Month: February 2025

Deathtrap buildings on Park Avenue unsecured a month after Public Safety Chair assured public they would remain secured

Written by Randy Corman 3 Comments
Open sections in the chain link fence around the site give quick access to the dangerous buildings.

A month ago the North Renton Neighborhood turned out in force at a Renton council meeting, to beg for action in resolving the hazards and blight caused by the dystopian Park Avenue Buildings.  These formerly beautiful office buildings were allowed to swiftly fall into ruin over the past 18 months.

When the damage begun in 2023, many of us encouraged the city to save the multi-million dollar building complex by repairing the property  at owner expense through the enforcement and abatement process defined Renton’s Code Section 4-5-130 .  To meet code, the buildings needed some windows replaced, water dried out, some lights left on, and ideally (with owner coordination) a caretaker or non-profit tenant to keep the buildings looking occupied…the precise steps any good homeowner would take before an extended trip away from home.  The City could take the action to abate the building, and the expense could be billed to the owner and/or placed as a lien on the property.  The money would also come back to the city through property taxes many times over (as opposed to losing all property tax associated with the building, which is ultimately what happened).

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Renton Jet Center invites 737 business jets, further increasing chance of runway/school clash

Written by Randy Corman 1 Comment
The lower right corner of the new Vesper Aviation website shows it’s not business as usual for Proflight at Renton airport. “Largest Aircraft Handled Boeing 737” invites large business jet landings. When the total  landings and takeoffs (including Boeing deliveries) exceeds five hundred in a year, the runway will likely need to be extended through Renton High School.

 

I’ve previously reported that Proflight Aviation, which was primarily a locally-run flight school and propeller aircraft hangar facility, was purchased and turned into a jet center without public awareness or input.   Then last week I explained how the airplanes proposed for hangaring in the new jet center could likely trip our airport runway into a larger classification, forcing an expansion right through Renton High School.

Now, a newly-updated Vesper Aviation website for the facility is inviting Boeing 737  business jet fly-ins.  It’s as if they want Renton to expand our airport…. and who knows, maybe they do.

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Coal mine tunnels at asphalt plant would further increase risk to Renton’s drinking water

Written by Randy Corman 5 Comments
Tom and Ed Jones at their new Coal Mine in 1925, on the property now proposed as an Asphalt Plant. Abandoned tunnels will provide a shortcut for “forever” toxins from asphalt production to reach every layer of Renton’s drinking water aquifer. (Photo courtesy of Renton Historical Society)

 

Question: What is the one thing that would make it even more dangerous for an  asphalt plant to inject toxic runoff into the ground on Renton’s sole source aquifer?

Answer:  Man-made tunnels at the site to carry poison through every clay and sedimentary layer, so that no well is deep enough to be safe.

These 100-year-old photos were taken on the property that is now owned by Lakeside Industries, and proposed for the asphalt plant.  The Coal Mine shown was alternatively known as the Jones Brother’s Mine, the Indian Coal Mine, and the New Black Diamond Coal Mine.  (The “New Black Diamond” name reflects that it replaced what may have been the deepest coal mine in the world in Black Diamond.)

Perhaps the reason the ground percolated so well during the “infiltration test” at the proposed Asphalt Plant site is the miles of mining tunnels that descend from the property.  We may unfortunately never know, as no Environmental Impact Statement was required for locating an asphalt plant here.

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Renton City Council must protect our drinking water before it is too late

Written by Randy Corman 12 Comments
Screen capture from US government map showing sole-source drinking water aquifers. I’ve added labels showing approximate locations of some of Renton’s wells (in blue) and the planned Asphalt plant runoff “infiltration” facility (in red). (Link to map here)

 

Renton City Council’s Planning and Development Committee was recently briefed on a proposed update of Renton’s Critical Areas Ordinance.  Per the language recommended by Washington State (slide 4, bullet point 5), critical areas include aquifer recharge areas: ” Critical aquifer recharge areas contribute to groundwater quality and in-stream flow. While critical aquifer recharge areas are designated and protected to ensure availability of potable water, the groundwater resource also interacts with streams.”

But a future Asphalt Plant could soon be injecting thousands of gallons per year of contaminated runoff water into the recharge soils of Renton’s pristine sole-source aquifer, a short distance upstream of our drinking wells, and Renton City Council has not used its state-granted authority to halt it.

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Renton needlessly elbowed out our premier flight school; is space going to more jets?

Written by Randy Corman 4 Comments
A google image search of Rainier Flight Services in Renton looks like a college yearbook of happy graduates and their instructors, launching life-changing careers in aviation

 

Renton has suffered a very sad academic loss this week.  Rainier Flight Services has been training our aspiring aviators in Renton for decades, launching many of our residents into lifetime careers as professional pilots.  Their prices were affordable, and Renton’s youth could earn a pilot’s license for the price of a semester or two of college. Formerly (until last week) headquartered in Renton, they are the biggest and most successful flight school in the Northwest, with major satellite schools in Everett, Tacoma, and Auburn.

Their social media pages look like college yearbooks, replete with photos of happy graduates and their instructors at this key moment in their lives. They take pride in keeping their airplanes up-to-date and well maintained, and they fly them to low-population regions to get their time in, producing minimal negative impacts to Renton.  The business added to our job and tax base along with training our youth;  dozens of instructors and support staff were employed at their headquarters in Renton.

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Renton School District on collision course with Renton Airport jet center, with residents caught in the middle

Written by Randy Corman 10 Comments
An extension of Renton airport (left) would put the runway and taxiway right into Renton High School (right), which is about to undergo a half-billion dollar rebuild.

 

In 2020 the City of Renton worked diligently with the FAA to avoid an airport reclassification which would have required Renton to extend our runway and taxiway one-thousand feet into Renton High School and the nearby homes and businesses.  The arguments Renton made to avoid the extension leaned heavily on the fact that almost all our air traffic was lightweight propeller aircraft with just one or two carefully-orchestrated new 737 takeoffs per day.  We barely prevailed….if the jet operations had been any more numerous, we would have needed to extend the airport into the neighborhood and school.

Today, to the dismay of impacted residents, Renton School District is purchasing and/or condemning much of the same neighborhood property that we protected in 2020, in order to amass land for a half-billion dollar rebuild of Renton High School.  (The average Renton household will pay about $1000 per year in additional property tax for 22 years to fund this rebuild.)

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