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You have the best take on local politics I've read. Your labor coverage is great. You all have a lot of devotion and a lot of guts! My hat's off to you.

Eric Franklin

Editor's Note: From now on only letters highly critical of the Free Press will be printed. Most scathing letter gets a free subscription for a year.

Commons: A $400 Million Front Lawn?

I appreciated your piece a few months back on the proposed Seattle Commons (WFP Issue #15). You did an excellent job describing the negative impacts this scheme will have on low-income housing, and in describing the powerful political and monetary interests that have been pushingthis project forward. I'd like to discuss the political and economic consequences of this plan.
Seattle's city government isn't just trying to build a park. Their larger intent is to "transform" the 560 acre planning area's 100-year pattern of land use to create a shiny new "urban village." By offering the public a $400,000,000 park in exchange for legitimizing the Mayor's Comprehensive Growth Plan, the city is pulling a classic bait-and-switch. A "yes" vote on the Commons not only starts the forced bulldozing of the affected area, it implements an unpopular, and possibly unenforceable, citywide plan. All this to build a front lawn for new condos and luxury apartments.
The practical effect of this "transformation" would be the destruction or dislocation of 130 businesses and over 1,800 jobs (real jobs, not projected ones) for park construction, and the displacement of up to 609 businesses that provide an additional 9,000 jobs. This would occur through inflated tax assessments, transportation grid disruptions and construction impacts - the "3rd Avenue Affect." The 130 businesses in the park are eligible for relocation assistance, but this is widely regarded as inadequate. Under this proposal, the remaining 600+ employers get nothing.
Seattle currently has 351 parks with over 6,000 acres, including almost 20 acres in the area proposed for the Commons. What we have increasingly less of, however, is land zoned for the kind of commercial use currrently possible at and around South Lake Union, light manufacturing and industrial. Most of these employers will probably have to leave the city, hurting both our tax base and our economic diversity. This new upscale neighborhood is being sold as a way to reduce sprawl, but moving 10,000 good jobs into the Kent Valley or Snohomish County defeats the purpose.
At a time when the city has over $100,000,000 in deferred park maintenance, along with dozens of more urgent needs, it is amazingly irresponsible to max out our city's available levying capacity to build yet another glitzy monument to our civic vanity. Let's focus on maintaining what we have now.

Sincerely,
Matthew Fox
Chairman, SCOPE
(Seattle Commons Opponents Committee)





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Contents on this page were published in the August/September, 1995 edition of the Washington Free Press.
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