Written by 
For over 80 years South Tobin Street (shown above looking west) has provided an important east-west connection through downtown Renton, and important access to many local homes and businesses. The Renton School District is asking Renton Council to vacate this section of Tobin Street and two other streets so that the School can use them for internal circulation and play fields.
South Tobin Street currently runs east-west on this site plan just below the baseball diamonds, between the proposed “Staff Entrance” and (gated) “Event Exit.”
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.”
Renton School District has been obliterating Renton’s South Tobin neighborhood, demolishing 32 homes and 8 businesses
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 red “X” marks where the east-west running South Tobin Street is proposed for closure. This would leave only Airport Way for eastbound traffic within the northern 1.45 miles of 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.
Airport Way is fast and busy. As an arterial it is not very suitable for access to the local businesses that still exist on the west side of Renton High School. Tobin Street South provides a local backup now, but its western half is proposed to be closed by the District.
Airport Way has been partially or fully closed many times in the past few years, due to accidents and other emergencies. This October 7, 2023 closure was for a fire. As usual, Tobin Street was an important detour. Airport way and it’s intersections see about 15 accidents per year.
Accident data submitted by the School District engineers shows the high rate of accidents on Airport Way and its intersections. Tobin Street provides an alternate route during these accidents.
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.
South Tobin Street carrying bumper-to-bumper detour traffic six weeks ago following an accident on Airport Way. (This photo courtesy of “Commuter,” who included it in a comment.)
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.
Renton Council vacated a section of Houser Way North at the request of Paccar in 1971. Two decades later there was so much resulting congestion in North Renton that Renton had to construct the Houser Way Bypass, including an expensive tunnel under the I-405 offramp.
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.
May 4th Public Hearings details; from city website here
Recent Comments