Governor Christine Gregoire is expected to announce her decision on the single biggest civic discussion and capital project within Seattle proper in decades before the end of the year. Given the players involved and their involvement in national financial scandals her decision will perhaps reveal more about her than anything else.
This is turf that certain folks in Downtown Seattle claim as their own, even though the money they want to spend is not theirs. We don't know who all of them are, but the Greater Seattle Chamber Board is a good place to start looking.
Note that the chair is a partner at Foster Pepper, long time 'counsel' for Washington Mutual, whom I, and many others, have recently wrote about at length. He's backed up on the board by Judy Runstad, also a questionable character with a history.
Foster Pepper's original solution was the seawall tunnel. Frankly, after ten years or so of seemingly credible folks claiming this work, contrary to recent history of such 'big dig' projects I was begining to think that maybe it was the way to go.
Washington Department of Transportation engineers though just finished their analysis and that alternative didn't make the cut. I'm gonna be blunt here and call these downtown naysayers control freaks - presumably stemming from the work environments that formed them. And, in my opinion, that's exactly what's involved in the latest media blitz.
While it may well be the case that deep bore tunnels are getting more reliably cost effective I find it kind of laughable that the downtown interests - for whom the cost is the benefit are so much more knowledgeable and credible than the WSDOT folks. Perhaps most shameful is the involvement of the Discovery Institute, normally a balancing voice in Seattle.
David Brewster, of Crosscut, has also been an early promoter. His first piece on the subject was near the start of the media blitz regarding the 'consensus', which, curiously, he fails to mention a single member of. Today, he follows up that special interested based journalism with an angled attack on Frank Chopp's viaduct proposal.
Contrary to the 'consensus' assertions of the downtown corporate welfare crowd the North Seattle Industrial Organization, the biggest business group outside of downtown, supports a Viaduct. From what I know most of these Republican types have respect for Chopp, their social service agency neighbor - because, drum roll please...he runs a damn good non-governmental organization.
Both Chopp's ideas and the Deep Bore tunnel ARE worth further study, and some inclusion in the EIS, but really just as place holders for future expansion (including compatibility with the actually selected design).
Curiously, on the same day Christine Gregoire announced cuts in 'nickel' highway projects due cost overruns Tayloe Washburn, that Foster Pepper partner announced that 'they' would be willing to vote a downtown local improvement district to raise the necessary funds. Mind you, not a contract with cost overrun guarantees assigned to the LID, but, at least a start.
But, likely it is too little too late - Downtown Seattle is starting to fold under a tidal wave of new vacancies led by Washington Mutual. Curiously JP Morgan announced they would be cancelling leases on over 700,000 square feet of WAMU property, at least some of it controlled by Foster Pepper partners.
I wonder, will downtown interests really vote to tax themselves and guarantee such a project? If they would, I think that's great, and it might even merit moving that alternative to the front. But me, I wouldn't trust these people for a second.
Hopefully, if that's the case, I'll be proved wrong.
Who knows, perhaps Gregoire IS an accountable person who will take responsibility for her previous mistakes in this arena and actually HELP to bring these people to the same standards of law they'd hold us all to - as they take our jobs, our houses, kicking us out into the streets while they enjoy the protections of the 'bailout'.
