Good morning, everyone.
The May 12 2023 regularly scheduled meeting of the neighborhoods, education, civil rights and culture committee will come to order is 930. I'm Tammy Morales, chair of the committee.
Will the clerk please call the roll?
Councilmember Lewis, present.
Councilmember Nelson.
Councilmember Strauss.
Not on, could you call my name again, please?
Council Member Nelson.
Present.
Thank you.
Vice Chair Sawant.
Present.
Chair Morales.
Here.
Or present.
Thank you.
If there's no objection, today's agenda will be adopted.
Hearing no action, today's agenda is adopted.
Today we'll be hearing from the Department of Neighborhoods about a landmark for four schools.
Karen Doherty will be joining us to discuss the designation and what controls are put on each school.
First, we're going to open public comment.
At this time, we'll open the general in-person and hybrid public comment period.
I ask that everyone be patient as we operate this system.
We have, I don't believe we have any folks signed up virtually.
Is that correct?
That's correct.
And we have one person in chambers.
Okay.
So in that case, I will have allowed two minutes for each person who signed up.
We'll call you up to the podium.
You'll have two minutes to speak.
If we do end up having folks register online, we will go with that when we get there.
Please state your name and the item you're addressing.
As a reminder, public comment should relate to an item on today's agenda.
You will hear a chime when you have 10 seconds left.
When you hear the chime, I'll ask that you please wrap up your comments.
OK, so the regular public comment period for this committee is now open.
And Devin, I'll ask for you to call the names on the list.
First, we have Marguerite Richard.
Good day, my name is Marguerite Richard.
And I'm a Seattle light, and I did come to the public school system.
If anybody cares to understand where this committee stands as far as civil rights.
2023 is the anniversary of the birth of Malcolm X, and I'm mentioning him because he talked about education, and you're talking about preservation of schools, but are you preserving the minds of the children that have to walk the corridors of the schools?
That concerns me more than talking about a building.
I saw that, I read the agenda, but the agenda is whether or not we're gonna have the rights that are supposed to be sacred to us as indigenous black people, to have sole ownership of our system of doing things, because whatever you're doing, it's not working.
Why should I come down here and lie to the people about what I see with my naked eye, okay?
I'm not going to do that.
And I'm not going to allow you or anybody else in this town to sit up there and regulate my thought process, telling somebody to speak to the agenda when our life being preserved right now is the agenda.
Because if we're not breathing in and out, what good are we?
Nothing, huh?
eternal rest?
Is that what you're trying to give us?
That don't make no sense.
That's what I'm saying.
This whole giddy up.
Okay.
Alex Zimmerman, Eric Mays, he's a councilman in Flint, Michigan.
He got TikTok, anything he wants to serve and say, he's doing it.
He still has a job.
He's been arrested too.
I said, how do you that as indigenous black men go to work, and get arrested for being a council person.
I guess he said was salon has been to.
Is there anything else new?
You have another any additional speakers?
We have no one else signed up for public comment.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
That concludes our list of speakers for the general public comment period, and we will move on to the first agenda item.
Will you please read items one through four into the record?
Agenda Items 1-4, Council Bill 120563-120566, Ordinances Relating to Historic Preservation, imposing controls upon Madison Middle School, Magnolia Elementary School, Daniel Begley Elementary School, and West Seattle High School, landmarks designated by the Landmarks Preservation Board, for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.
Great, thank you very much.
We have Erin Doherty here with us from the Department of Neighborhoods to discuss the pieces of legislation.
So, Erin, I will hand it to you for your presentation.
Good morning.
That is on.
And I'm joined today by...
Jessie Claussen from McCulloch Hill.
We represent the Scallop School District.
And Devin, I don't see the presentation on the laptop.
Are we getting that loaded up for Erin?
Yes, Chair, I'll be doing that from the clerk's desk.
Standing by.
Thank you both for being here today.
Thank you.
Here we go.
Okay.
And am I able to advance that?
I think he's running it.
Will I not be able to?
I can control it for you.
Okay.
You can just say next.
Okay.
So thank you for having us here today.
We're looking at four Seattle Public School properties.
And these are in an order that are chronological and the agenda is slightly different, but they are shown from oldest to newest.
I hope that is okay.
So these ordinances are to codify the controls and incentives agreements signed by the property owner, Seattle Public Schools, and the Seattle City Historic Preservation Officer.
So as always, we bring with us the designation standards that the board considers, and there are six of them in total.
We won't read them all, but they're here for reference if we need to choose them.
Next, please.
And in addition to choosing at least one of the standards, the board must also decide that the property has integrity or the ability to convey its significance.
Next.
So this is West Seattle High School.
If you could move forward one slide.
This is located at 4075 Southwest Stephen Street, adjacent to Hiawatha Playfield in West Seattle.
The playfield is also a city landmark.
Back one slide, please.
This was designated June 17th, 1981 under standard D.
The features of the landmark include the site as illustrated, which is essentially the north half of the block and the exteriors of the buildings on the site.
The original building is from 1917. and there are additions from 1925 and 1954. West Seattle High School was designed by the school district's second internal architect, Edgar Blair.
He served in this role for nine years, and he's credited with more than 30 school buildings and major additions, including several landmarks, among them Franklin High School, McGilvra Elementary, Cooper Elementary, and the city's most recent school landmark, the original Van Asselt School located in Beacon Hill.
When West Seattle High School was completed in 1917, the United States had just entered World War I, and therefore the vast majority of the student body were young women, as many young men had enlisted.
Nearby shipyard and steel mill production was booming, and the area continued to grow rapidly through the next few decades, resulting in these multiple early additions to the school building.
As the neighborhood continued to grow over time, the school has had more contemporary additions and they continue to the south and off of the landmark site.
The architectural character of the building is influenced by Renaissance and Romanesque revivalism and the historic additions to the original building were designed to be compatible with the vision from 1970. So if we could move two slides forward, thank you.
This is Magnolia Elementary School.
Next slide, please.
This is 2418 28th Avenue West adjacent to Ella Bailey Park.
back one slide.
This was designated July 15, 2015 under standards C, D, and F.
The features of the landmark include the site, the exteriors of the 1927 building, and the 1931 and 40 additions, as well as portions of the interior.
The Magnolia School was designed by the school district's third and last major internal architect, Floyd Naramore.
He's credited with designing 20 major Seattle School buildings, of which more than a dozen are landmarks.
And all of this construction by him occurred between 1921 and 1932. Some other examples of his elementary schools include Mott Lake, EC Hughes, Loyal Heights, and Dunlap, all of them city landmarks.
This school is a classic example of Georgian Revival architecture and early additions that tripled the size of the building, extruding the mass of the building to the north and south.
So the historic photo on the bottom right, it's kind of a smaller building in the center of the block, but that image above, the school has been essentially bookended with additions to the north and south and fills the whole block.
So Magnolia has served different grades from K through eight in various periods of time.
For a while it was just grades one through four.
So it's been flexible to serve the district's needs.
The school closed in 1984 and was used for several years as an interim site for students from other schools that were being renovated.
Notably, it was home to the African-American Academy from 1993 to 2000 until their purpose-built school designed by architect Mel Streeter was completed in Beacon Hill.
The Landmarks Board has since approved a multi-phase major rehabilitation of the Magnolia School with large additions that are now complete and occupied.
If we can go forward two slides.
So I want to acknowledge that although I've been talking primarily about architecture of all these school properties, it's important to recognize that the culture and stories associated with these places are important to their neighborhoods and to their communities.
And individuals have personal histories with school buildings and that collective experience cannot adequately be conveyed in just these brief summaries today.
So this third school is Madison Middle School.
Next slide.
This is at 3429 45th Avenue Southwest in West Seattle.
You can see the high school property we discussed a moment ago to the upper right of the slide.
So this was designated January 16th, 2002. Thank you.
Under standard D, the features include the site, the exterior of the building, excluding the gym and portables, and the main entrance hall and lobby at the interior.
It was built between 29 and 1931. Madison is one of four middle schools, quote unquote middle schools, designed by Floyd Naramore, built between 1925 and 1931. In the early 1920s, the Seattle School District considered building intermediate or they called them also junior high school buildings to serve students in grades seven through nines.
This was a new concept following a national educational philosophy to try and relieve pressure on existing undersized elementary and high schools.
All four of the Seattle Middle Schools from this era have similar planning and share characteristics, but Madison is different from the others, exhibiting Gothic Revival influences rather than Georgian.
The Limerick's Board has since approved a major rehabilitation of the subject building and multiple large additions in different eras to accommodate continued growth in West Seattle, including one group of classroom additions that has occurred just in the past couple of years.
And lastly, we go forward two slides.
We have Daniel Bagley Elementary School.
Next slide.
This is 7821 Stone Avenue North, north of Green Lake.
This was designated, you can go back one, thank you.
June 17th, 2015 under standards C, D and E.
The features include the site, the exterior of the building and portions of the interior.
building is from 1930, and again, another work of architect Floyd Naramore, and one of his last for the school district.
The Bagley Elementary School is eclectic and architectural character, blending an art deco form with ornamentation that reflects Gothic revival.
And it seems like an evolution of design from the Madison School that we previously looked at.
It's also a fairly unique school architecturally within the school district's portfolio.
The Bagley School includes In the historic photo at the bottom, there's sort of this chamfered projecting little bump out in the building.
And I thought I pointed out, it's an unusual feature that Mr. Naramore incorporated into a number of his school designs.
And we see it at the Columbia School in Columbia City, the Bailey Gatzert School, the one that is no longer extant, and the Loyal Heights School, which still exists today.
For this school and at Loyal, we know this was home to the story time and gathering space of the kindergarten classroom.
So it's just an interesting little tidbit about the building and anyone who went to school there would surely remember that.
Here again, the Landmarks Board has approved a major rehabilitation of the school as well as large additions to accommodate growth in the district and these are also now complete.
And thank you, that is all that I have.
Great, thank you very much, Erin.
I appreciate the comments that you made about, you know, this isn't just about buildings, it's about the community around the buildings, the students and families who use these schools, and I'm sure spent many years enjoying them and having them as assets in the neighborhood.
I'm sorry, can your table mate there introduce yourself, please?
Yes, Jesse Clausen from Akula Hill.
We represent Seattle Public Schools.
Great, thank you, Jessie.
Thank you for being here.
I will hand it off in a moment if my colleagues have questions, but I wonder if you can talk a little bit about why we might landmark a school.
These buildings are beautiful.
I went to school in a, my elementary school was built, I think in the 60s, maybe even the 70s.
I'm not sure if it will be preserved or not.
So these clearly have architectural history and the history in the community.
But I wonder if you could talk a little bit about why we would landmark a school.
And then if you could also talk about for those who may be concerned that this would affect the ability to do technology upgrades or renovate facilities that need to be updated, even expand a school if the student population changes.
what should the public know about the impact of something like designating a school as a landmark?
You want me to go?
Maybe you can take the first one about eligibility of schools for landmarks and then I can talk about the processes that we go through to build additions and the collaborative process we have with the city.
Sure, so I can only speculate as to why these particular schools were nominated to be considered but I would imagine that in all cases it was because they were contemplating major additions or rehabilitation to the schools.
So, SEPA, the State Environmental Policy Act, has criterion around buildings more than 50 years old.
And when proposed major development and additions exceed a certain threshold of size, and it's based on zone, those would qualify for consideration under the state policy.
So I think even if we look back at West Seattle High School in the 1980s, it's likely that that was happening at that time as well and not just the more recent nominations that have occurred.
So, and, you know, many times we see the board The board doesn't nominate and or designate every school that they consider.
We've had several come to us in the most recent building excellence levy where the board decided not to nominate or designate the properties and the school district then moved forward with demolishing the structures and building new schools which are under construction now.
And so that kind of leads into me many times having new landmarks.
And as I'd mentioned, I think in my presentation, many of these, the board then reviews additions, but Jesse can elaborate on that.
Yeah.
So I can't remember.
I know Magnolia for sure.
And Daniel Bagley recently have gone through and maybe Madison as well.
So just like any other landmark structure, the school would go through a certificate of approval process with the board and staff to, you know, ensure that the addition is appropriate given the Secretary of Interior standards for rehabilitation and addition.
So that process is, you know, a process that the school district has gone through many times.
It's a very collaborative process with staff and the board.
And I guess I haven't had any concerning situations where, you know, an addition that is needed for educational standards has, you know, been denied at all by the board ever.
One of the criteria that is special in the landmarks ordinance for schools is when the board is reviewing a certificate of approval for a school, it's required to actually consider the educational specifications that are needed.
So again, I'm making this up, but if you needed 12 foot windows for some sort of ed spec, the board would consider that when it's looking at the Certificate of Approval.
Great, thank you so much, Jessie.
Okay, colleagues, are there any questions for our...
Oh, I do want to note that Council Member Strauss has joined us.
Any questions for Jessie or for Erin about these school landmark designations?
I am not seeing any.
Okay, in that case, colleagues, I'm gonna move that the committee recommend approval of these landmarks.
Is there a second?
Second.
Thank you, Council Member Nelson.
It's been moved and seconded to recommend approval of the landmarks.
Ben, will you please call the roll?
Council Member Lewis?
Yes.
Council Member Nelson.
Aye.
Council Member Strauss.
Yes.
Vice Chair Sawant.
Yes.
Chair Morales.
Yes.
Five in favor.
Perfect.
Thank you very much.
The motion carries and the committee recommendation that Council approve these, these landmarks will be sent to the May 23 2023 City Council meeting.
Colleagues, that is all of our agenda today.
This was a short one.
So if there are no other comments, this concludes the May 12, 2023 meeting of the Neighborhoods, Education, Civil Rights, and Culture Committee.
Our next scheduled committee meeting is May 26. Thank you for attending, everybody.
We are adjourned.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Recording stopped.
Thank you for being here, Aaron and Jesse, really appreciate it.