visitors will be filling Renton’s hotels to attend World Cup soccer events.  But if these visitors want to learn anything about Renton’s storied history, they won’t find it at the Renton History Museum.  Until last year, the Museum building was filled with 45,000 historic artifacts curated by the non-profit community-run Renton Historical Society.  But in January 2025, the City of Renton abruptly evicted Renton Historical Society and their artifacts from the surplussed-firehouse museum building that they had leased since 1979.  The City said they were going to make urgently needed updates to the building and then operate the museum as a city department.  Nearly a year and a half later there have been no building updates, and the City has not put any displays in the Museum.

Fortunately, Renton Historical Society carefully boxed and stored their 45,000 Renton artifacts, photographs and documents last year when they were evicted, and they just purchased their own historic downtown building to rebuild a Museum.  Their replacement building is across the street from their previous building. It is the oldest brick building in Renton, built in 1898, and an excellent location for them to share their artifacts, hold classes and workshops, and provide office space for their many volunteers that help run the Society.

The Society’s commendable actions upheld decades of commitment to their present and past donors and volunteers, who have documented local stories, supplied antiques and cash, and even left entire estates to Renton Historical Society to benefit the public.  Even during this time of displacement, Renton Historical Society has kept their photographs and artifacts available to the public and maintained regular office hours at their temporary leased location at Renton Technical College, where they have some items on display and many available in indexed boxes. They have also continued to share photos and stories on their website.

Did this have to happen?

On January 30, 2025 the Renton Reporter ran a story titled “Renton Historical Society asked to remove artifacts from museum for renovations“.  The article includes this statement taken from a Renton Historical Society press release, “Most noteworthy is the fact that the city cannot provide financial or logistical support to any outside organization, including nonprofits like the Renton Historical Society. As a result of this change of city policy, the Renton Historical Society now manages its own administrative, financial and fundraising efforts.” I assume someone at the City of Renton had told them this, but it does not ring true.

Washington law RCW 27.48.010 clearly states that Cities can provide “quarters” and funding for museums, consistent with the historic lease and operating agreement between the City and Museum.

In the same Renton Reporter article the City says the move was required for renovation:

“Renton communications and engagement director Laura Pettitt said the forced move is due to planned renovations. The museum is currently in the process of undergoing renovations, and every item in the building is slated for removal, whether owned by the city or the Renton Historical Society or any other entity,” Pettitt said. ” 

A year and a half later, with no renovations evident, it’s hard to believe that the need for an urgent renovation drove this change.  Especially because the city is now hosting some non-museum activities in the building.  It might be that City leadership simply became disinterested in our local history.

The only thing we know for sure is that Renton Historical Society has done a solid job protecting Renton’s history, and they deserve our gratitude for it.

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 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.

The Renton Reporter informs us that in Mayor Pavone’s “State of the City” address he said the city missed an opportunity by denying light rail to preserve the small town feel.  That decision continues to shape some of the challenges we’re working to overcome today.”

This untrue statement by the Mayor works against Renton’s urgent need to obtain equitable transit service.  And the statement is grossly unfair to the four Mayors that preceded Mayor Pavone who all toiled through complicated, difficult regional politics to try to get Renton light rail access.

Mayors Clymer, Tanner, Keolker-Wheeler, and Law all labored to get light rail service to Renton. Mayor Clymer led Renton through our first Growth Management Plan in 1994, in which Renton worked to be recognized regionally as an “Urban Center.” This designation, which required upzoning of downtown and South Renton, was accomplished primarily to make Renton eligible for regional high capacity transit, which was just coming into existence with Sound Move in 1995.

Mayor Tanner worked to recover funding and commitments from Sound Transit after the agency backed out of their ST1 campaign promise to spend $100 million improving regional bus service in Renton with HOV direct access connections to I-405.  Mayor Tanner, an accomplished engineer and former FAA executive who had spent his life promoting safe public transportation, would have been delighted if Sound Transit had offered to install the light rail system per the 1996 long-range vision.

Mayors Keolker-Wheeler and Law both advocated vociferously for Renton light rail through Sound Transit 2 and Sound Transit 3 planning efforts. But ultimately the fact that Renton is in Sound Transit’s Eastside Planning District and our Eastside Board Members were from Bellevue, Redmond, and Issaquah was too big a hurdle; all three of these cities received light rail while Renton did not.  Both Mayors sought Renton representation on the Sound Transit Board, and both were turned down until after ST3 had passed.  In a series of past blog posts I’ve given the details of these frustrating battles to bring light rail service to Renton.

These four Mayors were backed by incredible staff leadership, including Chief Administrative Officer Jay Covington and Public Works Director Gregg Zimmerman, who both advocated for high capacity transit for Renton for thirty years.  The Renton Mayors were also supported by about twenty-five councilmembers during these years who would have all liked to see Renton get light rail service.  Many of us on Council worked countless hours on regional bodies in east King County, south King County, and in Seattle in an effort to get us light rail.

If Mayor Pavone has knowledge of any of these previous Renton public officials working to deny light rail to Renton, he should be forthcoming with the names of those involved.

When I retired in 2021, Renton was supposed to receive BRT Stride Service starting in 2024, with a parking garage at the Rainier/Grady station and a large park-and-ride lot at the Seahawks station; and Sound Transit was supposed to be spending $5 million to develop concepts and layouts for a potential future light rail line from Renton to Burien along the I-405 corridor.   But since I retired, the BRT service was pushed out to 2028, the parking facilities have been delayed until 2036, and the Renton light rail study has been seemingly ignored.  A year ago, many Renton Highlands residents were celebrating that new King County Council legislation would provide improved access to light rail via more frequent Metro 111 service once the Seattle-Bellevue rail link was activated.  But Metro has recently delayed this improvement, and Renton officials have not even acknowledged it yet, let alone tried to speed it along.

Mayor Pavone cannot blame these delays on past Mayors or Councils.

Excerpt with context from April 6, 2026 Renton Reporter:

“Pavone said they have to plan with the future in mind, which involves making tough decisions. He cited the land acquisition for the expansion of Coulon Park in the 1960s and moving the car dealers out of downtown as good decisions the city has made. However, he said the city missed an opportunity by denying light rail “to preserve the small-town feel.” “That decision continues to shape some of the challenges we’re working to overcome today,” Pavone said. “The decisions we make now will define our future. It’s up to us whether we impact it positively or negatively.”

At my last Council Meeting, in December 2021, Renton Council tentatively approved a Pavilion Event Center upgrade. The plan called for the selected bidder to use his private funds to add anchor tenants and portable market kiosks to the Pavilion building.  The bidder wrote that he would take out a 1.2 million dollar loan to remodel and begin operations, and his anchor tenants would pay for their tenant improvements.  Large events would be held in the updated Pavilion by rolling away the portable kiosks, and installing a stage when desired.  In my comments that night I stated that the event capability (which was a requirement in the City’s Request for Proposals) was important to attract new visitors, and I hoped that the current tenants (Rain City Catering) would be able to utilize this event venue.

Per Mayor Denis Law in the Renton Reporter on May 3, 2019 “The proposal would leave the renovations, operations and management to the leaseholder”….  Law told the council that the city is not currently proposing money toward the project, nor would the city operate it.

After I retired from Council, the plan went through complete upheaval with little public process.  Instead of the selected bidder paying for the all the upgrades, Renton taxpayers will now pay $10 million for a total remodel of the Pavilion building, plus another 2.8 million for the adjacent Piazza Park, for $12.8 million total.  The taxpayer-funded Pavilion remodel includes many features which would be considered tenant improvements: customized heating and ventilating equipment; new floors; interior dividing walls; an entry vestibule; full plumbing and electrical rough-ins for two main anchor tenants and 2-4 minor anchor tenants; plumbing and electrical systems for six permanent kiosks; enhanced area and decorative strip lighting at kiosks and entry points; and other decorative features throughout.

Even more impactful, by running utilities into the kiosks, the kiosks are no longer portable. The ability to host large events, which was a condition of the original RFP, has been eliminated.

The new tenant will also be renting the building at a fraction of market rate, starting with free for the first six months, then $4,909 per month for the next two years, then stepping up over four years to the far-below-market rent of $15.00 per square foot; after that it’s expected to stay well below market (as low as half the rent of similar sized buildings) with 3% annual increases.  The tenant terms are so generous and the deal so different from the RFP, I strongly recommended the City issue a new RFP a year ago. 

The plan that wasn’t supposed to cost the city anything in December 2021 has changed dramatically.  But instead of explaining why these changes to the plan were made, the City has been communicating to the press and on social media that this new plan is the same plan that we agreed to before I retired.  It obviously is not that same plan, as the charts below show and as I’ve covered in even more detail here.

Why does the City continue to insist that this is the same plan that Council agreed to in 2021?  Are City leaders unable to justify their changes to the plan?  Did they run afoul of fair bidding practices? Is there another reason?  With no information being made public about this, the rumor mill has been coming up with its own answers.

Renton’s communication team should let the community honestly know when this plan changed and why it changed.  Hopefully their reasoning is sound, and the rumors can all be put to bed.

As crews rush to complete Legacy Square, the Piazza, and the Pavilion, they have to be extremely careful digging in the ground or driving trucks on the site.  Seattle’s most important water pipeline system runs straight through the construction site, just a four feet under the surface.  Any errant equipment operator who strikes this pipeline could cause a break that could dump 100,000 gallons per minute into downtown Renton, and deprive Seattle of 70% of its water.  It’s actually a pair of pipes through the Piazza, one is 52 inches in diameter and one is 66 inches.  The 66 inch pipeline is seventeen times bigger in cross-section than the 16 inch pipe that flooded Houser Way and Renton’s 200 Mill Avenue (former City Hall) building last week.

Safely working around this pair of pipelines must remain front and center, as the Piazza work crews have just 46 workdays left to complete this project before the June 2nd Farmers Market.   They can’t rush their digging work, or introduce any extra personnel that have not been fully briefed on the pipeline risks.

On January 23rd I posted an entry titled “Renton races to put Piazza back together before World Cup.”

Now, with just barely two months to go (just 47 workdays), the Piazza construction timeline has gone from looking challenging to looking worrisome and mismanaged.

In addition to paying contractors $12.8 million to tear out and rebuild the Piazza and Pavillion, Renton has committed to pay a consultant up to $600,000 to “activate” the Piazza and Legacy Square this summer. Formal activities are scheduled to return to the Piazza by the June 2nd Farmers Market.

Ideally the consultants would use the next two months to install decorations, verify that the flower beds are tidy, walk-through the space with performers and vendors, and perform system sound and lighting checks.  Instead, the consultants will be watching anxiously from behind a chain link fence as frantic construction crews work overtime to bury drainage and irrigation pipes, pour and finish concrete, affix plumbing fixtures, install wiring and electrical fixtures, plant trees, roll out sod, and establish flowers and shrubs… all within a nine-week window.

Even if all this work miraculously gets completed by June 2nd, it will have been a self-inflicted emergency that cost the city far more than it should have.  There is little hope that this project will get completed with high quality and minimal overtime in less than nine weeks.  An old project management axiom says you get to pick two: good, fast, or cheap.  When you need it fast, you must sacrifice either quality or cost-efficiency.

If the lovely and well-established Piazza had never been torn out, we would already be holding spring events in this park, creating momentum and energy for this summer.  The Park was “World-Cup-ready” in 2023, as shown in the photos below.  But Renton’s leaders had the Piazza demolished last summer.   We’re now approaching our biggest summer ever for the Piazza, and it’s a muddy construction site.  Even in the best case the Piazza will have unestablished plantings and the concrete will probably not be fully-cured by the deadline (it typically takes 28 days to reach full strength). And as I’ve covered in previous blog entries, the Piazza will have lost its water features and the majority of its tree canopy just in time for summer World Cup crowds to arrive.