Boom Seattle Looks to Re-Devo Old INS Building in ID
posted by on January 24 at 15:39 PM
The brick building (Neo-Classical, 1932), at 815 Airport Way S., has been junked by the feds and gifted (watch what you ask for) to the city. The mayor’s office sent out a request for proposals today. Proposed uses include: “affordable housing (particularly for downtown workers), retail space, historical exhibit space, and space for agencies serving immigrants.” But any new use must also be one that, according the mayor’s office: “preserves historic building elements, remembers and celebrates the immigrant experience, and reflects the historic uses of the building.”
So, like, we gotta keep the cells they used to lock up brutish feriners? That could be interesting. A BDSM bathhouse perhaps?
Share your ideas here: Public Meeting:
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Tashiro Kaplan Community Room
115 Prefontaine South
It's a cool building, and despite the fact that it's squeezed between the ID and the ugly industrial part of the stadium district, would make for something cool.
It is a cool building. Unfortunately it's surrounded on all sides by impassable freeway-like major arterials in the most confusing part of Seattle -- surface arterials just like the ones Cary Moon wants to run along the waterfront.
I dunno about turning it into housing. I'm generally not into the extra-natural, but given that the building was essentially a jail it's GOT to have some bad energy in it. :(
A Canadian friend of mine who was essentially here illiegally for a time and had run afoul of the athorities more than once was in the habit of buying cigarettes and tossing them up to the handful of tiny windows the cells in the buildings had.
It broke my heart.
One of the worst times I experienced privelege was when it was still the INS building and I was a messenger and had to make a delivery there. There was a line of folks waiting to deal the slow moving bureacracy waiting patiently in the rain, whilst I was able to go to the head of the line, wave a package around and directly enter the building.
I've always hated that building, I wish we could doze it, purify the ground and put up a commemorative park to the struggles of folks to enter our country.
I know this is wasteful of an existing building, but I'm tellin' ya, it's tainted ground...
my ex-husband is british. as a result, i have spent a lot of time in that building. not much of it was great but, i gotta say, i love that building. it is magnificent to look at and i would be sorry to see it go.
It will not be 'dozed. You can count on that. Just not sure how it will be reused. Should be an interesting public meeting.
I vote for affordable housing for immigrant families. Put that building to work for the people who spent the most time negotiating its corridors.
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