Seattle: The Stranger Finds the Loophole, But Proposes the Wrong Way of Closing It

Today on The Stranger’s blog SLOG, Dominic Holden proposed a course of action to resolve something that’s been afflicting Seattle in the past decade.  There, developers and real estate investors will buy old buildings downtown prior to those buildings being listed as historic.  The developer or investor at that point will order some changes to the building – usually to the building’s historic facade.  After these changes, the building will have no chance of being listed as historic, and the developer or investor can then build a skyscraper full of condos for the affluent urbanite.  Holden is ready to throw down the gauntlet and say, “Enough!”

My love for The Stranger, Seattle’s Only Newspaper(tm), is well known to the one or two people who actually read this blog regularly.  The reason I like The Stranger so much is that not only do they aggressively cover events, but they also advocate for their own opinion.  More people should be out there advocating for their opinions.  But, sometimes The Stranger is wrong.  This is one of those times.

I can’t fault Holden.  What developers have been doing is a pretty lousy trick to pull on people who want to see history preserved.  Which makes this case – this particular instance – seem absolutely absurd to use as a gauntlet case.  Let’s get into the details of the case:

In August of this year, Holden reported that a building at Eighth Avenue and Lenora Street downtown was having its “very striking terra-cotta cladding skin [which] is surprisingly intact” removed by a workman.  In August, at the time of the report, nobody from the owner of the building would claim knowledge of any plans to replace the building with a new development.

Fast forward to just recently, when the Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce reported the owner/investors of the property had intended to do just that.  Holden maintains that now is the time to put a stop to all this – that the development must be held up by either the City Council or the Mayor.  But I can’t help thinking there’s too much nuance in this case for it to be that simple.  Here’s why.

First – modifying the facade of a building – especially those in cities – is not something you do just willy nilly.  You need a permit.  In his original piece Holden contacted the Seattle Department of Planning and Development and found that while distasteful, the actions of the owner were perfectly legal.

Second – Holden would like to see some of downtown’s surface parking lots turned into skyscrapers first.  Wouldn’t we all!  But in our system of private property and free enterprise, a willing buyer and a willing seller are required parties to any transaction.  A few years back, I happened to catch a forum of green/infill/density builders (including Peter Steinbrueck) on TV and one of the participants joked about wishing they could turn those parking lots into something – but no dice, the little old lady in Spokane who owns this parking lot isn’t selling.  The audience laughed, but some jokes are a little too close to home.

So… even though it’s unsavory, what the developers are doing to their buildings is perfectly legal.  The proposed solution to the problem – use parking lots for this kind of stuff instead – would require powers of eminent domain no American city can hope to have.  Maybe it would benefit us to take a step back and ask a few questions.

One – if a building is in candidate status for historic preservation – can the DPD issue permits for changes to its facade?  And if so, why?

Two – what makes a building historic?  The Stranger doesn’t like cars – they have made no secret of that.  So what makes an old car dealership so historic that no more historic buildings like it may be torn down in Seattle from this point forward?  Should actual history had to have occurred in a building for it to be deemed historic?

The politically feasible solution would seem to be to make it much harder to get building permits to modify the historically significant details of any building which is a candidate for listing on the historic register.  The historic preservation people would actually have to go inside the buildings they are surveying and might be prodded to consider history as something bigger than simply the presence of some terra-cotta facadework from the 1920s.  (Though I happen to love terra-cotta facadework from history.)  And the developers would be required to prove from an engineering standpoint – if we don’t tear this facade off this building right now it’s going to fall over in the next windstorm! – that the modifications they seek to make are indeed required.

The people who are planning to put up this condo skyscraper for future Yuppies (today we’re calling them… I believe… Generation Y people), are not actually doing anything wrong, and as such don’t deserve to be punished.  If permission is denied to build their tower to “punish” them, they might decide to get religious about holding a grudge – and keep their building just up to code enough, keep the taxes current, and let the thing sit vacant and boarded up for how many unforeseen decades.

But more importantly, if we punish people who are not breaking the law then we’re setting a worse precedent yet.  We will have taken the funhouse mirror that is the US justice system – where we prosecute people for breaking laws that exist to criminalize activity that harms no one – and bent it around to where we’re also punishing people who are not breaking any laws.

It’s hard to imagine something more absurd.  Let this incident serve as the impetus for bringing about a correct and defensible solution to the problem.  Things are not nearly out of hand enough for the solution to this problem to emerge from a line drawn arbitrarily in the sand.

Comments

[Dominic Holden]

This post is erroneous and, ultimately, makes the same point that The Stranger has made before.

First, the owner of this property didn't get a permit to deface the building, so your claim that "You need a permit" is wrong. The only record DPD had about the work was when someone filed a complaint about it.

Second, nobody is suggesting that builders be forced to develop parking lots--I cited the plentitude of downtown lots as proof that we could achieve density without destroying historic buildings.

It's clear that these developers are technically abiding by the law, but it's an abhorrent abuse of a loophole. To claim that blocking the proposed development on the site is The Stranger's only proposed solution, while linking to another article where I describe alternative solutions, is being willfully naive. I write:

"[City Council planning and development committee chair Sally] Clark should consider requiring attendance of all landmarks-board members at each meeting (or a voting alternate), requiring permits before altering any building in the historic survey (even ones not yet designated as landmarks), and prohibiting anyone with a financial stake in a building's demolition from advocating for or against its landmark status."

You propose essentially the same thing: "make it much harder to get building permits to modify the historically significant details of any building which is a candidate for listing on the historic register."

So it's ludicrous to crow that "The Stranger is wrong."

The problem is that, despite a plethora of reasonable solutions and ample time to implement them, the city has done nothing. That's why it's important to take more drastic action. These developers appear to be deliberately abusing a loophole to destroy something historic. The city needs to put its foot down, both on this building and by reforming the historic preservation process.

[Ken Manz]

Dominic - thanks for stopping by!

First, it's clear that you were on the right track originally. I liked the earlier report. Mea culpa for not adding my voice to the chorus when it was originally published.

Here are my points:

1. Why no permits for facade alterations? In a major city in the developed world, to operate a scissor lift on a public right of way and remove things from the side of a building - that's a permit. What happens if some beautiful historic facade falls on someone's head while it's being removed?

2. What about this building is so historic that makes it a landmark? Was the established process for designating landmark status not followed in this particular instance? Acknowledging in full that you and I might not have gotten the result we wanted out of that process, and you correctly argue that the landmark board should change their rules about what constitutes a quorum.

3. Advocating for "punishing" people who are exploiting a loophole is not the same as advocating for changing the law that has the loophole.

So perhaps I should amend my earlier statement. The Stranger - those writings which appear under the paper's masthead on a weekly basis - is not wrong. The particular SLOG post I'm calling into question here does, I maintain, advocate the wrong solution to the problem, and I will stand by that.