Downtown Seattle has its  McGuire apartments, 25-story building the owner plans to demolish because it says construction defects are too expensive to fix — a contention the contractor disagrees with.

Sarasota, Fla. has its 15-story Dolphin Tower condo complex, which engineers plan to jack up to fix severe design and construction flaws that have caused a key concrete support to fail, according to a Sarasota Herald Tribune story. Read it here.

I’m writing about a little park along a major regional paved trail. The park will go nameless here…no sense embarrassing the design team or owner. It’s actually a nice park, depending on the weather.

The temperature was in the low 80s yesterday when I stopped on a long bike ride. The park has lots of benches and low walls for sitting, and there were a dozen bicyclists hanging out, along with others presumably from the neighborhood. The benches and low walls, all in the sun, were empty.

Instead, the bicyclists — nearly every one – huddled in the shade of trees along the water’s edge, despite the lack of seating there. There were five or six good shade spots, one paved and the others not. Each shade spot was staked out by between one and three people. Thankfully the paved spot had enough room for a couple of us to share.

The park was renovated not long ago, and got a new restroom building. It has no awnings, and provides no shelter from either sun or rain. Unless you want to hang out with the toilets.

Here’s my question: Do park designers REALLY have so little understanding of how parks are used? Don’t they know that bicyclists are generally overheating when we stop during a summer ride? Or that on many other days, for familes too, it’s reassuring to be able to dash under an awning if it suddenly starts raining?

In the case of this park, simply moving a few benches to the shady areas would give a lot of tired people a respite on a hot day. And an awning, anywhere, would be nice.

The New York Times has an interesting article on how Seattle Children’s hospital is using an efficiency system to help it avoid some capital spending.  Here’s the story.

Last month, an engaging temporary public art installation, “Windfall,” opened at Seattle Center next to the new Theater Commons and Donnelly Gardens.

Created by Annie Han and Daniel Mihalyo of Lead Pencil Studio in Seattle, “Windfall” consists of some 1,000 cast iron wind chimes hanging in the trees on both sides of a walkway. The ringing is sublime and the bliss is unexpected in a busy urban environment. You can see how it catches people off guard when – as they’re hurrying by – they stop and stare into the trees.

Upon hearing that it’s a temporary installation, many of them say it should stay permanently. The short answer is it won’t. So you should go see it before it’s dismantled in mid-September.

Like the new Theater Commons and Donnelly Gardens, “Windfall” honors the late Peter Donnelly who, starting in the latter half of the 20^th century, invigorated the city’s arts scene.

In an e-mail, Han and Mihalyo said they sought to highlight this new public space by providing visitors with “a heightened experience of the spatial qualities of wind and its impressive volume.” They chose bells to do this due to chimes’ association with the cycles of life and birth.

“We wanted this artwork to be a contribution to the landscape experience, filling the available site without overwhelming the primary experience,” they wrote.

With the garden completed only about a week before the planned opening, the artists had no time to test their idea. They worried “Windfall” would seem either not large enough or too large. They wondered, too, whether the chime “feathers” – made of eucalyptus wood veneer – might appear “too artificial.”

Mihalyo and Han designed the chimes and fabricated prototypes before finding a company, Travis Pattern – N.E.W. Foundry near Colville, to manufacture them. After the castings arrived, the artists had three assistants help for about 3 weeks, applying metal primer, drilling, tying knots and fabricating the feathers.

The idea of making the installation permanent did come up when the project was proposed, and some members of the artist selection committee recommended a longer-term installation. Ultimately, however, Seattle Center and the city’s Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs decided it would be most appropriate to make “Windfall” temporary.

There were concerns about the health of the trees, which could be damaged if people yanked the chimes down. The materials are “very ephemeral,” said city Public Art Project Manager Patricia Hopper. “It simply could not last forever.” And, to make a longer lasting exhibit would have exceeded the project’s $24,000 budget.

Besides these practical issues, there is the purpose of “Windfall.” Hopper explained it’s to celebrate the opening of the gardens and draw people into the new space. The work is something “that thrills for the moment and then lives on.”

And it will.

When the installation comes down, Mihalyo and Han plan to give the bells to people who come to Seattle Center Sept. 16-17. They say this will allow the memory of “Windfall” to be dispersed out into the city to the backyards and porches of residents who experienced it.

The Alaskan Way Viaduct and downtown Seattle. Photo courtesy of Clair Enlow.

Reading Clair Enlow’s very insightful piece in yesterday’s DJC gave me hope.  For too long all I’ve heard about is the proposed new Central Waterfront park that could some day replace the dead zone now created by the Alaskan Way Viaduct.  Don’t get me wrong; parks can be great and we do need more gathering space(s) at the City’s front door, but the thought of a single, long, linear park in that location would send shudders down my spine!

When I read that partnership committee member Mark Reddington stated exactly what I’ve thought all along, my fears started to relent, and hope entered the picture.  “This isn’t just a single space,” he said.  “It really should be a deeply integrated place.”

That’s exactly right. that does three crucial things: 1) knits back together the waterfront and the downtown neighborhoods uphill; 2) creates a new series of microneighborhoods with their own new and exciting character, and finally 3) provides a series of interesting, engaging, diverse, interconnected public spaces.

Stated succinctly, Seattle has not done a good job (yet) with downtown public open spaces. In addition, for some reason the political ethos has not yet warmed to the notion so prevalent elsewhere around the world of a genuine integration of public spaces with other public, semiprivate and private uses to achieve truly urbane spaces.  Just look at Westlake Park versus Westlake Plaza (next to the Westlake Center).  The City’s ludicrous policy of essentially disallowing any private activities (vendor carts, spill out of café tables or sales tables) onto public land leaves that park rather lackluster.  Just across the street, on private land, the smaller Westlake Plaza, complete with its coffee shop, vendor stands and exhibits is often so lively and populated it can actually become crowded. For an important civic space in a major city’s downtown that’s not a bad problem to have!

Can you imagine if that policy were allowed to prevail in the much larger central waterfront public spaces?  Just think of Pier 62/63, where not even a popcorn stand, hotdog vendor or espresso stand can be found in that vast, vacant, yet valuable space.  Yes, the view is lovely there, but imagine how much richer the experience would be if there were some minor services or amenities, together with more movable tables and chairs.

If we can truly shed this mindset and move towards an underlying principle of a genuine integration of public and private spaces, activities and uses, then we will have set the stage for a remarkable central waterfront neighborhood that could become the envy of cities across the country.

The remarks by Cary Moon, Clair Enlow and Mark Reddington are giving me hope. Let’s work with them and support this new vision for the central waterfront.

The city of Seattle has produced a flyover video that shows the Broadway alignment of the First Hill streetcar route. Click here for video.

The city and Sound Transit are moving forward with plans to build the new streetcar line linking First Hill

Visualization courtesy of city of Seattle.

The city and Sound Transit have executed an agreement that includes an expedited construction timeline. The line is anticipated to open in 2013 instead of the 2016 completion as was earlier planned.

The city will build and operate the new line, which voters approved as part of the 2008 Sound Transit 2 ballot measure.

The First Hill Streetcar will serve major Seattle work centers, including Swedish Hospital, Harborview Medical Center, Seattle University and Seattle Central Community College.

The line will link to the Link light rail system that opened this summer and the Capitol Hill light rail station when University Link opens in 2016. The city plans to begin construction in 2011.

Some Seattle developers have said they intend to build smaller housing units to keep price points lower and therefore more appealing to workers downtown.

New York City

But they’re living large in New York City. The New York Times reports that sales of three- and four-bedroom apartments jumped last year, and that the mini-trend is continuing. This is another sign NYC is becoming more family friendly, according to the newspaper.  Here’s the story.

SeattleScape blogger Irene Wall has an update on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s plans to relocate six research vessels to Newport, Ore. from Seattle next year. It is a press release from U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell on construction under way in Newport of the Marine Operations Center – Pacific pier to serve as home port for the NOAA vessels. In the release, Cantwell questions Commerce Secretary Gary Locke about the move.  Read it here. You can read Wall’s view of NOAA’s choice in the post below.

If NOAA ships lift Newport’s spirits, their hopes will be dashed soon enough but not before $30 plus million is spent on a pipe dream. I’ve watched the NOAA drama play out for the last year through the lens of NOAA engineers close to the crazy decision to move the Marine Operations Center-Pacific, a large vessel maintenance function, to a place with no marine infrastructure to support it. This guarantees added cost to all taxpayers, and little payback to Newport despite their wishful thinking.  The “175 family wage jobs” used to sell the proposal as an economic development project is greatly exaggerated.  Counting all the NOAA officers, civilian engineers and technicians who are the permanent MOC-P staff, the real number is 77 at best. The rest are wage mariners and scientists who are unlikely to take up permanent residence in Newport because their ships will only be tied to the new expensive and oversized wharf a few months of the year.  Most of the time the ships are at sea or in a drydock for major repairs in Seattle, Portland, Bellingham, or even San Francisco because that’s where the real shipyards are, not in Newport.  The majority of the scientists are also in Seattle at the Western Regional Center at Sand Point.
A little known fact is that the Oregon taxpayers are subsidizing NOAA to the tune of $19.5 million to build

NOAA Ships at WRC in Lake Washington, 2009. No Complaints from the neighbors. Photo courtesy of Irene Wall.

And—surprise—NOAA Corps officers and mariners who may move there don’t have to pay Oregon income tax.  They can call any state their Home of Record and avoid paying state income tax this way.
If this seems like a terrible hoax, it gets worse with a closer look at the reasoning behind the move and the “circle the wagons” mentality NOAA officials took when Senator Maria Cantwell and two independent watchdog agencies asked questions about NOAA’s decision to build in a floodplain and reject offers by the General Services Administration to use existing federal buildings and waterfront facilities in Seattle rather than spend millions on new buildings and piers in Newport.
On May 26th the Office of the Inspector General sent to NOAA a memo essentially saying STOP until we sort this mess out.
Instead, NOAA joined a party June 6th at the Port of Newport to show off its newest ship the Bell M Shimada which arguably should have been using its high tech multibeam sonar to track the Great Gulf Oil Slick instead of making PR appearances in Newport.
Environmental Roulette
Why should we care about this?  It’s just a few ships leaving Seattle, and we’re just being sore losers.  Maybe, but the NOAA move raises an even greater question —what is the environmental price for moving ships to Newport?  The Newport boomers see dollar signs; they want growth. It’s Deus Ex NOAA. Yet why would NOAA, whose Fisheries Service branch,  “is dedicated to the stewardship of living marine resources through science-based conservation and management, and the promotion of healthy ecosystems” chose to build a huge 64,000 SF wharf in their own recently designated Critical Fish Habitat for the endangered green sturgeon?
The recently filed  Oregon State Lands permit application on the project goes on for pages describing how critically important eelgrass habitat is for a dozen species of fish in Yaquina Bay and how difficult eelgrass mitigation is and how they searched the entire area and could only find three disconnected little spots to attempt the “restoration” of eelgrass. Yikes, how about NOT destroying it in the first place. Conservation before mitigation!  As local officials clamp down on permits for any new habitat shading dock, you would expect NOAA to model better behavior.
The permit’s spin is that the mitigation eelgrass will be “better” than the existing resources (if it gets established!). This sounds like destroying the village in order to save it. If there is a compelling reason to plant more eelgrass in Yaquina Bay, NOAA should just do it, but not hold eelgrass restoration goals hostage

NOAA Ship at Federal Center South, June 2010. Plenty of room here.

At a time when President Obama is asking all federal agencies to cut back, NOAA is insisting on all new digs for ships that will only be tied up at the “homeport” a fraction of the year.
The Port of Newport and NOAA appear to be trying to box in the Corps of Engineers by going ahead with upland construction even before the formal public notice period on the permit. There’s still a chance that the Corps will see the light and deny the permit because by their own rules, they must only approve the “least environmentally damaging practicable alternative” and they are not limited to NOAA or Newport’s definition of what that should be.

Office building construction has been a mainstay of urban and suburban development for decades. But will it always be, at least in decent economic times? To some extent it likely will in the Seattle area, with our always-growing population and our success in key industries. But even here, the volume will probably slow down compared to recent decades. In metros that aren’t growing, I suspect that office development will slow to the level needed to replace whatever is lost, or even start to shrink a little.

The drivers of heavy past growth have played out — particularly the conversion to a white collar economy, and massive employment growth as women entered the workforce. Today, plenty of drivers point in the other direction, or might soon.

It used to be that most white collar jobs didn’t offshore easily. Many now do, or soon will. This trend isn’t a steady line and each industry’s experience is unique, often resulting in fits and starts, but the general direction seems clear. Our economy might get noticeably less white collar in the coming years.

Telecommuting is starting to live up to its potential. Even while most of us crave human contact, the basic telecommuting tools are finally getting easy. Broadband on the computer and phone. Teleconferencing with a simple webcam. Home access to networks rather than just email. If commuting is a challenge too, or expensive as oil prices rise….the planets are starting to align for more telecommuting.

Office square footage per person seems to be shrinking. Some of this is a reaction to cost, both in a great economy when space is expensive, and in a bad economy when tenants have less money. Some of it is cultural, as companies choose communalism over personal space. But it’s also structural — things that have always required a lot of space are requiring less and less, from filing cabinets we no longer need because of digital documents, to flat-screen monitors that allow shallower desks, to cell phones that allow people to step away for private conversations rather than relying on walls.

Some companies are going as far as not having assigned desks at all, which is related to the telecommuting trend and the digital trend. Maybe each person has a rolling cart with his or her personal stuff, plus a laptop on Wi-Fi. Maybe the office has 50 staff but only 20 or 30 desks, where people camp as-needed.

I don’t expect age demographics to have a big effect, at least not directly. Some suggest that as baby boomers reach retirement, they’ll take white collar jobs with them, particularly fewer new people will be entering the workforce (boomers’ kids are entering the workforce now, but after them comes another baby bust). But I suspect that the number of white collar jobs will be tied to demand for the services they provide, not the availability of the same people to provide those services. The main age-related demographic effect should be cultural, as younger people adapt better to freeform offices, and might be more open to telecommuting from the coffee shop.

Even as some trends become clear, there are too many questions to be sure about the bottom line. As some office jobs go away, will others take their place? If not, what other jobs will? Will wages in other countries rise relative to ours, which might help keep jobs from offshoring? What will the dollar do? Will people really telecommute effectively, in large numbers? Will anyone retire anytime soon?

If you’re looking for a positive on the commercial development side, here’s a big one: There might be a lot more housing construction in business districts. These will pencil more often because, for one, they won’t have to compete as much with office developments. The same traffic and oil price issues that may reduce commuting will encourage proximity for many people, even as some telecommuters head for the hills. Living in a mixed-use district seems poised to keep growing as a lifestyle choice, as each wave of added residents makes a district more attractive for the next wave. Heck, if you believe that the US will lose some of its economic primacy, maybe places like Seattle will end up being second home destinations for people from overseas, like Vancouver.

Unrelated aside: The City should go easy on the Macy’s skybridge. The store is important to Downtown, and we should support it rather than penalizing it. I agree that Seattle shouldn’t have a skybridge network, but they’re ok in special circumstances, particularly when they already exist.