Photo courtesy of www.sunsetrenton.com

Renton residents got a first hand account of my reaction when I learned the builder had pulled out of the Hi-Lands Shopping Center renovation right after making the long-time tenants move out.  I got the news in a public meeting, and reporter Haley Ausbun did an excellent job of recording my candid reaction in an article in the Renton Reporter. “The loss of the Solera Project came as a shock to Corman at the March 18 Committee of the Whole meeting.” …“This shopping center has been ground zero of the Highland redevelopments for probably 20 years at least,” Corman said.”  …”Corman also said he was disappointed, and doesn’t understand what led the eviction to happen so early.”…“We’re trying to do a revitalization, not end up with a shuttered shopping center,” Corman said at the meeting. “It’s been such a long road to get here.”

In summary, I share the community’s disappointment in the way the Hi-Lands Shopping Center business timing was handled.  I’m also working with our city’s economic development department to help ensure the planned renovation project gets going again soon, and that we don’t miss any opportunities to find homes for the businesses that were displaced.

With that said, I want to assure the Community that Renton Highlands Revitalization, also known as “Sunset Area Transformation” is proceeding at a brisk pace.  A beautiful, sustainable, inclusive, and thriving Renton Highlands, including new market-rate and affordable housing, improved transit, and an all-new “parkway-style” Sunset Boulevard, is just a few short years away.  In city-building time scales, it’s just around the corner.

The 11-acre Highlands Shopping Center is a part of the overall plan, but only a small part, as the entire improvement area covers 269 public and private acres.  Decades ago, during a bleak period when businesses were pulling out of the highlands,  I encouraged  the council to put $1,500,000 in a fund to jump-start Highlands Revitalization .  We’ve targeted this money for infrastructure, property acquisition, and planning,  including creation of the award winning Highlands Revitalization Plan that is summarized well in this “CityLab” news article here.    In author Kaid Benfield’s words, “If you’re looking for exemplary revitalization with new, first-class green infrastructure, community facilities and mixed-income housing, take a look at what’s happening in the Sunset district of Renton, Washington, a city of about 90,000 people south of Seattle.”

It took countless meetings with residents, businesses, and dozens of governmental and charitable stakeholders, to arrive at the highly collaborative and successful plan we are working to today.  We had some notable rough spots in the early days of creating the plan, and through it all I personally worked hard to help keep residents and property owners on board through every step.  We also suffered a small setback when one of our first demonstration projects, Harrington Square Apartments, suffered a dramatic fire while being roofed during construction,  before the building’s fire walls and fire-fighting features were completed.  Thankfully no one was hurt, and our dedicated firefighters aided by  recently enlarged water lines and reservoirs were able to readily contain it.

In recent years we have re-worked the plan to make it an even more collaborative and co-owned  product of 28 stakeholders/partners, maximizing our opportunity for County, State, Federal, and private grants.  Because the Sunset Transformation Plan is so comprehensive, including new housing and transit, it has been successful in pulling in many millions of dollars in outside assistance.  Most recently, King County pledged $5,000,000 towards this plan and hundreds of thousands of extra hours of bus service to Renton in support of the important new housing that is going into the area.  We’ve also been able to acquire grants to allow us to simultaneously complete phases 2 and 3 of the park near the library, which will bring new playgrounds, water features,  shelters, tables and seating to the park, completing it.

Within the private development community, this plan is well known, and we expect to see an increasing number of private retail and housing projects on the Sunset corridor in the next decade.  This will help us meet growth management targets, while keeping the high-density housing on appropriate corridors where it does not increase traffic in single-family neighborhoods.

I’m excited about this plan and I hope you are too.  I’ve worked on it 20 years, and as Mayor I plan to see it through to completion.  As always, please feel free to comment with your thoughts below.

For a virtual year-book of Highland Revitalization Discussions and related blogs, search “Highlands” in my search bar or simply click here