Author: Randy Corman

Both the Renton Patch and Renton Reporter ran stories about the very significant library vote (and the discussion preceding it) at last night’s council meeting.

I had explained my opposition to this move in my previous blog entry here.

Here is the story in Renton Patch.

Here is the story in the Renton Reporter.  (Update:  This article seems to have disappeared from cyberspace; here is an earlier related article by the Renton Reporter)

Cathy and her Dad at the Ale House on First Street in Livermore, California. Livermore’s award winning downtown has undergone the type of transformation we have been working to obtain in Renton

Fountain on First Street in Livermore California

I don’t have to look any further than my own home town of Livermore California (pop 81,000) for a success story of downtown revitalization. Livermore’s downtown struggled for decades as outlying shopping malls and big box stores stripped away its customers and revenue. In the 1970’s and early 1980’s, Cathy and I would steer away from downtown First Street when shopping or going on a date. But in the last decade they have successfully made major changes. Their shops and restaurants are now bustling, and in 2009 they won a national award for their astounding turnaround. When Cathy and I were in Livermore last month, we waited forty minutes to get seated at a popular new downtown restaurant, and it was worth the wait. While we waited we enjoyed a joyful street scene that would be the envy of any city planners. Read more about their award winning transformation in this article from “Main Street News” here. (Or read Livermore’s official downtown plan, with background data, here. )

Interestingly, during the years they were planning and rebuilding their downtown, they also rebuilt their Public Library– but they did not move it to the heart of their downtown. Their gorgeous new library is actually further from the center of town than the old library was, approximately ten blocks away instead of six. Their old library, which is a beautiful building built when I was young, is now used only for storage.

Since I have so much family in Livermore, I’ve visited the city often over the years and watched the change almost as if it is time-lapse photography. The new Livermore downtown is a result of intensive planning, coordinated traffic revisions, major streetscape improvements, and strong business leadership and partnering.

Renton has taken some of these actions, but we have not gotten as much traction as Livermore at bringing customers to our businesses. In Renton during the last 15 years we purchased a downtown car dealership for about half a million dollars, and then spent a few million dollars to create the downtown Piazza Park and the Pavilion Building (which was remodeled from the dealer showroom). Then, we spent about ten million dollars on a parking garage downtown. We spent about half a million partnering with Renton School District, IKEA, and others, to build the IKEA Performing Arts Center. We purchased and tore down a derelict building near the Historical Museum, and then built the Veterans Memorial for about half a million dollars. We rezoned to encourage residential construction on top of businesses, and we worked with private developers to bring some of this about. In addition, in a move I’ve often wished we could take back, we gave Metro the land to build the Transit Center. All of these moves were intended to provide more people pedestrian traffic in downtown.

While we have had some successes in downtown, we clearly have a long ways to go to achieve the successful restaurant and shopping climate that we are looking for. Lately, I now recognize that this is because simply creating traffic does not assure the creation of customers. People have to be immediately interested in shopping or dining when they pass one of our restaurants or stores, or else they will not add to our customer base. It’s the same reason Google makes billions of dollars on the internet, while most newpapers have been losing money on the internet: People visiting Google are often searching for merchants or trying to find service providers, so they respond readily to Google’s ads– but people reading the New York Times are looking for news– ads are just a distraction.

In the case of business districts or the internet, traffic generated by people who are not looking to make purchases will use up road capacity/band width, but will not generate revenue. Common examples of these types of users of Renton’s downtown include motorists driving through from South Seattle to Issaquah, motorists avoiding I-405, bus-riders making tight connections at our transit center, and commuters using our transit center as a park-and-ride. We get tens of thousands of these per day, and we are lucky if we can sell one-in-fifty of them a cup of coffee.

What we really want, and what Livermore has succeeded in capturing, are people headed to downtown BECAUSE they want to go to a downtown restaurant, shop, or entertainment venue… the same reason they are going to Renton’s Landing. To get to this point, the streetscapes, restaurants, shops, and entertainment venues all have to offer what customers are looking for.

One immediate question Renton City Council is facing is whether moving the library downtown will help bring customers to Renton businesses, or at least do it better than other options we might have before us. I am not convinced that moving the library will help. In fact, I think it is possible that library patrons will simply use up more parking and road capacity in our central business district without adding to the business customer base. Like readers of the newspaper in my internet example above, library patrons can not be assumed to be in a “buying” mood. They are very likely to spend no more than a user of the transit center while they are in our downtown. And while it may seem funny to worry about parking now, if the downtown developed the way we would like it to, library parking demand could conflict with business parking demand.

I share the Mayor’s and the rest of Council’s concern about improving our downtown. And I think we should work hard on the next phase of our plan for doing so. I don’t claim to have all the answers, but I do have some ideas. When I look at the Livermore example, the amount of spending we have dedicated to landscape and streetscape in downtown has been minimal. Our 1.5 million dollars spending on Piazza landscape and Veterans Park together accounted for only about ten percent of the 15 million dollars Livermore spent making improvements to beautify their streets and sidewalks in the central business area. We spent most of our money on parking (ten million dollars), something that was important for us but less of a problem in Livermore (which had large undeveloped lots for parking). This makes me think we are overdue for a major streetscape update. But I would not want to do this without something else Livermore enjoyed– a strong commitment by property owners to update/replace their aging buildings as required. We should not commit taxpayer funds without confidence that the private sector is going to do their part. If property owners are not ready to make this commitment this year because of the recession, we may have to wait until enough of them ARE ready to commit.

In addition, we need to continue the Mayor’s current emphasis on crime prevention. I’m glad we are moving toward zero-tolerance of nuisance crimes in the transit center– this facility has generated too many complaints for too long. (If we can’t stop the complaints, I would even be open to the idea of closing the transit center and working with Metro to make the Grady Park and Ride the new place to catch a bus. It would be a shame to let criminals and punks cause us to close the transit center when it is used by so many people– but it would also be wrong to continue to let people get hurt or frightened while trying to use a public facility.) For now, we should see if the new emphasis on crime prevention is going to work.

Lastly, if we decide to move the library downtown, it should be part of a comprehensive plan, with broad consensus, that we collectively feel is our best hope to revitalize our downtown and make the business climate thrive– The same type of planning that revitalized the downtown in my home town. I don’t feel that we are there yet, so I am not ready to vote to move the library.

Cathy’s Mom and Dad at the Ale House in Livermore

Four Generations: Cathy’s Mom, Cathy, our daughter Katie, and her daughter Carolyn enjoying coffee at an independant coffee house on Livermore’s revitalized first street

Livermore’s First Street in 1955

Livermore First Street in 2006

Livermore’s First Street in 2011

Livermore’s old first street buildings are almost hidden behind new landscaping that a Parisian would be proud of

Even the alleys were included in Livermore’s downtown makeover; Public Works price tag for the whole job– about 15 million dollars.

Livremore’s transformation required a strong buy-in and donations from the public

Livermore’s new public library is further from the center of town than the old library

Livermore’s old library– used only for storage since it’s replacement about ten years ago

Council
Sent: Wednesday, May 11, 2011 4:28 PM
Attachments:

From: Denis Law
Sent: Wednesday, May 11, 2011 1:47 PM
To: Denis Law
Cc: Jay B Covington
Subject: Downtown Library

Dear Councilmembers,

Following weeks of debate and recent developments, I want to propose that you consider postponing any decision regarding the location of a new downtown library.

Given the importance of this topic and the impact of this decision to everyone in our community, I believe it is important that all our councilmembers be present and participate in the library debate and ultimate decisions. Councilmember King Parker will miss next Monday’s Council meeting due to a business trip, and Council President Terri Briere will be out of town the following week. In addition, some of our councilmembers have expressed their desire to have additional time to seek input from a broader base of our community, beyond those who have expressed their view at recent Council meetings.

Yesterday, we rolled out a comprehensive downtown safety initiative that includes additional police officers, rigorous enforcement, cameras, lighting and more in downtown Renton and the Transit Center. Unfortunately before we could implement this program and put these strategies in place, we had a gang-related shooting in downtown last night. Postponing this decision will allow us to fully implement this plan, which we believe will dramatically improve the sense of safety in our downtown area.

We are confident that there will not be any significant impact to the library decision if we decide to take some additional time to study it further and get additional public input. However, we do recommend moving forward with the design and financing of the Highlands Branch.

If you agree with this option, I also recommend that you delay the second reading of the bond ordinance and your decision on the Inter-Local Agreement.

If you feel this idea has merit, it needs to be discussed in an open meeting on Monday. I wanted to send this to you now so you would have a couple days to consider this option.

Denis Law
Mayor, City of Renton
1055 S. Grady Way, Renton, WA 98057

Many residents are saying they are not ready to replace the iconic downtown Renton library

At last week’s meeting of the Renton City Council, we had a spirited discussion about the proposal to build a replacement downtown library at the former Big 5 Sporting Good’s site next to the Piazza. This session was covered well by the Renton Reporter in this article here . Following last week’s meeting, Council has continued to receive significant email and citizen comment about the downtown library location. A few days ago we received a 43-page petition titled “Save our Library.” The hundreds of signatures on the petition were collected from library patrons during the past week. Email comments seem to be about five-to-one against moving the library.

As I said at last week’s council meeting (and discussed in a previous blog entry here ), I think we should be patient, and gather all the facts and input we can, in making the final decision about the downtown library location. I would be happier to see us first complete the proposed new Highlands library, building it to the proposed size of 15,000 square feet (increasing it from it’s current 6000 square feet.) Once it is completed and in operation, citizens could more easily evaluate whether the size would be sufficient for downtown (which is proposed for the same square footage.) Furthermore, having the Highlands library built to full size would minimize inconvenience to residents when the downtown library is worked on, regardless of whether it was moved or renovated.

Completing the highlands library first would also give us the time to complete another critical part of the plan– what to do with the building over the river if we move the library. The mayor and council have indicated that we intend to save and re-purpose this building, but the plan is not yet developed. Since there is no use defined, no one yet knows what the upgrades would cost to support any viable new use. We’ve been told that refurbishing this building to continue its long-term use as a library would cost close to ten million dollars. A reasonable assumption is that any other use would cost nearly as much, or perhaps even more, depending on how much activity was planned.

For example, the existing library is load limited in it’s central section where it spans the river (it can handle about 60 pounds per square foot), and this central section is therefore used for low-load purposes such as tables, chairs, and computer work stations. This use generates much less load than it would as a reception hall where hundreds of people could be dancing in rhythm. Ultimately, we ought to know the proposed use and the cost of retrofitting before we commit that we will re-purpose this building.

The consequences of failing to come up with an acceptable and affordable use could be severe. If the building gets labeled as abandoned, or falls into disrepair, there could be numerous agencies (Federal government, State Fisheries, Muckleshoot Tribes, etc) pushing Renton to demolish it. And demolishing it would not be cheap– many expensive permits would be required, salmon-migration dates observed, and contractors paid. We’ll have to keep the building maintained and in some type of use, with the heat and lights on, to prevent this fate. This could take us many years. I won’t feel comfortable promising citizens that we are keeping the building until this plan, including the funding, is worked out.

The above is the header page of a 43 page petition, with up to twelve signatures per page. The petition submitters have said that they are gathering more signatures daily.

I’ve included two examples of recent emails we have received below, one in favor of moving the library, and one against.

Continue reading →