Billy O’Neill, “Dale Chihuly’s right hand man,” (in white sneakers) selecting the large facility on Airport Way for his decorative glass making studio.  The venue was going to teach youth and adults the art of Chihuly style glass making.  The large open-bay building features the same old-growth historic bowstring-trusses that caused our city council to save the Pavilion building in the 1990s.

It was a dream come true for Renton’s Arts Community, our youth, and our Economic Development department. A world-class glass studio was relocating to Renton, headed up by the vice-president and operations manager of Chihuly’s workshop in Seattle.  Billy O’Neill, who Seattle Times calls Dale Chihuly’s right hand man, was working on a gift for Renton that would have taught new generations of Rentonites how to create beautiful glass sculptures and containers.  Mr. O’Neill  has served on the Seattle Arts Commission, as secretary on the Executive Board of Directors of the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) and on advisory boards for the Seattle Sounders and other non-profits– a perfect fit in Renton.  He was instrumental in creating Chihuly’s Garden of Glass at Seattle Center.

But the exciting glass art studio fell victim to a School District Eminent Domain taking, along with numerous other businesses and homes, with no acknowledgment by the School Board of the glass studio’s extraordinary significance.

The business, called “Glass Eye” already has a permanent sales location at Pike Place Market, which would have soon been selling the Made in Renton glassworks.  We would have a new Made-in-Renton products we could share with visitors and far-away family, to replace our much-missed Uptown Glassworks.

The large open-space building was leased and getting preparatory updates.  According to the buildings representatives, half a million dollars had recently been put into the building to prepare it for new tenants.  The building ceiling comprises bowstring trusses, probably old growth, from the first half of the 20th century.    Preservation of these trusses, which can span wide spaces, was a major driver in our saving the Renton Pavilion building in the 1990s after it had served as a Mazda showroom.

Mr. O’Neill explained to the Renton School Board that he had grown up in this area, and played softball in high school on Renton High’s current field.  He regretted he was unable to bring the education gift to the Renton youth as planned.  He was accompanied by his wife and a small entourage of partners and patrons, who all in turn implored the Board to reconsider their action.  Each speaker received an emotionless “thank you”, by a School Board that had obviously already made up its mind.

Mr. O’Neill expressed concern that the building’s owners were not being properly compensated for the value of the unusual building, and the concerns were repeated by the owner’s real estate representative who also spoke.

In the unacceptably-brief five minute discussion by the board after all the comments, one of the board members asked the School District’s project manager why the Districts offer of 2.7 million was nearly two million dollars shy of the building owner’s price of 4.6 million.  The District’s manager said he was using the price the building had traded hands for half a year earlier, and that the land value is reduced by being height-limited by the airport and possible oil residue in the underlying soil.

When Mr. O’Neill asked if he could offer some helpful information to correct the the record on this appraisal, the Board Chair refused to reopen the public hearing to hear the explanation for the difference in value, suggesting that he should email his input.

He pointed out that the information could inform their decision, so giving it to them before their decision made more sense then emailing it afterward.  The Board wasn’t interested in the information, and murmurs in the audience made it clear that we all knew the Board had made their decision before the public hearing had even begun.

Soon the Board President asked for a motion.  And after a long, suspenseful silence that looked like no one wanted to appear to have lead responsibility for the taking of so many homes and businesses, the motion to use eminent domain was made and seconded, and then unanimously approved.

Mr. O’Neill describes his planned art studio to the School Board Directors.

Later, Mr. O’Neill’s team explained to me that the 2.7 million dollar estimate is wrong because there has been a half million dollars of improvements made to the building, along with some inflation since the last sale. Additionally, the previous sale was discounted because the building had been emptied by a fire, and it now was repaired and had leases.  And lastly, the District was treating it like raw land, talking about how high you can build and possible minor environmental concerns– issues that don’t matter when the right building is already in place for the use, and generating even more rent than a 4.6 million dollar building.

As I visited with Mr. O’Neill and his wife and friends after the meeting, I wished a Renton Economic Development specialist was with me.  Ideally, they would have been working to find the exciting glass studio another fitting site in Renton, as well as helping keep the other displaced businesses in town.  In the case of an Glass Art Studio of this value, they’ve already got a Plan B of course since everybody wants them; and sadly Plan B is not in Renton.

This photo shows the bow-string trusses that would have added a historical element to the new glass studio

Renton’s downtown Pavilion building shares the same historic bowstring truss structure as the now-disrupted  “Glass Eye” studio. The desirable and beloved Pavilion building has been the center of recent controversy because the Mayor has taken it from Rain City Catering, which ran it as a successful event center, and it is currently sitting vacant awaiting the Mayor’s vision.

The exact kind of vitality we’ve been working to bring to Renton; Glass Eye’s Studio’s Ballard location can bring out hundreds of visitors for their community events. Here residents line tables full of Chihuly-style glass ornaments, sculptors, and containers.

Vase in work at current studio location in Ballard. Renton residents could have readily participated in this glass forming, or purchased made-in-Renton glass artwork, at the Renton location.

Glass Eye’s studio in Ballard

This Google Earth screenshot shows the intended home of “Glass Eye” Studio (white roof in center) on Airport Way, between the airport (front) and the high school (back).

Important!  The two-day Council offsite Feb 27-28 is at Maplewood Golf Course, Magnolia room, not at Renton City Hall.  The public is welcome to attend, and there should be comfortable seating.  However the public will typically not be allowed to comment at the meeting.  

The City has reworked their website, and the new version currently is missing an enormous amount of important information.

For instance, Public Meetings are not properly identified on the new Council Calendar.  There is a two-day council off-site that is occurring tomorrow and Friday but not found on the calendar.  I’ve attached the agenda below.

READ MORE »

The initial submittal for Logan Six in 2022 included a street modification request. Final line of item 1: “The site is narrow, and without these modifications, the project would not be able to be built.”  Council could have questioned the scale of the project on the record.

At last night’s council meeting, a Council Member told the audience that the State of Washington forced Renton to approve the Logan Six development with only one parking spot per unit.

This was not correct, for at least two reasons:

Reason 1: The parking standards for this project are very clearly captured in Renton’s zoning code, and the Council put them there as I described in this blog entry here.

While the State of Washington did implement parking regulations in 2020 that could potentially supersede a city’s parking regulations, the state standards specify a minimum standard of one spot per BEDROOM, as opposed to the lesser standard of one spot per unit that Renton has imposed on Logan Six.  Here’s the State law on this topic. (Presumably the 0.75 spots per unit applies to studio “no-bedroom” units)

Reason 2: the Council probably had an easy opportunity to stop this project after the first submittal in 2022 if they had wanted to.  In the initial submittal for the project, the applicants provided a letter making it absolutely clear that they were concerned the site might be too small for the project.

In the relatively brief two page letter, the applicant says they need a Street Modification because of their overly narrow site.   Then they say three times that without this modification, they could not build the project.  Here are some excerpts:

“STREET MODIFICATION NARRATIVE

This narrative is provided to request and justify a street modification on the Logan 6 project. The applicant is requesting a street modification to retain existing improvements with. 1.5 feet of Right of Way dedication on Logan Avenue N, and to retain the existing curb-curb. pavement with, with a 0.5’ curb, 8-foot planting strip, 8-foot sidewalk, and 2-foot clear space for. 3rd and 4th Avenues N…..

The site is narrow, and without. these modifications, the project would not be able to be built….

The modification also allows for the project to be built at all, given the narrowness of the site….

The shown modification is required for the building to be done without incurring additional. costs. The site is narrow and if much more were given, the project would likely not pencil….”

Any of Renton’s eight elected officials could have questioned the requested modification, on the record, and consequently questioned whether the project may be too large and dense for the site.   Even the rules governing quasi-judicial hearings do not bar Council members from asking questions about a project, on the record.  Since the developer said three times they were concerned the project would not fit on the site, this would have been an opportune time to scale it to a better size.

Instead, Council did not ask any questions and City Staff appear to have approved the modification request, enabling the project to go forward.

So no, the State did not require this project to take its present form, pushing the street boundaries set for the zone with consequent minimal parking. That appears to be just a story.

Last night’s Council Meeting featured a large number of residents speaking out on a broad selection of topics.  They shared the concerns about the controversial Logan Six project, the taking of homes for Renton High, the derelict Sixth and Park buildings, the Asphalt Plant, open drug use near Sartori Elementary school, the general condition of downtown, and other issues.

The Council Meeting can be viewed here.  The Audience comment begins at 31 minutes into the meeting.

A number of residents shared concerns at last night’s council meeting.

In a quasi-judicial hearing, Renton Council would look for errors in the building application process. Renton Council just decided to no longer conduct these hearings, after the North Renton neighborhood had been told for years that it would happen.

The Renton City Council swiftly made a major policy change at their last Council meeting, sending all land-use appeals to King County Superior Court instead of the Renton City Council.

While the council may have had good intentions with the change, they followed a flawed implementation process that left the North Renton neighborhood feeling betrayed and put in an unfair position.

For three years the Council has told North Renton residents that residents can’t discuss the Logan Six project with Council because it would eventually be sent to the Council for a quasi-judicial review.  At that time, the Renton Council, acting as judges, would formally review all aspects of the entire record of the project and make sure that residents had not been victimized by any errors in the process.  But after three years of telling North Renton residents this, a mere month before the long-awaited quasi-judicial hearing by Council would occur, the Council surprised virtually everyone by canceling their role in the appeals process and all future appeals processes.  Many North Renton residents understandably now feel hurt and betrayed.

The City made at least three errors in their implementation of this policy change that led to this betrayal.  (The policy change may have been reasonable, except for these errors.)

(1) The Council should have given the public better awareness and opportunity to comment on this policy.

This policy change was made swiftly, gliding through Renton’s Planning Commission and then two readings on Renton City Council in less than a month’s time.  Unless Renton residents were carefully monitoring the Planning Commission, which very few do, they would have missed virtually all discussion on this topic.  The group most severely impacted, those concerned about the Logan Six project (which many feel is too large with too little parking), did not have awareness this was coming.

Policy decisions benefit immensely from public input, and this change is so far-reaching that Council should have given ample time for the public to be notified and give input to council.  This is a change that has been discussed by Council in decades past, and has positive and negative ramifications, which the public could have been educated on, and commented on, with leads to my second complaint about the process:

(2) The administration should have presented both pros and cons of the policy change to the Planning Commission and City Council.

The Planning Commission was given a staff statement to base their deliberations on, which gave a positive account of how this change would improve communication between Council and residents concerned about a nearby project. Council would not have quasi-judicial constraints on their communication with residents during the life of the project (i.e. not every communication would have to be formal and on-the-record).

But the administration left out the negative consequences of the change– the reasons that Council has never changed this policy in past decades:  The quasi-judicial council review gives residents an easy and efficient way to appeal Hearing Examiner decisions, that does not require the extraordinary time, complexity and expense of going to Superior Court.  In addition, the Council appeal process ensured that the legislative body itself, the very ones setting the rules and codes, made a thorough review of all documents, and then a determination regarding whether the rules– that they had set– had been followed.  Without this Council review, residents and the King County Superior Court are left to try to try to surmise for themselves what the legislative intent is for specific rules, while residents typically must pay attorneys somewhere between $20,000 – $100,000 to represent them.

The Planning Commission and Council should have been presented with both sides of this argument.  Then Council should have notified the public of a possible change with a press release, and held it long enough to give ample opportunity to hear from residents and builders.  They could have scheduled a council public hearing on the topic, since the existing policy has been in place for many decades, and the change is so far reaching.  An open public discourse regarding this change would have assured that all factors were taken into consideration.  No matter what the final policy choice, Council, residents, and home builders would have understood the rationale without suspicion.

(3). Most important of all, Council should have set the policy for new applications, but not changed the policy mid-process for projects in work. 

They especially should not have changed the process for a project just a month away from it’s Council review, after refusing to discuss the project with residents for three years.  This amounts to a complete denial of legislative representation for the residents impacted.

The US Environmental Protection Agency’s Hot Mix Asphalt Plant Emission Assessment Report provides the pounds-per-year of pollutants expected from typical asphalt plants.

In our toxic world, the only safe drinking water is that which evaporates from the ocean, condenses in a cloud, and drops as rain or snow in a clean, natural environment.  This is what Seattle drinks, and it is what Renton residents deserve as well.

Treated industrial runoff will never be healthy drinking water.  Industrial runoff is treated to a level that will minimize harm to wildlife as the water returns to the ocean. It’s not treated to a standard that makes it safe enough for human consumption.  Only evaporation and condensation will make treated industrial runoff safe to drink again.

With their proposed new Asphalt plant, Lakeside Industries is planning  to remove about 30-60% of the contaminants from their runoff using onsite treatment.  They will then inject the remaining waste-water, still containing 40-70% of some of the worst pollutants, into Renton’s sole source aquifer.  This is per poor instructions from the County, in a flawed approval process that has acknowledged the responsibility to protect salmon but not Renton’s residents.

Airborne contaminants from asphalt production will settle on equipment and pavement throughout Lakeside’s industrial site. Rainstorms will flush the poisons into a central catch basin, along with waste water from hosing down equipment and pavement.  Contaminants will include toxins like benzene, arsenic, lead, and mercury, along with dangerous PAHs that can cause cancer and autoimmune diseases, including fatal blood diseases.  Approximately half of the deadliest contaminates, those that are fully dissolved into the drinking water, will pass right through the “Enhanced basic” on-site filtration system–by design.

King County has required Lakeside to meet an “enhanced basic” standard in treating their runoff, which lets 30-60% of heavy metals pass right through.  The partial-treatment comprises an oil separator, a sand vault, and a small retention pond.  The 50% or so of dangerous contaminants that flow right through these simple systems will be infiltrated into our aquifer recharge zone.

There’s widespread misunderstanding about  the capability of the on-site system to clean the water.  The treated water is considered too dirty to dump in the Cedar River. Renton should not allow water deemed too dirty for the Cedar River to be intentionally pumped into our sole source aquifer.

READ MORE »

Members of the Renton Airport Advisory Committee (RAAC) and Airport leadership discuss the future plans for Renton’s airport at last Tuesday’s quarterly RAAC meeting. Some participants were on Zoom, visible on the right side of the meeting screen.

[Note:  There was also some valuable information shared at the Tuesday meeting, including a thorough report from the South Renton neighborhood representative. I’ll cover this content in a separate article. ]

At the Tuesday meeting of the Renton Airport Advisory Committee, I was surprised and disappointed by the controlling, questionable guidance given by airport management to the Committee’s hard-working volunteer members.

My process objections, in order of occurrence:

READ MORE »