Category: Uncategorized

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.

 

 

The Renton City Council should thoroughly review how Renton manages our city facilities to return the best value to our residents and businesses.  Lately, it feels like our city facilities are being treated as if they are disposable.  With replacement buildings now costing in the tens of millions of dollars, our city facilities should be utilized to their fullest and managed with respect.

It’s been two years since the City of Renton evicted the popular “Landing Gear Works” from their leased manufacturing building and hangar at Renton Airport.  The decades-old landing gear manufacturing company specializes in small-airplane components,  and their operation provided desirable economic diversity to our airport.  The eviction eliminated dozens of living wage jobs, sacrificed city B&O and sales tax revenue on a multi-million dollar business, and left aircraft owners queuing for support for their aircraft products while the Landing Gear Works hurriedly relocated their operations to other cities.

Two years after this eviction began, nothing has been done with the city’s now-empty buildings.

The eviction process began when a roof replacement was needed on the manufacturing building that was partially leased by the Landing Gear Works.  The City (which owned the building)  would neither pay for the repair themselves nor grant the tenant reasonable lease terms to accomplish the repair.   The dispute became exacerbated when the city realized they had made a multi-month billing error, and then demanded tens of thousands of dollars in surprise back-rent from the Landing Gear Works at the same time as they were refusing to address the roof.

While a negotiated settlement could have quickly resolved these issues, the Renton City Council (which has responsibility and authority for leases) never publicly discussed a possible resolution, either among themselves or with the tenants.  The Council remained silent during a series of Council meetings as the tenants made repeated heartfelt pleas for a negotiated settlement.

When it ultimately became apparent that the Council would not intervene, the airport manager pressed the tenants to work around-the-clock to meet a strict move-out deadline; the tenants used floodlights and worked into the nights, to clear the buildings– as if it was one of the City’s biggest emergencies.

But following the midnight move out, the city has let the buildings sit vacant and abandoned in the year-and-a-half since.  The message apparently was “Hurry up and get out, so that we can leave TWO MORE City of Renton buildings vacant.”

While a new roof might have cost six months of lease revenues, it would have kept years of lease payments and taxes flowing into the city and preserved an important Renton business.

Eventually the manufacturing building (and maybe the hangar) will be demolished and replaced, but there is still a long process to do so, and it could have hosted a viable, revenue/tax-generating business in the years leading up to its replacement.  We certainly don’t want private property owners leaving abandoned buildings all over our city, and there is absolutely no reason the City should be modeling this bad behavior.

The Landing Gear Works buildings have joined a long list of city buildings that have been temporarily vacated or completely abandoned by Renton in recent years, including:

The Former Chamber of Commerce Building (left vacant, now demolished)

The Renton Historical Museum (Historical Society kicked out, now sitting empty with unclear future)

Rainier Flight Services flight school building at Renton airport (school kicked out, building sitting empty)

The Pavilion Event Center (empty for over a year, now getting a taxpayer-funded $10 million conversion into a privately-managed market)

Carco Theater (flooded by Cedar River in December, activities cancelled as flood-damage is  remediated)

200 Mill Avenue- former City Hall (recently flooded by broken 16-inch water main, repair costs and future currently unknown)

The Landing Gear Works hangar and nearby manufacturing building (thriving business kicked out, now left vacant)

This protracted, wasteful vacancy of the Landing Gear Works buildings was 100 percent predictable.   In a blog post two years ago I identified many errors in the Mayor’s official statement regarding Renton’s airport management at that time. Many topics were errantly discussed in that memo, leaving me seriously concerned about Renton’s airport leadership. For example, the Mayor asserted that business jet operations would cease each day when the tower closed, and I corrected that (per FAA policy) jet operations would continue 24 hours per day  which they have.    The Mayor’s equally erroneous comments concerning the Landing Gear Works in that memo are shown in italics below, with my corrections underlined and linked to source data.  (This exchange is excerpted from the April 2024 blog post):

5. Is there a business leaving the Renton Municipal Airport?

The City of Renton is moving through the legal process of eviction of a tenant for a long-standing non-payment of rent. The occupied buildings in question were originally scheduled for demolition in 2015. The buildings occupied by the Landing Gear Works, the old tower building and hangars, have never been scheduled for demolition. 

The occupation of these buildings were at a deeply discounted rate, with an understanding that any repairs needed would be at the expense of the tenant. This statement is false. Landing Gear Works hangers are priced like all other Renton airport hangars.  The old tower building was leased for the highest rate the Airport could get after it had been vacant for months.Airport management had responsibility for maintenance of common areas and the tower of the office building through most years of the tenancy.

The natural end of the lease was slated for July 2024, we have moved forward with a lease termination date of March 31, 2024 in light of nonpayment. This more accurately would say “in light of an ongoing rent dispute that began when we improperly billed the tenant, then ignored his concerns while we played musical chairs with our airport managers, and finally denied him and his employees their First Amendment rights to communicate with their elected officials.”

It is the responsibility of the city to maintain safe, functional and market-rate buildings for future tenants. It IS the city’s responsibility, and the city has unreasonably tried to get out of it by arguing that the building is going to be replaced in the future.  It’s also the city’s responsibility to ensure that private buildings are safe, and they are failing in many places.

One of the core pillars of our city administration is to communicate regularly and clearly with plain facts and direct language.  The Council, not the Administration, is responsible for leases under state law.  The council members have never publicly discussed this lease issue with each other, or communicated in any way with the tenants.  An attempt to reach out was made by one council member, and was apparently shut down by the city attorney.  This complete lack of council involvement and communication is shockingly different than council behavior and actions in the past. There were many steps where a collaborative discussion between the tenant and  the airport manager or council members would have quickly and peacefully resolved this dispute.

(Reminder: The full Mayor’s statement and my responses can be found here.)

 

 

 

 

Author’s note: I’ve recently written two blog entries recommending that the City of Renton investigate the way it bids and manages Public Works contracts due to recent severe overruns.  This is a story about a third public works project that experienced a 50% overrun in the same timeframe (i.e. three over-budget projects all required significant additional funding within a two week period. )  While one overrun might be an unfortunate anomaly, twice indicates a trend, and three times feels like it could be a new normal.

On February 9 the Renton City Council was asked to approve final expenditures for an office remodel project at Renton airport that exceeded the budget by over 50%.  The project provided refurbished office space for an increase in the number of staff managing the Renton airport.

According to city documents, “the main contributor for the escalated costs was HAZMAT remediation throughout and repair that was unforeseen prior to demolishing the interior walls and ceiling.”

While safely dealing with hazardous materials like asbestos and lead are important, some of these materials could have been expected in a 1950’s era commercial building.  And it seems like some preliminary investigation could have revealed their presence in advance.  In future budgeting and bidding processes, it would make sense to explore for these materials and budget in advance for these contingencies.

With regard to the unforeseen repairs, contractors will tell you repairs are inevitable when remodeling an older building.  Most Public Works contracts carry a 10% contingency to cover for unexpected repairs or other work, and that is typically sufficient.  It’s hard to imagine that reframing or redecking a portion of a small one-story building should exceed the 10% contingency for this project.

The original contract amount was $679,000.  The final amount was $1,016,647.  This amounts to a 50% overrun.

When overruns climb this high, it can become impossible to determine whether the city truly got the best deal during the bidding process.  We’ll never know if the second or third place bidder might have been less expensive overall… there is no way to know.

The previous two blogs discussing recent Public Works cost overruns where for the Williams/Wells which needed $1,000,000 additional funding on February 9 and went over budget by 43%, and Rainier Avenue Project with required $370,000 additional funding on January 27th and was over budget by 29%.

Overrunning the budget on projects can happen even with solid planning.  But  it seems like there is room for improvement in estimating Public Works projects, and the City Council should consider an after-action review to find these opportunities.

 

On February 23rd, Renton City Council changed the zoning on nine sites in Renton to 40 units per acre.  Most of these sites were previously zoned for 10, 14 or 20 units per acre.  Since they are largely already developed, its expected that they will be slow to redevelop.

However residents should be aware that they can now be legally developed at 40 units per acre. And since they are within a mile of a transit stop, the parking requirement may be as little as one car per unit, or even less.

I’ve included the details for Sites 2-9 below the cut, as well as the ordinance that was approved.

 

See the information for sites 2-9 by clicking below:

Continue reading →

The Williams/Wells two-way street conversion was completed over a three year span from 2019 to 2022.  The work included intersection improvements and new utilities and sidewalks on sections of Williams and Wells,  as well as sections of South Second and South Third Streets. The project suffered several long delays, primarily from an evolving work statement and pandemic-era material and labor shortages. Our long-time Public Works Director retired in February 2020, and the project leadership went to Martin Pastucha, Renton’s current Public Works Director.

As the project overran the schedule, the costs ballooned.  The contractors began submitting dozens of change orders to cover the changing project requirements, and cover their expenses that came from delays they felt were outside their control.

In late 2021, two representatives from the prime contractor, Cascade Civil Construction, attended (via Zoom) a Renton City Council Meeting to let the Council know that they did not feel that change orders were being approved quickly enough.

In 28 years on Council, this was a first for me; I didn’t remember ever having seen a contractor attend a Council Meeting to complain about slow approval of change orders.  After the meeting I was informed by staff that the issue was a misunderstanding, and would soon be handled. (I was only on Council for three more months before my final term came to a close.)

The change orders continued piling up into 2022.  While the initial agreed contract amount was $7,733,422, sixty-six total change orders increased it to $10,424,543, a 35% increase.

But it was not over even after the construction dust cleared.  Cascade Civil Construction and the City of Renton fell into a dispute over an additional half-million to one-million in costs, and both sides began paying attorneys.  Renton employed Perkins Coie in addition to paying City attorney staff.  Both sides finally hashed out the final Change Order number 67 at a settlement conference, which will bring the contract to a close.

At the February 9 Council Meeting (three weeks ago), the Council approved this $602,390 change order, along with approving $304, 826 recently paid on the contract.  There are also other fees associated with the settlement, including attorneys fees and recording fees, which added up to accrued 2025/2026 costs of 1.25 million dollars.  By my calculations, the amount going to Cascade Civil Construction will bring their total up to $11,026,923, or 43 percent over the original contract amount.

In another recent blog post I described how 56 change orders on the Rainier Avenue Project took it 29% over budget, and recommended Renton perform an after-action review to find ways to reduce these change orders on future projects. The Williams/Wells project could be included in this review.

Below the cut I’ve posted the agenda bill and settlement documents that the Council approved for Williams/Wells at the February 9 meeting.

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Even while the owners of Renton’s Garden Plaza have been demolishing the three-story 500 Park Avenue building and unveiling plans for it’s replacement, the seven-story building on the site continues to be a danger.

The City has told the public that this property has been secured, and that there are workers in this building preparing it for demolition. The City has said they are monitoring progress daily.  But a “Renton Responds” complaint filed last week leaves doubt.

Unless the workers are throwing drawers through plate glass windows on Park Ave (probably not), there appears to be a continuing presence of intruders who are putting motorists and pedestrians in danger with thrown objects.  Unauthorized occupants also continue to put the city in danger of fire, since the seven-story building lacks its required fire protection systems.  And they put themselves (and potentially their emergency rescuers) in danger, as open elevator shafts and other hazards on the site put anyone at risk who has not had site briefings and is not wearing OSHA-specified protective equipment.

I’ve seen Renton residents threatened with $100 per day fines for such minor transgressions as not cutting their lawn for a few weeks or not painting over someone else’s graffiti on their fence for a few days.  For these small (non-safety) code compliance actions to be taken seriously in the future, the city must demonstrate they won’t continue to show favoritism to an out-of-town property owner who lets broken windows rain down on our public streets and sidewalks.

 

 

 

 

In my second term on Renton City Council I helped tip the scales in a 4-3 vote to purchase a car dealership in downtown Renton, and build the Piazza Park and Pavilion Event Center.  All seven councilmembers and the Mayor were soon on board, creating the beautiful garden-style Piazza Park Renton has been enjoying for the past 25 years.  We tore out the dealership parking lot, and added pretty stained-concrete patios, lawns, trees, shrubs and benches. We incorporated two impressive water features into the new park: a formal cascading fountain and a 40-foot babbling stream.  We eventually acquired the aging sporting goods store as well, giving us space for Gateway Park and food trucks, and room for another future building which several of us thought might be a public arts and crafts studio and market.

On May 14, 1997 the Seattle Times published an article titled  “Is Jet City Finally Taking Off? — Projects Bringing New Look To Blue-Collar Hub”

“Renton, the little city with industrial shoulders on Lake Washington’s southern shore, suddenly is on the verge of coolness.”….“To help, the city is building a 1 1/2-acre plaza in the heart of town scheduled for completion next spring. The Piazza Project, at Burnett Avenue South and South Third Street, will anchor downtown businesses and provide a focal point with benches and trees, a fountain and amphitheater.  In addition, the city will redevelop a 15,000-square-foot building on the site for possible use as a public market or festival and banquet hall.”

We also remodeled the dealership showroom into the Pavilion Event Center with the help of Mithun Architects, the award-winning firm that designed REI’s flagship store in Seattle.  The design highlighted the historic old-growth wooden bow-string roof trusses, that gave the room unobstructed space, and we surrounded the 12,000-square-foot open space on three sides with unobstructed glass. New glass “garage-style doors” could be opened by rolling them up in the summer, creating indoor-outdoor pedestrian flow.  Mithun helped us tear out the cement-slab floor, and excavate a two-foot deep crawl space in the building that allowed us to distribute conditioned air throughout the building and run electrical and plumbing, without visually impacting the open space. We topped the crawlspace with carpeted “plenum floor panels” that distributed air throughout, and could be lifted for easy maintenance of the system below. The event center brought tens of thousands of visitors per year to our downtown, many of them for the first time.

Today, the Piazza and Gateway Park are closed and torn up for construction of a mini soccer pitch, the addition of a million-dollar jumbotron  TV, removal of the water features, a modest “log-pile” playspace, the removal of  77% of the trees in the Piazza, and the addition of more Piazza pavement.  I’m personally not a fan of these changes. I actually feel like they are taking us backwards.

The Pavilion is also being changed, along with the Piazza.  The engineered plenum floor has been thrown away, the crawl space has been filled in with gravel, and a new cement floor has been poured.  Partition walls are being added, and HVAC equipment and ducting is being installed in the bow trusses.  The building is looking more like it did when the car dealer had it. It will host a small meeting room and still-unknown collection of retailers and venders (Hot-Dog-on-a-Stick is shown in one city chart).

All we would have to do is park some cars for sale in the Piazza, play an advertisement on the Jumbotron, and we will have come full circle.

While I would not have chosen these changes, they are well underway, so I can only hope they turn out to be popular long-term.  I ask our Public Works Department and elected officials to dedicate the time, energy and perseverance to making sure their changes are improvements, and that taxpayers get real value for the $12.8 million we are investing.  Maybe one day I’ll decide they were a good idea, but I’m certainly not convinced of that yet.

 

In a recent blog entry I linked to the Federal  “Terms and Conditions” that Renton committed to when the city accepted a $1.5 million Federal grant to remodel the Pavilion building from an event center to a market place.

The Federal document includes a commitment by Renton to help any displaced businesses with relocation costs (on page 12).  This payment could be actual costs, or a lump sum up to $53,200, at the option of the eligible business.

Rain City Catering (King County’s 2024 “Minority-Owned Small business of the Year) was running their event business in the Pavilion for about thirteen years, and then told they would need to vacate because the City was going to renovate the Pavilion into a market.

I contacted one of the partners in Rain City Catering, and he said he does not remember being offered or receiving any relocation assistance.  When I asked him how much he thought they had lost, he said the impact of the displacement of their business left them with canceled and lost business opportunities in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and an abundance of expensive equipment and furnishings that they have had to dispose of at surplus (garage-sale) prices.  They have been looking (without assistance) for a new facility, and have not found one.

While I’m not an attorney, I can read regulations.  My reading of the referenced federal rules suggests that Rain City Catering should have been considered eligible for compensation.  There was a woman-owned “Night Market” operating in the Pavilion, and it’s possible the owner of that business should receive compensation as well.

The City might claim that the Rain City Catering lease expired, and that is why they were displaced.  But that would distort the decision-making record and the timing of the notice to vacate. Rain City Catering’s lease expired specifically because the city was  negotiating a rehabilitation and new use for the building. The applicable regulations suggest that any person who occupies the real property and is in lawful occupancy on the date that negotiations begin for a new federally-funded use “are presumed to be entitled to relocation payments and other assistance set forth in this part…”   They also say evictions can not be “undertaken for the purpose of evading the obligation to make available the payments and other assistance set forth in this part.

Since I’m not a lawyer I’m going to leave  interpretation of the applicable regulations to the readers.  I’ve excerpted some of the key language from the Terms and Conditions of the grant Renton accepted, and the underlying federal regulation that are referenced in the grant and cover displaced businesses.  I recommend that anyone who feels they have been unfairly displaced by a federal project consider consulting with an attorney to learn what your options might be.  (Click below for the details of the regulations)

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A quick check of public real estate listings shows commercial buildings in Renton, many of them decades old,  are being offered for lease rates of $20-$38 per square foot.

But Renton City Council is being asked to lease our  newly renovated Pavilion building for $5 per square foot.  The rate would rise to $15 over five years, and then 3% annually after that. Since commercial rates will also be increasing 3% per year, the Renton Pavilion will remain at about 50% market rate.

If this building was going to host a non-profit or publicly-owned “Public Market,” this lease rate would be considered highly charitable, but probably legal.  But apparently the city plan is to have a private company rent the building for this give-away price, and then let the private company keep the profits for themselves.

Such an arrangement looks like it violates Washington’s constitution, by using public funds to support a private business.

The fact that the “Renton Market” sounds a lot like a desirable “Public Market” does not fix the issue.

RCW 35.92.040  gives cities Authority to acquire and operate public markets, but the city or a public corporation the city creates is supposed to operate them:

“A city or town may also construct, acquire, and operate public markets and cold storage plants for the sale and preservation of butter, eggs, meats, fish, fruits, vegetables, and other perishable provisions. Whenever the words “public markets” are used in this chapter and the public market is managed in whole or in part by a public corporation created by a city, the words shall be construed to include all real or personal property located in a district or area designated by a city as a public market and traditionally devoted to providing farmers, crafts vendors and other merchants with retail space to market their wares to the public.”

Since the City or a public agency is not operating the Renton Market, it’s no more eligible for public funding than any other business that residents might want in Renton, like a Trader Joe’s, or Whole Foods or Puget Consumers Co-op.  As much as we would like more food choices, Renton and other cities are not allowed to subsidize private companies to get them to locate here.

This Pavilion project started out in 2019 with no subsidy offered.  The Request for Proposals (RFP) made it clear that Renton would entertain proposals from private developers to make improvements to the Pavilion, paid for by the developer, in exchange for a longer lease; the developers would pay market-rate rent.  The subsidies and city-funded tenant improvements were added after the RFP bid was selected.

Taxpayer subsidies of a privately-owned “public market” have not been meaningfully discussed in open-public meetings. A true “Public Market” could be a valuable asset for the city, but the current arrangement does not have the transparent public ownership that a Public Market requires. At Monday’s Committee of the Whole, several Council Members spoke to their desire to see certain types of businesses included in the “Renton Market,” only to be told that their suggestions would be forwarded to the (for-profit) “operator” who  may or may not choose to pursue the Council suggestions.  Council was also told the operator has not yet signed a lease with the city, even while tax money is being used to customize the building to meet the operator’s desires.  This arrangement is unacceptable and should not be getting taxpayer subsidies.

Renton taxpayers are paying about $12.8 million to alter the Pavilion and the adjacent Piazza (which will provide dining space to the Pavilion.) Documents submitted to the City  with the RFP proposal show the “operator” of the market predicting a combined loss of about $500,000 over the first three years, breaking even in year 4, then recovering all his losses and making a profit by the 6th year.  He estimated increasing profitability after that, surpassing $300,000 in year 7, and blossoming to over $400,000 per year by the tenth year.  He would then be eligible for two five-year lease extensions which could bring him another $4 million in profits, or more.

But it would take 70 years of the proposed $176,000 annual rent payments for the taxpayers of Renton to recover the renovation costs.

This looks like the type of public cash/credit giveaway that is forbidden by the constitution.

As one other interesting data point, the “operator” who wishes to rent our newly-renovated city Pavilion building for $5-$15 per square foot happens to own a 65-year-old building a few blocks away from the Pavilion. His building is tax-assessed at $2.1 million (about 20% of what we are spending on updating the Pavilion), and he is advertising that building for lease for $20 per square foot.  Clearly the Pavilion, with its park setting in the heart of downtown, is being subsidized at the proposed lease rate.

The Council is also being asked to lease 30 dedicated parking spaces in the adjacent City Center Parking garage to the operator for about $1.31 per spot per day, which is a bargain.  The garage also provides hundreds of free two-hour spots to the Pavilion’s customers.

I don’t blame the operator for asking for the best deal he can get. He’s in business, and it’s what sensible business people do.  But government officials have to say “no” sometimes.  While a true public market could be a desirable public asset, Renton City Council must say no to a public giveaway to a private business.