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Current city drawing for Pavilion Market submitted as part of permitting process
The City of Renton is paying a consultant up to $49,000 to write a proposed lease agreement for the remodeled Renton Pavilion. As part of this work, the consultant is supposed to be asking the public what we want to see as the future of this building. The public should be weighing in now with our thoughts on the details of what we want to see.
One detail I’m not happy about is that even though both responses to Renton’s formal RFP process in 2019 retained substantial event space, the latest market concept no longer has event space other than a cooking classroom and possible banquet seating in one of it’s anchor restaurants.
For over 20 years the Pavilion has served exclusively as an event space, drawing large groups of people to downtown, sometimes hundreds at a time visiting for the first time. When the Spirit of Washington was operating both the dinner train and the Pavilion, Renton saw up to 200 events per year in this building, with some events bringing in 300 people or more. The Pavilion was so busy that the Renton Council had to move the “Movies in the Park” just to spread out the large gatherings we were attracting in our downtown. The Pavilion contributed to a renaissance in our downtown, helping inspire the name of the Renaissance Apartments next door to it. Then a frustrating deal between Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad and Washington State Department of Transportation ended our Dinner Train and sent Spirit of Washington packing.
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