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Renton’s Community Center stack-up of activities reminds me of this memorable scene from the Marx Brothers “A Night at the Opera.” Many classes, meetings, performances and activities are getting moved from other city buildings that have all been closed at the same time. Schedules are being altered frequently to fit everything in, and conflicts are still arising.
Since I retired from Council in 2021, our Renton Public Works Director Martin Pastucha has closed numerous public buildings, typically without replacing them. And with current temporary closures, Renton has nine fewer public buildings currently in service than we did when I retired. They didn’t all have to be closed.
We’re currently coping with temporary or permanent closure of the Pavilion Event Center, 200 Mill Avenue, the Don Persson Renton Senior Center, Carco Theater, the Renton History Museum, the former Chamber of Commerce building, Rainier Flight Services airport classrooms, the Landing Gear Works historic tower building, and the Landing Gear Works installation hangar.
While a few of the individual closures are understandable, in the big picture we can’t lose nine public buildings simultaneously without harming the quality of our city services.
In my household we’ve seen city class times changed from one week to the next and kids performances rescheduled or canceled, often with little notice, as our Parks workers do their very best to try to fit everything in with too few facilities. This evening two of my family members noticed each of them has an event scheduled in the same room of the Community Center at the same time, even though the events are not compatible. They’ll contact the parks department tomorrow to try to work it out.
Renton leadership should analyze how this happened on one of Renton’s biggest summers ever. We’re celebrating 125 years as a city, our 40th River Days, our 25th Farmers Market, and hosting a World Cup soccer team– but without our Senior Center, Pavilion, Carco Theater, our History Museum, Mill Avenue Building, or our former Chamber of Commerce building. And our airport has lost vitality with the abandonment of three key facilities at the same time that it’s being marketed to World Cup fly-in visitors.
Maintaining buildings and keeping them in service is hard. I get that. But past Public Works Directors were able to do it, and we should expect our current Public Works Director to do it to.
The following nine buildings are OUT OF SERVICE:
As you point out the lack of space, on the City Channel 21, they continue to run videos advertising the spaces for rent! There are lovely photos of the Sr. Center, and the Community Center set up with decorated tables, with bold letters across the picture saying For Rent, Contact the City.
The facilities are closed!
Does anyone in City Hall talk to any other department? It’s all so sloppy, and doesn’t give much reassurance of a well-run city.
Thank you Randy, for continuing to shine light on reality in our city. There’s no excuse for 9 taxpayer-owned city buildings to sit closed to the public. How embarrassing.
Marcie
Easy to treat Renton like Sim City when you’re phoning it in from miles away
I feel like even a game of Sim City would have better organization 😅
Yes. Doesn’t Renton’s Public Works director live on Bainbridge Island?
He does live on Bainbridge Island. As far as I know he has never lived in Renton, or even in King County.
Renton has many hardworking employees that can’t live within Renton city limits because of costs or needing to balance a partner’s location needs, but I think Renton’s Public Works Director should live closer to our city. And living in King County would help him work across jurisdictions on our road projects, as well as make him more personally aware of our high property and sales taxes.
Our previous Public Works Director was a professional engineer, who I think made his home in the Redmond area. He came to Renton early and left late on most days. I would often see him at construction sites, personally overseeing road work, building renovations, and major projects like the Landing. He was also a frequent attendee of King County regional transportation forums, advocating for more state and county funding and transportation services for Renton. He always took pride in maintaining our public buildings, no matter the age. He oversaw the construction of thousands of feet of flood walls and berms while he was Director, and he’d arrange for sandbag crews to begin work the moment we got any news of potential flooding. It’s hard to replicate this performance from Bainbridge Island without an engineering degree.
It’s likely that all nine of these buildings would be in use this summer if he were still Public Works Director.
Unfortunately the “city” never looks at the big picture. These buildings could have made an impact ($) during the upcoming World Cup. As much as they focused on ripping up downtown to show a fresh face for FIFA they sure dropped the ball on this….
We’re down two hotels too.
You’re right, Anonymous! I’d forgotten about the Red Lion & Extended Stay, both now owned by King County. Those would have been booked solid for FIFA, bringing in Lodging Taxes to the City like we’ve never seen before! sigh
3 hotels. the one off of 405 by the VMAC is a shelter
Sweet jesus. Is Renton becoming King County’s shelter?
It’s even worse:
The former Boeing 10-16 building at 535 Garden Avenue North eyesore and hellhole.
The Apartment and Trader Joes project was scrapped and now we’re just getting a Winco in a old Fry’s building.
Renton Village “Via I-405” housing project — suspended
Old City Hall property near the library. Housing project suspended, and it’s flodded and full of mold.
Don’t look too closely at the ST budget for Renton and South King County. Belleve is getting everything.
Stop complaining! We get football themed activities this summer!
Football?
Get with the program. All the cool kids call it football, even though the people who invented it call it soccer. Now go listen to some world music and have a cup of yerba mate.
Never been cool but a cup of anything sounds good.
I’ll bet you money that 405 construction will stop for FIFA. FIFA is more important than Mother’s Day.
Meanwhile, half the stores over 10,000 sq ft in Renton now have armed security.
The empty building should be turned into a homeless shelter and support center. Council member Carmen Rivera has the right idea in recognizing that homelessness is a regional problem, not something cities can just push across their borders and ignore. Renton is part of the greater Seattle area, and it should do its fair share to help people who have fallen through the cracks.
Many homeless youth in the region are LGBTQIA+ and are at much higher risk of violence, exploitation, untreated mental health issues, and long-term homelessness after family rejection or instability at home.
Renton wants to be seen as a compassionate and capable regional city. Helping vulnerable people is part of what responsible communities do.
Your commie buddies are bussing in homeless into Renton to clean up Seattle for FIFA. Thanks a lot Carmen.
Cedar river has a crap ton of more homeless camping out there in the last week.
Turns out if you vote for Seattle-style leadership, the city starts looking like Seattle.
You want junkies? Because that’s how you get junkies.
I’ve recently removed a few comments because they waded into race, gender, and personal appearance instead of being about performance, results, and behavior. I won’t remove comments just for being critical of public officials’ performance or positions on issues (or critical of mine for that matter).
I saw the comments. Spicy. But Unrepentant domestic violence is a behavior. Faking an accent to code non-white is a behaviour. Using sexuality to gain power is a behavior.
On the topic at hand, I am disappointed that the Council has allowed the permanent or temporary closure of these nine public buildings to happen all at once. I don’t remember any of these councilmembers running on a platform of reducing our community spaces for classes and meetings, or eliminating flight training options for our aspiring aviators. This has gotten worse recently, which unfortunately seems to correlate with some of our newer officials. I wish they had not let this happen. If this was not by Council intent, then Council should have been standing up to the Administration as all these buildings got closed. The overcrowding of the Community Center is not something anyone should be proud of.
Two of the council members actively don’t like Renton . But I’m more disappointed in the others that just let this stuff happen.
And the mayor?
We need better people to run for office. I’m glad he won over the performative “girl boss” type and the activist outsider. The other options looked even more likely to make things worse.
And no, KKV, you’re not it. We won’t have a puppymill mayor.