Thanks.
Okay, thank you so much.
So it is the September 7th meeting of the Seattle City Council's Public Assets and Homelessness Committee, and this meeting will come to order.
It is 2.01 p.m.
I'm Andrew Lewis, chair of the committee.
Vice Chair Mosqueda is excused this afternoon.
Will the committee clerk please call the roll?
Council Member Herbold.
Here.
Council President Juarez.
Here.
Council Member Morales.
Chair Lewis.
Present.
Chair, there are four members present.
Thank you, moving on to approval of the agenda.
I am just going to announce at the front here that due to the availability of panelists, I'm gonna switch agenda items one and two, given that some panelists need to leave by 2.50 this afternoon.
So I'm verbally switching those items if there are no objections from committee members.
Hearing no objections, the agenda will be so altered.
Are there any objections to the agenda as altered?
Hearing none, the agenda will be adopted.
Chair's report, we're gonna have two items of business today that have just been switched in our adoption of the agenda.
One is a resolution on Third Avenue, which we will be considering as our first item this afternoon.
And then the second ordinance from the Seattle Parks Department regarding an easement on the Turner Cove House and Garden.
So why don't we just move forward then to public comment.
Is anyone signed up for public comment, Mr. Clerk?
Mr. Chair, we have two in-person public commenters.
Okay, and no virtual public commenters?
No one has signed up virtually.
Okay, we will go ahead then and take public comment for two minutes, and you can preside over the public comment period.
The first public commenter is Alex Zimmerman.
Alex, you'll have two minutes for public comment.
I'll start the timer when you start speaking.
Oh, Zeke Heil, my dirty damn Nazi fascist, my bandit and psychopath who speak to us from the heaven.
When you will show us faces, you promise us from September will be normal.
I don't see this.
Where is my face?
Counsel, what's going on?
Okay, no problem.
I'm sorry.
Yeah, so right now situation with Third Avenue very interesting.
We have only one Third Avenue.
In many government organization, one helps this, make Third Avenue better.
But we have only one Third Avenue.
We have, for my understanding, 1,200 homeless.
It's totally different from one Third Avenue.
So why you want to spend a thousand, a million bucks for Third Avenue?
Make Third Avenue better, you know what I mean?
So this 1,200 homeless or how many, I don't know, will come to Third Avenue and sleep in Third Avenue?
I don't understand why you're doing this.
From my understanding, before many government organization want to spend money for Third Avenue, maybe you need help.
Homelessness, you know what this means?
Because you have a committee for homelessness, not for Third Avenue.
So I'm totally confused when you stop acting like a bandit, like a criminal, like a psychopath.
Is this possible?
or you will be with your Nazi Gestapo principle for another 30 years.
So right now, I speak to everybody to listen to me.
Stand up, America, you know what this mean.
Maybe it's time for cleanse this chamber from this idiot with Nazi Gestapo Mario principle.
Yeah?
Huh?
Who answer me this?
Nobody.
Everybody in heaven.
In.
Yes, in heaven.
Thank you very much.
Our next public commenter is Frank Zamfino.
Frank, please approach the dais and we'll start your two minutes when you're ready.
Yes, thank you for hearing me.
My motor home was stolen by this woman.
Mindy and a guy named Ross.
Both of them I believe are drug addicts.
I went through the process of going through the police department, general investigations unit and sending and telling them that I owned it.
I did the process.
You have to send these alleged victims to the notice You have to give them 10 days to respond.
No response.
Uh, it went to detective Lindsey Brown.
I gave her information.
I told her about the motor home.
I told her about, uh, this guy that that's in my motor home that is, um, uh, carries a knife and, um, and it was my vehicle, and she reports to me, she sent me an email saying that she, I keep changing my story.
This is what this detective tells me.
I'm changing my story.
And then she says, we are in question of the veracity of your statements.
Just an excuse.
That's all.
That's all it is.
Just an excuse.
I want my motorhome back.
I want it back.
I even told her where, somebody told me where it was.
I want my motorhome back.
I want some kind of assistance to get my property back.
And it's a shame that they don't do anything about it.
Are there any other public commenters?
Mr. Chair, there is no one else signed up for public comment today.
Yeah.
And sir, who just public commented, what's your, what's your name?
I apologize.
Yeah.
We can't get into that now, I'm sorry.
If you send my office an email, if you send my office an email, I'm happy to follow up with that situation.
This isn't the proper forum to discuss this, but I'm happy to look into that issue for you.
I just wanted to flag that before we move forward.
Yes.
Thank you.
Thank you.
We will now move forward to the items of business.
So, okay, we switched the items and the script already reflects that, which is great.
So will the clerk please read item one into the record?
Ian Swallow, Boulder Housing Partners, Planner Item 1, Resolution 32067, a resolution endorsing the goals of the Downtown Seattle Association's Third Avenue vision and stating the intent of the City of Seattle to work collaboratively with Downtown Seattle Association, King County Metro, and Sound Transit to pursue improvements to Third Avenue and Downtown Seattle.
Thank you so much, Mr. Clerk, and I think that we are joined here today by Seattle City Council Central staff.
Is everyone here on this item?
I see Lish, Cal, and Tracy, and then also John Scholes from the Downtown Seattle Association.
I'm just gonna make a couple brief introductory comments and then turn it over for some remarks from Mr. Scholes.
It's good to be able to be here today to discuss this issue and discuss it in the Public Assets Committee.
This has been an ongoing discussion that we've been having as a city family for the past several years, given some of the ongoing challenges around Third Avenue and some of the ongoing challenges related to commuting trends following the pandemic and the nature of return to work post-pandemic.
The third avenue in many ways really is the front door of our downtown neighborhood.
It is the place that we all go to all the all roads lead there.
If you are going downtown.
If you are commuting to go to work, you're going to have to end up on Third Avenue.
If you are going downtown for an evening at the Paramount or the symphony, or the Seattle Art Museum, or many of our marquee arts institutions downtown, you're going to end up on Third Avenue.
If you're a tourist coming in from the airport on light rail, the first impression of the city that you're going to see is going to be when you come up out of the light rail tunnel on the Third Avenue.
and it is the gateway by which I on a daily basis get downtown on the number one metro bus via 3rd Avenue and see it on a daily basis.
It really is an appropriate item for us to discuss in the public asset context given the intersections of transit, public safety, economic development, the connections to the waterfront project and the pike pine improvements that feed into the core of the city and unite the waterfront with the eastern end of the downtown neighborhood where the new convention center will be completed and much of the retail core is positioned.
And as we have discussed this work over the course of the past several years, this conversation gets bogged down and disjointed, given the intersection of the various policy areas.
This resolution is going to be an attempt for us to harmonize all of these various interests in the Third Avenue corridor into one common project in much the same way that we as a city have monitored progress on the waterfront or the Pike Pine improvements or the convention center or other large civic endeavors that the city has engaged in, where it really does fall outside of the scope of work of one discrete committee.
So as a way to start getting into this the downtown Seattle Association several years ago, did some work that Mr schools the president of the downtown Seattle Association will speak to, to really look at how other major urban centers around the country.
are able to create transit malls, transit cores in the center of their cities that enhance an urbanist experience, that enhance activated spaces as well as access to mass transit in a way that creates for a more robust dynamic and diversity of use downtown.
And those findings have been manifested in a document that the Downtown Seattle Association has called the Third Avenue Vision.
This is a good framework for going forward.
It is not a overly prescriptive document.
It offers multiple different modifications, paths, concepts, ideas to engage in creating a robust transit mall and corridor in the downtown neighborhood.
And with that, I think I'll hand it over to John and the presentation to hear a little bit more.
about this.
I am not intending to vote on this today.
I'm intending to have another hearing on this matter before the end of September, but did want to get the conversation started and put this forward.
So with that, I'll hand it over to our panel and John's goals.
Thanks so much, Councilmember Lewis appreciate your work and bringing this resolution forward, and the opportunity to be with you all today.
Thank you, Council President Juarez and Councilmember Morales as well, just have a few slides here just to provide a bit more.
context and specificity around the work that our organization helped lead just prior to the pandemic is when we finalized and completed this vision, which involved about 70 or so stakeholders from nonprofit leaders and business leaders, small business folks, property owners, as well as representatives from the city and metro and other public agencies.
We looked at, as Councilmember Lewis noted, other great transit streets around the country that have suffered from some similar challenges and how they approached remaking and re-envisioning those streets from Minneapolis to Denver and up north to Vancouver.
We did a lot of outreach up and down the corridor and ZGF architects helped support the process.
And you can go to the next slide here, Jacob.
I think Council Member Lewis did a good job of sort of summarizing the significance of the street itself and the role it plays in our city, you know, connecting Seattle Center, you know, the city's living room in many ways down to the Civic Campus and our county courthouse.
And I think of it as really the lobby of our city.
So many people are passing through that each and every day, whether you're a resident of market rate or low income housing along the corridor, you might be accessing human and social services, you might be serving in a Capacity as a juror at the county courthouse or getting off the bus to go to work or headed across the corridor to the market or to an arts and cultural venue it serves a lot of different functions, really for everybody in our city and lots of people throughout.
our region.
And I think the challenges are ones that we're all largely aware of and and they extend certainly beyond the built environment and how it's designed and the lighting and the physical nature, which is a lot of what this vision is designed to do.
I mean we see and address.
But we see today, you know, certainly lots of people still suffering outside with mental illness and substance use.
We see safety and security issues.
And the vision really speaks to the physical environment and the opportunities to invest in design improvements and lighting and more space for pedestrians, dedicated space for transit riders, which we believe will be a significant contributing factor in interventions to help improve the safety of the corridor as well.
But as we all know, additional actions and investments and interventions are needed.
When we ask people if there's a street or area in downtown that they avoid in the intercept surveys that the city completed through SDOT about three or four years ago, there's a strong consensus that Third Avenue is a street most people don't want to be on.
Given all those functions that it serves and all the people that pass through there and need to access Third Avenue, it really shouldn't be that way.
This should be just a great lobby for our city.
If you're running a hotel, oftentimes the lobby is where you put your investment because it's the place that everybody passes through.
You want it looking and feeling great and everybody that should feel welcome there.
I think that's the same approach we should take for this street because of the important functions it serve.
We think it should serve continue to serve as a really critical transit street which it has for many, many years but we've really lacked a vision we've lacked a detailed sort of aspiration and goal for what this street should look like should feel like in the function that it should serve and it really hasn't recovered as a street since the cut and cover.
original transit tunnel was dug through and along Third Avenue in the early 90s.
The retail has struggled, the pedestrian environment has struggled, and over that time we've added lots and lots of buses, where today it's the busiest bus street in the nation, in North America.
And the the buses that come through that corridor play a really important role of moving lots of people from across our city into and out of downtown for all the reasons I articulated earlier, but I think we have an opportunity here to just be much more intentional about the design, the improvements, what we're trying to achieve with this street and And again, this effort has been informed by several dozen stakeholders from throughout downtown, as I noted earlier, and with great support from GGF Architects, in addition to some other consultants.
You can go on to the next slide, Jacob.
And so this really was a public-private partnership involving the city and SDOT and Metro and others, and we really appreciate their engagement and participation in development of the vision.
The DSA funded this vision back in 2018 and 19 and published it in late 2019. And as I noted earlier, we, in addition to working to understand the current challenges and situation on the street itself, we want to understand what other cities across North America have done on transit corridors that were primarily serving rubber tire transit service, so heavy bus streets, and looked at Vancouver, Minneapolis, Denver, and a few other cities.
And we took a trip as well out to Denver to look at the 16th Street Mall and some of the other improvements that they've made to their streets, transit streets, and continue to make their.
Denver is now in the midst of $150 million remake of 16th Street, their sort of major pedestrian and transit mall.
So the vision really reflects some of the best practices around the country of how do you serve transit riders and encourage transit use, but also have great retail and great street side cafes and uses and make it a street that people want to linger on and walk down, not a street that people want to and do avoid.
You can go ahead there, Jacob.
The vision doesn't prescribe a specific alternative or answer, but really provides a few options of different ways to give more space to pedestrians.
As we've added all those buses over the years and really committed to the street being a significant transit corridor, We haven't really widened the sidewalks at all and so it creates a lot of crowding and bunching that I think we've all experienced people waiting for the bus or waiting against a business that's hard to see what is that business and how do I find the door, and then if you're just walking.
along the corridor, you're sort of navigating all of that as well.
So a big move in each of these alternatives is to dedicate more space to pedestrians, whether it's a pedestrian that's going to wait for a bus or a pedestrian that's looking to access a business or walk home for the evening along 3rd Avenue.
So there's a series of alternatives and Jacob will just sort of cycle through a few of these in and these are in the hard copy report and PDF that I think is in your packet so you can spend more time sort of looking at these alternatives and there's some associated renderings as well at street level to articulate what could be a much more pleasant, inviting, well-lit, green, delineated experience from what we have today.
And this is the opportunity we see is to create one of the country's best transit street, a street that people are delighted to wait for a bus on or walk down or go out to eat or access a business or services or show up for jury duty or go out to arts and culture.
And that's the opportunity we see.
And we think this matters not just to folks who may work or live downtown, but folks throughout our city and region that are accessing downtown for a host of services and reasons.
This really should be everybody's street and a street where everybody feels invited and included and safe and welcomed.
So we appreciate the development of this resolution, which sets forth, I think, some important steps and actions to move this forward.
We wanted to sort of start the conversation with the vision and the document that we produce and hold out the aspiration that I think we all share for a tremendous street through the heart of our downtown that people want to be on that serves an important function for transit and other uses.
And now I think it's time to take some next steps to involve key partners at Metro and SDOT, Sound Transit, and the private sector to solidify around a common alternative here and the alternative that that where we can achieve consensus and then to take the design forward and identify how we bring this project to reality and create a terrific experience extending from the Seattle center down to the county courthouse and civic campus in Pioneer Square and into the international district.
So thank you again, Council Member Lewis, for your leadership in moving us to, I think, a critical next step here.
And if there's any questions from the committee, I'm happy to take them.
John, thank you for that overview.
Before we open it up for questions from committee members, I want to give central staff an opportunity to jump in and maybe discuss the resolution if this would be the appropriate time.
And I don't know if Lish or Cal want to take on that mandate there.
Sure, I'm happy to jump in.
So the resolution is fairly simple as two sections the first voices support for the vision, and the processes come before us and the second lays out a process to move that vision towards a project that can be built.
It calls for forming a task force that includes the Office of Planning and Community Development, Seattle Department of Transportation, Office of Economic Development, Downtown Seattle Association, King County Metro and Sound Transit.
And as for the development of a work plan, budget, identification of short-term changes that can be made to improve the corridor, development of final consensus of an alternative that can meet all of the different stakeholders' goals and needs for the corridor, and then identify funding for implementation of that plan that has reached consensus.
That's it.
Lish, thank you for that overview.
So do colleagues have any questions on the resolution?
given those presentations.
Council Member Morales.
And then Council Member Herbold.
Thank you.
Thank you for the presentation.
I mean, it's beautiful.
It looks like exactly the kind of thing I would love to be doing on all of our city streets.
And I'm wondering, I understand the resolution says that in, or and you just said, you know, now is the time to start talking to key county metro to start to to OPCD.
Can you talk a little bit about how much they know like what have the conversations been.
to give them a heads up or to seek their input as you're going through this kind of design process about what the reality would be about their ability to move it forward.
John, you want to take that question?
Yeah, thank you, Council Member.
They were deeply involved in the development of the vision.
And then we've been talking to both the city and leadership at Metro about Council Member Lewis's resolution specifically.
And then we'll be convening the Downtown Transportation Alliance, which is a table where we, along with the other agencies, sit to sort of talk through issues like this next week.
And Council Member Lewis will be joining us.
So they've been deeply involved from the get-go and the development of the vision.
I think we'll need to be critically involved going forward as we try to solidify on one alternative.
This street, let's be clear, needs to continue to be a really critical transit street.
It brings people from all across our city into downtown for lots of different reasons.
That function needs to be maintained.
How we do that, I think, is the critical question as we go forward.
We know just one final point from looking at some other cities that we don't have great efficiency today in the number of buses that are moving through there relative to the number of people that we're carrying.
We have a lot more buses relative to people compared to other cities, and there's some charts in the vision that shows that.
So we think the transit system needs to stay there and it can operate more efficiently with better configuration as well.
So I guess a follow up to that is, I mean, we're in the middle of the Seattle transportation plan.
We are beginning the comprehensive planning processes.
And I wonder how this vision and the changes that are being proposed here, I don't know if it's reconcile or relate to the kinds of conversations that will be happening through those different planning processes.
I just say I think making this a much more desirable street for pedestrians and transit riders and the public would be fully consistent with those broader policy objectives and goals of the city and, you know, increasing density is great for climate change more people on the bus is great for our sustainability goals more people walking.
So we see this as wholly consistent and that we have an opportunity, particularly with, you know, the additional federal funding for infrastructure that is out there and congressional directed spending to formulate a design and a financing plan to bring this to reality.
Thank you.
Councilmember Herbold.
Thank you so much.
I would love to have a little bit more conversation, if not now, before this resolution comes forward for a vote on what it means to the I think that would be really helpful.
We've.
As noted was done in 2019. there is fluctuation in ridership anticipated in the future associated with light rail coming.
And there was, there's also, I think, a really important recognition of how.
bus routes from all over the city, go through downtown and are dependent on going through downtown to not only meet capacity, but to save time.
We saw when the Viaduct came down, the bus routes to West Seattle, the amount of time it took increased afterwards.
I think maybe just creating a little bit of granularity about what our expectations are in this vision, I think would be really helpful and useful and I hope you agree.
No, absolutely.
Like I said, this street needs to continue to serve a really important transit function.
Our interest is that lots of people can ride buses into downtown for all the reasons they need to to show up each and every day and so we want to be able to maintain that.
I think the extension of light rail north and then future extensions and the reduction of the peak period post-COVID take some of the pressure off this street, frankly, and then some of the reductions of bus service from the regional routes on 2nd and 4th Avenue give us some opportunities to maybe figure some of the bus service in downtown while still maintaining access for folks.
But this street carried, you know, 52,000 people each and every day prior to the pandemic and busiest transit street in our city and region and needs to continue to serve that function.
Lish, could you provide maybe some insight to Council Member Herbold's question is a very good one on the maintaining capacity definition.
How would you envision responding to that within the four corners of this resolution?
I'm gonna hand that over to Cal, who's our transportation expert.
I think it's a, you know, this is a transportation corridor that's, you know, been the, it's a function of the geography of Seattle, frankly, we have north south systems and we have funneled a lot of our transit service down this road so it's a long standing issue.
We have had the opportunity to really look at how we manage the flows of third in conjunction with second and fourth.
That was part of the discussion around some of the bike lane expansion that happened over the last couple of years.
So some of this is an ongoing evaluation that the transportation engineer will have to be involved with as well in determining what that capacity looks like.
I will say that the transit agencies will be focused on exactly that question of maintaining what is going to make their system continue to operate.
So I think it's critical to have them in the discussion.
And it's really about trying to get all these folks to sit down and hammer through what are frankly going to be some tough issues.
It's not just about, you know, coming to a resolution about how to use the available resources.
potentially depending on the types of options that are chosen, this could be a significant capital ask.
So I think, you know, it is important to do that, that ground setting of understanding, you know, what are the near term, shorter term options that can get some benefit?
And what are, frankly, the larger term options that may require consideration for levy renewal or other financing proposals that are much, you know, much more than what we have for capacity today.
I think it's important to recognize that the situation we're in is the result of a lot of long-term legacy decisions that have built up over time.
That's not always easy to get away from right away, but if you don't have the people talking about it all in the same room, I think you don't have any chance of it at all.
Sorry if that's a little bit of a non-answer, but I feel like some of these issues have been talked about before.
We have seen some movement, and there is some opportunity just as we're seeing changes in what our transit network should look like and what the nature of transit is in general in the city.
So now seems like a good time to get at these issues, especially if it will lead to potentially funding requests that could be considered in part with the levy, say, in two years.
Mr. Chair, I have a question.
Yes, Council President.
Thank you.
And thank you, Calvin, for that long non answer.
You kind of got I'm just going to cut to the quick here because I and I appreciate John and all the work you've done in your 88 page PowerPoint.
So can I just ask we know Third Avenue in history.
Thank you for letting us know there's like fifty two thousand people did not know that number.
So we all know it's a major transit spine, obviously.
It's critical to downtown transit, all those issues, and we all understand that.
Can I just get right to it about, is this in response to crime, congestion, maybe the street has grown up?
If this is a response to that, is that going to be part of the discussion as well?
Because as you know, and I think we all know this, we see what's going on on 3rd Avenue every day.
So if it is a response to that, and there are more people and more density, more use, and second of all, are we gonna be looking at other streets as Council Member Morales also brought up that there's other streets that could use this kind of re-imagining, if you will, and maybe it did take COVID and a spike in crime on 3rd and what we've seen to really get in a room and address it, if that's the elephant in the room.
Is that a fair question for me to ask of you, John?
No, I'm happy to respond to that, Council President.
I would say that certainly improving the physical environment will help improve safety and security.
There's all kinds of research around the country and around the world on that.
I think this is necessary, but it's not going to be sufficient.
And as I noted earlier, there's certainly other interventions and investments that we need to be making collectively to deal with some of the human suffering, to deal with the crime that we all are well aware of.
that is in a lot of ways and has been for many years anchored to this corridor.
But simply putting out better plants and lighting or widening the sidewalk will not help someone that is smoking fentanyl right now at the corner of Third and Pine.
We need a different intervention for that.
And so this needs to be, I think, a comprehensive approach to improve the lobby of our city that is really, really important for lots of different reasons.
certainly to downtown, but I think to the entire city.
Mr. Chair, may I ask a follow-up question?
Of course, Council President.
Thank you.
Thank you, John, because I think that's what I was getting at, that yes, it's enough that we activate streets and we do lights, but we are addressing, I think we should just be honest about it, how this third and some other streets have changed and have become not safe.
We want it to be safe for everybody and also for addressing homelessness and getting the right people down there to handle it, but also alleviating some of that pressure from a major quarter like third.
So I think we have to be honest about that.
And I like what Council Member Herbold said as well, and Mr. Chair, that we all get in the same room and say, okay, even if it is a response to more crime and all these other things, it still needs to be addressed.
So I am really supportive of this resolution and I'm glad that Mr. Chair brought this to the forefront and we maybe can fine tune it I do have one comment, you need to have bigger page numbers on your PowerPoint.
Maybe I'm just old, but I'm like, what number is that?
I was trying to follow on the screen.
I'm still old school.
I print stuff out and make notes in the margins.
I think that this is, are we, Mr. Chair, I don't know if you're going to respond to this or maybe Mr. Schultz, are we looking at this kind of being a model, and how we address some other streets are experiencing the same type of stresses.
Maybe I could jump in on on that one and you know if john wants to respond I'm happy to give him time on the other side to.
I think what we're really seeing not just in Seattle, but nationally and around the world post coded is this new surge of urbanism to take back spaces for people activations, an emphasis on place making that.
really centers how we can use a space that was previously dominated by cars or dominated by concrete.
And I think that this is a movement that is or this is a policy in keeping with that broader movement.
We're seeing it in places all over the city.
I see it all over my district.
And I do hope it serves as a template for how we can continue to reclaim places for bikes, pedestrians, street cafes.
I want to expand that as much as possible.
We're seeing significant renewed interest among members of the public for doing things like this all over the city.
I think we should heed that call and incorporate it considerably into our planning.
And Council President, I agree that we should acknowledge that the intersections of placemaking in terms of the residual benefits that that gives to economic development and opportunity for small business to flourish and improved public safety in the community, you know, and improved livability in our neighborhoods.
So totally agree that it fires in all cylinders.
And I really wanna make sure that that activation is the path we go down rather than a path of hostile architecture, the barring of public spaces, and the destruction of public spaces because we don't have confidence in our ability to activate them and to invest in them, which is a dangerous path that has a corrosive effect on the resiliency and the togetherness of our communities.
I would hope that some of the concepts that we are putting forward here could be modeled in other places and could really contribute to making Seattle a highly livable, urban, and active place.
John, do you wanna?
Oh, go ahead.
Sorry, Council President.
I'm glad that you articulated much better than I did what I was getting at about having a hostile architecture.
And before this becomes a story of war on cars, it's not.
it's an acknowledgement that you do have to reclaim this space, whether it's, you know, street, well, I was gonna say street vacations, but whether it's bike lanes or home zones or all these tools that we use, if we get down to what, you know, just down to the nitty gritty of what the space should be used for, because the benefits, as you pointed out, Mr. Chair, not just safety, but, you know, economic development, spaces for people to come.
We're seeing this up in the North end a lot, the work that we've done with some of the folks up here in Lake City and Northgate.
And I'm just really happy to hear that we're having these kind of honest discussions about that.
So I think that's a policy going forward that we can all buy into and be supportive of and hopefully replicate in other places.
So thank you, Mr. Chair, for bringing this.
Yes, and you know the advantage this quarter has is we've already made the tough decision to remove cars from it.
And I'll just tell you from other things I've been involved in removing cars from places where we could enhance the use of those spaces.
tends to be the hardest step.
So going to the next level here is really what we're talking about.
And it would be hard to pin war on cars, given that they're already banned, for the most part.
John, did you have any other closing remarks?
It looks like there's not any more questions.
And I think there were a few things that were fielded to you that may have
may have fallen through the cracks and in the back and forth just now with the Council President know the only other thing I would add Council members I think coalescing around a vision for this really critical corridor.
very important to the continued recovery of downtown, to the recovery of the retail core, to attracting more retailers, restaurants, small businesses to fill up vacancies so that they understand that there's a vision here for this street.
And that is going to be critical to rebuilding and strengthening the city's tax base.
There's a fair amount of sales tax revenue and B&O revenue, commercial parking tax revenue.
that we're not collecting today when we look at empty storefronts.
I think we all share an interest in seeing more small businesses and folks have job opportunities and customers coming through those doors to continue to strengthen the city's tax base, which is important for investment and services throughout Seattle.
So I think what happens on this street and really aligning around a vision and aspiration and a set of steps that we can take forward is an important signal to property owners, small businesses, others looking to get back in or in for the first time our downtown.
Excellent.
Well, like I said, we're gonna have another hearing on this in two weeks, knowing that this is kind of a big new subject coming right out of recess.
I wanted to give people time to really digest it, talk to my office.
If there's questions, reach out to the DSA.
I'm sure they would make themselves available.
So I think that that's a good place to end it on for this session.
Looking forward to taking this up in the future.
So John, thank you so much for joining and thank you to central staff for the overview of this and looking forward to next steps when we reconvene in two weeks.
Okay, why don't we have the clerk read item two into the agenda?
Item two, Council Bill 120415, an ordinance relating to Seattle Parks and Recreation, authorizing the acquisition of a conservation and recreation easement at the Turner Kopf House and Garden, commonly known as the Garden House, located at 2336 15th Avenue South, authorizing acceptance of a recording of the conservation and recreation easement for open space, park, and recreation purposes, and ratifying and confirming certain prior acts.
Thank you so much.
And we are joined today by a panel that includes Seattle Parks and Historic Seattle.
So I don't know who wants to be sort of the moderator here for the panel, or maybe it is just Historic Seattle and not Parks.
Kai, do you wanna take it over?
Lisa Parks is with us.
She can lead.
Oh, there we go.
Okay.
See, I wish we were all kind of back in chambers so I could actually like see who's presenting on what.
But okay, who wants to take the mic first and introduce themselves?
I'm Leigh Sward, Senior Real Property Agent for Seattle Parks.
Christopher Williams is on vacation.
And I thought Michelle Finnegan was going to be here, but I think I'll just barrel along.
We do have a PowerPoint and I'm wondering if it can be posted now.
Thank you.
Lisa, it will be shared in just one second.
Okay, and I'm here with Kai Kelly, Executive Director of Historic Seattle Preservation and Development Authority.
So, shall I just let you know when I'm ready for the next slide?
Yes.
Okay.
This has been a long time in the making, and my predecessor planner, Chip Nevins, actually started talking to Historic Seattle several years ago about this opportunity to both preserve a landmarked house grand old house in Beacon Hill and provide open space in a community that very desperately needs it.
And we've come up with sort of a neat concept that I'd like to share with you today for how both objectives can be met.
If you could go to the next slide, please.
So the overview here is just an air photo of Beacon Hill.
The address of this historic Turner, how do you pronounce it, Kai?
Kauffhaus is 2336 15th Avenue South.
The red arrow down at the bottom shows the house and the grounds that surround the house as well as the parking lot.
And we've tentatively reached an agreement Parks has tentatively reached an agreement with Historic Seattle to make approximately 12,000 square feet of the land around the house available to the public for park use.
And we're coming to you today to seek approval for a perpetual conservation and recreation easement, which will ensure that this property will be available for public use for generations to come.
The transaction consists of the city's purchase of this easement from Historic Seattle, which owns the property.
Purchase price is $1,842,500.
And I can talk about this on the next slide, but Historic Seattle has incurred some carrying costs over the past several months as it purchased the property last December from an underlying property owner who wanted to place it on the market.
And we wanted to put the kibosh on that as best we could.
So the transaction and the attachment to the ordinance consists of a purchase and sale agreement to which the easement is attached as well as an operations and maintenance agreement between Seattle Parks and Historic Seattle.
Next slide, please.
We at Parks operate under the 2017 Park and Open Space Plan, which identifies gap areas within the city.
So we've done some story mapping.
And within urban villages, we have concentric five-minute walking distance goals.
We call them our service area goals.
And what this map represents is if you can look underneath the blue there, North Beacon Hill Residential Urban Village has a significant gap.
You'll see that represented in orange.
This transaction, which is represented by the blue star approximately in the area of the property, would Considerably fill that gap.
The dark blue circle there represents five minute walking distance coming into that site for park use.
Property on the left in the dark green is East Duwamish Greenbelt, Beacon Hill Playground, which includes Seattle Public Schools properties to the north.
And I also identified the red star for you, which is El Centro de la Raza, and several years ago, about 10 years ago, in fact, The 2008 Parks and Green Spaces Levy responded to a Community Opportunity Fund application for construction of a playground on El Centro de la Raza's property.
And with that came a 20-year agreement to open that playground up to the public.
So I show that to you on this slide.
as representative of the type of park use that's also available within this five minute walking distance.
So you've got Beacon Hill Playground, you've got the El Centro de la Raza Playground, as well as the Turner Knopf House that will be a completely different kind of park use.
Next slide, please.
Kai, feel free to jump in, because this is your area of expertise.
But the Washington State Federation of Garden Clubs, and previous to that, I believe it was the Jefferson Park Ladies Club Society, owned the property for many, many years.
And so the house has a history of being used for community events in the grounds as well.
Federation found itself wanting to sell the house in 2018. We were approached to purchase the property, but Parks is not well-suited to own and operate a historic house of this significance.
So we were unable to put a deal together.
It was sold to a private buyer.
A couple of years later, that buyer wanted to sell.
Kai was talking to that buyer or seller and was able, Historic Seattle was able to sweep in and purchase the property prior to it being placed on the market.
And so with Historic Seattle Preservation Development Authority as the owner, both the house and the land can return to its former glory and former uses as community-based building and with grounds around it that would be open to the public.
I'll add a little flavor here at least.
The house is 139 years old.
It was built in 1883.
And hey, Kai, do you want to introduce yourself first there?
I'm Kai Kelly, Executive Director of Historic Seattle.
It's 139 years old, built in 1883. It was actually relocated in the early 1890s.
Probably many of you don't remember that time, but it was relocated to this current site, a nice large lot.
Historic Seattle is an organization as a PDA have been doing this type of community work.
for close to 50 years now.
We were formed back in 1973 by the city as a PDA, and we really focused our attention on saving meaningful places to foster lively communities.
Very simply, right?
Saving places for communities.
So Council Member Lewis, you previously had mentioned with John's presentation around placemaking.
I mean, that's a grand vision, a grand civic vision of placemaking.
This is a little more microscopic version of placemaking, but no less important.
particularly to the neighborhood of Beacon Hills.
So we're really excited about continuing the partnership with Seattle Parks.
That is not something new to us and to these organizations.
We're really excited to continue the partnership and the really sort of the outward facing opportunity to really return this, both the grounds and the house back into the community arena so that everyone can enjoy it.
Thanks, Lise, go ahead.
Thank you.
Next slide, please.
So I'm going to kind of jump into what this conservation and recreation easement will do.
It will eliminate development rights from the property.
It's zoned multifamily.
It will have a covenant on it as a result of part of the acquisition being funded with King County Conservation Futures.
The intent of the covenant is to preserve the open space nature of the property around the house that will be the subject of the easement.
The easement references an agreement between Historic Seattle and Seattle Parks for operation of the grounds, so it kind of gets into the weeds as to Who's going to do what and what's going to happen and what's not going to happen and that sort of thing it's a five year agreement, subject to periodic review and, you know, possibly, depending on how this all plays out, you know, it could be tweaked, but we started with an initial five year term.
consideration here for the city is that Historic Seattle will be maintaining the property on its dime and the city will incur no expense towards the maintenance of the property.
However, it will be open to the public for park use.
And the balance of that, of this type of transaction is to ensure that Historic Seattle has a sufficient income stream to be able to manage the grounds for public use.
And so with that, both in the easement and in the operating agreement, we hammered out terms for how Historic Seattle could schedule private events, whether they spill out onto the lawn and take up the north side of the site, leaving the south side of the site open or vice versa, or the occasional event that takes up the entire site, we went into great detail negotiating this, especially to keep weekends open as much as possible and to provide adequate notification to the public of scheduled closures so that they would know well in advance that these closures would happen.
So I know council members may have questions, more detailed questions about this, We just have one more slide, I think, and then we'll be happy to entertain your questions.
And this is your turn, Kai.
For Historic Seattle, I mean, the two projects that you see here, Good Shepherd Center and Washington Hall, they really form a bookend or bookends to our organizational existence and our real estate effort.
You know, we educate, we advocate in this preservation space, but we also have real estate.
We have 11 properties.
And the Good Shepherd Center many of you hopefully know is in Wallingford large 85,000 square foot building Community Center focused on an 11 acre site.
It was another, it was one of the first, if not early if not first project by historic Seattle in partnership with Seattle Parks.
It's a great use.
It's a great adaptive reuse of a meaningful historic building for community use and enjoyment.
We have performance space.
We have six affordable housing units that are lived in by artists.
We have mostly nonprofit tenants, close to 30 tenants.
Just a wonderful example of the work that we do all for community.
So it's a great example of PDA public partnership.
Washington Hall, our most recent project that we completed in 2016, we bought it in 2009, is a really great example of PDA private, if you will, partnership.
We work with three very local to the Central District organizations that focus on great community engagement, creative community work.
And they are our anchor partners within the building and we work together since we bought it in 2009 to really return this really valuable and historic community asset back literally to the community.
So these are two really good examples of what we do as an organization.
I will note that we've been very intentional with the garden house over the past.
We'll say six months to eight months.
with a community engagement process.
We hired an architect.
We went through a very deliberate community engagement process where we did a lot of tabling.
We did a lot of direct presentations.
We did a lot of community open houses at the property just to try to continue to gain momentum, gain interest, and get feedback from the neighborhood around vision, programming, and the worst thing that we be used.
We want community to sort of help direct and answer questions.
So we've been very intentional around getting that feedback and helping us provide that direction as we program and look to activate the house.
So that sort of provides a nutshell context of Historic Seattle and what we're currently doing with the Garden House.
Really excited about this opportunity.
Kai, thank you so much.
I do just want to acknowledge that we were joined by Michelle Finnegan in the middle of the presentation from Seattle Parks.
So I want to just give Michelle a moment if there's something else she wants to add before we move on to council member questions.
Thank you, Council Member Lewis.
No, I was in the audience side of the panel and glad to be promoted and Lise and Kai did a great job as well.
Maybe you'd be part of the Q&A.
Great, thank you so much.
So with that, thank you for the presentation.
Are there questions from council colleagues?
Council Member Morales.
Yes, thank you.
Thanks for the presentation, everyone.
I love the garden house.
I'm excited to know that this is close to being in the hands of historic Seattle.
I will admit that I think I've been on the upper floor I've only been on the, on the main floor of the house and on the grounds.
The examples that you gave of some of the other properties have anchor tenants.
Much bigger than this I think.
So is there a plan to lease to nonprofits, you know, office space on the upper floor or I'm just thinking about some of the questions around.
the financial feasibility of this, and in addition to renting the lawn, if there are other ideas for how you might be able to generate some operating and maintenance revenue.
That's a great question.
We're working through the finer points of what that program will look like, what the use will look like.
Right now, we're really sort who were quite honestly displaced when the house was sold back in 2018. We're trying to find a really sweet spot regarding use and financial viability.
We wanna make it very financially feasible, meaning zero cost or very, very low cost for organizations within the community to come and use the house and grounds and or both.
So we're trying right now to be very specific and targeted with trying to come up with that sweet spot, because we know that for this house to continue to stay around for another 139 years, there needs to be public use, but there also needs to be some economic viability to the project as well.
So we're really close to sort of narrowing down and zeroing in on how that can be worked through.
Luckily, we have now six, eight months worth of community engagement that's what we're looking forward to.
And that's where we're going to get feedback from.
Not a question just my ongoing appreciation for historic Seattle, and the nimbleness in which you always act in order to further your mission, and this is just another another great example of.
you seizing the opportunity and as a result, not only preserving historic spaces in our city, but much needed public use of those spaces and working with community to do so.
Thank you.
I appreciate that.
We do tend to swing above our weight class.
We tried to purchase the house back in 2018. We were unsuccessful.
So I do two things I think pretty well.
I pester people and I pester the owners and I look for money.
And the CFT funds were a perfect source to underwrite this community work.
And I was strong enough past that I think we have a good solution here that now is ready to be activated for community use.
We're super excited.
Great guy thank you so much and really appreciate this collaboration between the parks department and historic Seattle on making sure not just the house but the, the lands that are adjacent to it are going to be able to be used for the enjoyment of the entire community on Beacon Hill.
Seeing that there's no other questions, why don't we go ahead and put this in front of the committee?
So I'm gonna go ahead and move Council Bill 120415. Is there a second?
Second.
Hearing a second, will the clerk please call the roll on the passage of Council Bill 120415?
Council Member Herbold?
Yes.
Council President Juarez?
Aye.
Council Member Morales.
Yes.
Chair Lewis.
Yes.
Chair, there are four in favor, none opposed.
Excellent.
Well, this will go on to full council and I like the odds based on that vote.
So with that, the panel can go ahead and take the rest of their afternoon.
Thank you for coming by and joining us and answering those questions.
I'm glad we were able to get that resolved before budget.
So thank you so much.
So there are no additional items of business to come before the committee.
I did want to take this public opportunity to announce a little bit of Metropolitan Park District business that might have already been distributed to colleagues.
But we are going to go ahead and cancel the Friday meeting of the Metropolitan Park District in order to give central staff more time to digest, analyze and distribute information to park board members regarding the mayor's proposals for the cycle two investments for the Metropolitan Park District.
So we're gonna go ahead and give you the notice now of being able to remove that hold from your calendars for Friday.
And I just wanted to be able to announce that in an open session.
We'll be letting people know by email too if we haven't already.
And look forward to seeing folks this evening at the Northgate Community Center for another opportunity for the public to weigh in on the priorities and investments for the Metropolitan Park District.
And that will be at the Northgate Community Center at 6 p.m.
With that, colleagues, it is 3.07, and there's no more business on today's agenda, so I'm gonna go ahead and adjourn this meeting.