The land shown in yellow is owned by Seattle’s water department. They limit activities on it to protect their 60-inch-diameter Chester Morse reservoir pipeline. The pipeline runs just north of Legacy Square/Gateway Park (left) and beneath the center of the Piazza (lower right).

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.

Here is a wider view of Seattle’s property ownership in Renton, to protect their pipeline

Hre is a 1931 photo of the pipeline in Renton, looking west. Notice it is not very deep.

The pipeline in Renton on South Third Street, looking east. (1931 photo from University of WA)

As the pipeline carries water across Renton towards Seattle, it runs along South 3rd Street until it gets to the Piazza Park. At that point it slightly turns and runs under the Piazza and just north of Gateway Park (future Legacy Square). The pipeline property is used for parking and landscaping in Renton, with no trees planted on top of it. Renton held extensive negotiations with Seattle before building the Piazza in 2000.

This large excavator working on the Piazza is sitting directly on top of Seattle’s water line. If the operator errantly dug more than a couple feet into the ground, and broke the 60 inch diameter pipe, all of downtown could quickly flood. A break could dump 100,000 gallons per minute.

In this 2024 photo, Sofia Farret prepares high-tech Renton-made titanium landing gear for shipment, at ” the Landing Gear Works” at Renton airport. This facility is now abandoned.

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.

Derek Anderson, a third-generation Renton business owner and machinist is preparing parts for milling at the Landing Gear Works at Renton Airport in 2024. This building is now vacant.

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.”

The Landing Gear Works worked night and day in November 2024 to vacate this large hanger and a manufacturing building under intense pressure from Renton. After their forced move out, the buildings have sat vacant and neglected for the past year and a half.

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.)

Employees of the Landing Gear Works made numerous requests to City Council to help them reach agreement on their lease

FAA-approved spare parts for aircraft landing gear, many of them fabricated in Renton, were stocked, sold and delivered from this facility in Renton. Renton collected associated B&O and sales taxes. This spares business has been moved, and the facility is now abandoned and empty.

Shiney titanium Renton-made landing gear adorn this Cessna 180. The city-owned historic building in the background needed new roofing, and the city was unwilling to discuss a plan to replace it.  The building now sits empty.

The City of Renton has recently done a million-dollar interior remodel of the small blue building at the southwest corner of the airport, to serve as an airport management office.

The airport management office had previously been located in the one-story building at the bottom of the control tower

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.

Wells Ave in 2018, with both travel lanes heading northbound (Photo from Google Maps)

Wells Ave as it appears in Google Maps today, with two-way traffic

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.

This 2021 photo shows the worksite at the intersection of Wells and South Third Street during the Williams/Wells street conversion.  Impacted businesses begged the City to get the project done as quickly as possible. (Personal photo)

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 Renton Council Minutes from September 9, 2021.

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.

The Council passed a motion at the February 9 Council Meeting to add an extra $1,000,000 to the Williams/Wells conversion project fund.

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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