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First day of demolition of 500 Park Avenue North, Renton, WA; photo courtesy of Maggie Howard
Demolition began today on 500 Park Avenue North, the smaller of the two buildings at Garden Plaza as anticipated in my blog entry of December 19. Thanks to Maggie Howard for sending me these photos.
Removal of this dangerous, blighted building will be cause for celebration. It’s sad that the once-desirable office building was able to sink to this level of deterioration during the past three years.
First day of demolition of 500 Park Avenue North, Renton, WA; photo courtesy of Maggie Howard
First day of demolition of 500 Park Avenue North, Renton, WA; photo courtesy of Maggie Howard
Right before Christmas, after 3 years of non-stop complaints from North Renton residents and businesses, the owner, ION Renton LLC, is taking down the blight. Why do you suppose they’re doing it now, the holidays? It’s bittersweet, with memories of the beauty, function & pride that was; anger at the awful condition & crime allowed for too many years.
Thank you Maggie for always seeing what’s going on at the Park Ave. buildings, and getting photos. Thank you Randy for breaking news!
It remains to be seen whether demo will continue in a timely manner. There is a pile of debris, but no dumpsters or evidence of equipment to remove the debris. Now the pile is sort of in the way of further work. There didn’t actually seem to be very much torn down on the first day either. Perhaps with demo started it relieves ION Renton from fines for ongoing code violations, so I hope work will continue at a rapid pace. It’s been a frustrating three years wrangling with the city to enforce city codes, knowing that if they had in the beginning perhaps we wouldn’t have to watch this building come down and become a wasted pile of trash. Because of the lack of transparency from both the city and ION Renton, I’m distrustful ofnot confident that we’ll see a cleared lot any time soon.
Also, when development started at the Top Golf site there was in influx of rats to the neighborhood, so I hope that ION Renton did some exterminating while they were removing chairs and a/c units from the building.
You’re right to be suspicious: Having this be a demo site now protects them of any new fines.
P.S. shouldn’t they have started from the top?
Yes Maggie. I also would have expected them to start from the top. For tall buildings they will often put a specially-equipped excavator on the roof and taking down stories starting at the top. The three story building may be reachable entirely from the ground, I’m not sure about this, but I think they would still want to work mostly top-down.
They can’t remove structural elements from the bottom without risk of the building toppling, a catastrophic safety hazard.
When they get serious about this demolition, especially in the case of the seven story building, I would expect to see a crane on site to hoist the excavator up and lift heavy debris down. They’ll also need a trash-chute down to dumpsters for smaller debris. They should not just push debris off let it blow all over the neighborhood. They’ll also need a way to get people safely up to the top, like a construction elevator.
Here’s a video showing a typical top-down demolition of a tall building. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOwRpJn4e8E
Another photo from today, December 24. (Thanks Maggie)
Haha! The slumming of North Renton continues!
Wonder if Renton is going to go through a slum cycle, with developers buying when it gets cheap and then flipping everything.
It all starts at the top. Keep peeling the thread…..developers = gateways….gateways = doors. Doors = money. Money = honey…..bears bears bears! Go seahawks!
The current owners, ION Renton, envisioned an apartment project for this site. But Seattle-area permits for construction of new multi-family housing have dropped by more than 50% since ION Renton purchased this property, primarily due to rising construction costs and interest rates. Between these rising costs and the environmental issues on this property, it will likely be many years before anything new is built here. It’s therefore very important that the property be maintained in a presentable condition after the demolition is completed.
Here is a link to an Axios article about the drop-off in multifamily permits.
You’d be insane to build in King County. The chilling effect of not being able to evict bad tenants can’t be overstated. I won’t rent to *anybody* that even looks sketch now, and that’s a shame because I used to rent to people who needed 2nd chances.
Good job, Democrats!
We’re getting out too. We also used to rent to just about anybody, but unless they’re making six figures, they don’t even get a look. Sold one home already and it went to a private equity REIT.
I have an idea! Let’s start an advocacy group, but then get angry about fifteen different things so that nobody knows what they’re about and it all tapers off.
Oh dear, whatever shall they waste energy on next?
If we’e still talking about 500 Park here, I’ve been watching the demo over the last week and the building is definitely coming down. They don’t seem to be moving the debris out of the way as they go though. There is a large pile of debris between what’s left of the building and the equipment. Occasionally there is a very large dump truck (the size of a semi trailer) that I assume is going to move the debris out. It does seem like the demolition is disorganized, with equipnent sometimes working at a tilt on top of the debris. I can only hope that the demo gets completed with no injuries and all the debris removed from the site. My secret hope is that there will be housing (maybe condos?) built on site, with retail below, including a little Italian market. Regardless, I assume that the property will be cleaned up before the World Cup because that is very important to Mayor Pavone.
Sadly, there can’t be housing. The soil is contaminated and the government doesn’t want two headed babies.
Their loss. Twice the jib jabber with only one poop.
Why Randy, are you deleting comments again?
Probably hit a little too close to the mark.
North Renton Totals
Carmen Rivera: 688 votes
Mary Clymer: 521 votes
Quite a coincidence. Carmen talks big smack about brandy for a few years, then shortly after Carmen’s little love fest on the 4 a better Renton candidate thing, she and Randy have a meeting and all of a sudden, Randy isn’t quite Pro-Mary like he was before. I’m sure that the infatuation thing that Carmen and the interviewer had was just a coincidence until you realize that Randy is part of the little “we hate the mayor” thing that 4 a better Renton” loves to promote.
Brandy = Randy
I did not attend Councilmember Rivera’s interview, and I have not even taken the time to watch the video of it. I have not spoken to her in years. As stated above, she seemed to always talk smack about me and my work in City Council. But in the four years since I retired and Council Member Rivera has served, Renton’s problems have gotten significantly worse, while our property taxes have gone up 35-50%.
Needless to say, I remain unimpressed by her performance on Council.
I think she won re-election primarily because of the police and fire endorsements and the gushing (and improper) newspaper and social media blitze by the city that honored her for finally getting her 30-hours of council training done four years into her council service.
And you could have stopped it. You could have put Mary in that seat.
Nope. Randy’s blog and social media are important, but they but only reach ~1500 voters.
Basically, Renton voters go off of voter guides and mailers and Carmen did a unfairly good job on both of those. Mary never gave the voters a reason to not vote for the (presumably safe) incumbent.
We’ll never know.
I greatly appreciate comments on this blog, and I thank readers for your comments.
Unfortunately one of these particular comments seemed to wrongly accuse a private person of an illegal activity, and another of the comments made some sexually suggestive inferences. I deleted a third that was basically asking what one of the others meant, and a fourth that would not make sense out of the context of the other three.
If the commenters can make their policy points without these issues I will be grateful.
I would never delete a comment simply because I disagree with it; I welcome all opinions, and enjoy interacting with those with differing opinions.
Wow, I stumbled upon this via another site. It is so shocking to see these buildings deteriorated and coming down. I worked in the 10-16 Building in the early 90’s. 737/757 ECS
Hi Jim! Nice to hear from you! I was just down by the buildings yesterday, feeling blue about their demise, and remembering our nice days working in these buildings.