General Manager Robert Morrow welcomes customers to the new Panera Bread restaurant at the Landing. Mr. Morrow comes to us from the Gig Harbor Panara Bread location, and he reports that he is very impressed by Renton.

Renton’s new Panera Bread restaurant celebrated it’s opening with a “bread breaking” ceremony today –instead of the traditional ribbon cutting.

The inviting and aromatic bread-sandwich-pastry-beverage business has hosted large crowds of diners from the first hours of it’s opening last Friday morning. And don’t be discouraged by the line when you go there to eat… general Manager Robert Morrow assures me his staff work to see that orders are taken within five minutes. They use a pager system that allows you to place your order and then sit down at your favorite table in their sunny dining room– the pager alerts you when your order is ready for pickup at the counter.

Cathy and I had a great lunch at this restaurant yesterday, and more great snacks there today during the opening celebration. We will be going back often. The business is a great addition to Renton and the Landing.

Susan Bressler from The Renton Patch was on-hand to cover the festivities, and has further details HERE in her latest article. I was particularly excited to hear about the arrangement the restaurant has made to donate it’s excess bread to local feeding programs… Susan will be covering this further in a future article.

Here are a few more photos from today:

Talented, friendly staff and so many bread choices!…

My wife Cathy and friends having fun today at Panera Bread

At last night’s Committee of the Whole meeting we went over several major topics, including garbage and recycling, a federal grant for additional fire department staffing, the Strander Boulevard Extension from Renton to Tukwila, and Economic Development updates and emerging issues.

I’m really proud of our city staff, and I want to communicate about several of these items in the near future; better still, Jenny Manning from the Renton Patch will make it easier. She was at the meeting, and she has already covered the discussion on the Landing in great detail. Among the questions answered last night, and reported in the Renton Patch, were “when will Dicks and Panera Bread open.”

Click here to read the Renton Patch article about updates at the Landing . Then keep checking back for updates here and in Renton Patch for other economic development updates, such as activities in downtown, as well as stories on some of the other topics mentioned above.

Mayor Law is asking King County Executive Dow Constantine to help us raise the priority of protecting Renton’s bridges when creating habitat for fish on the Cedar River. The Mayor’s letter is attached below, and it adds emphasis and additional details to a request previously transmitted by our Public Works Director in a letter I covered in this journal entry (which includes pictures). Mayor Law points out again that expensive maintenance and extremely high economic risk are being created by logjams formed of washed-out woody debris that has been intentionally chained together with logging chains by King County. In addition, removal of rock armoring in some areas upstream on the river is leading to excessive wash-outs, putting far more full-size trees in the water than we would otherwise see. The resulting logjams cause risks to the bridges which connect our city, and to the bridges which connect our local airplane manufacturer with the airport.