Media Credulous Weekly Story Gets It (Nearly) All Wrong
posted by on August 15 at 13:58 PM
In a story headlined “Why is Peter Steinbrueck Obsessing About Historic Preservation?” (equally querulous subhead: “Does He Think It’ll Lead to Higher Office?”) recent Seattle Weekly hire Aimee Curl speculates that City Council member Peter Steinbrueck proposed a survey of potentially historic buildings downtown because he’s running for mayor and wants an issue to run on. Here’s her evidence.
1) Downtown business owners think Steinbrueck’s decision was politically motivated.
Bruce Cowen, who owns the Ace Hotel building and the El Gaucho building (both in Belltown and included in the city’s recent inventory of potential landmarks), says the latest initiative smacks of grandstanding. “The general feeling seems to be it’s politically motivated and somebody wants to be mayor,” he says, referring to Steinbrueck. “It’s without total regard for the factors that make a building historic.”
First of all, anyone who has watched an election in Seattle, ever, knows that if you want to run for mayor, the last people you want to piss off are downtown business owners. Mayoral candidates succeed or fail on the support of downtown businesses. Conversely, historic preservation is extremely low on the list of political issues that decide elections in this town.
Second, the survey took into regard precisely the “factors that make a building historic.” Those factors are spelled out very clearly in the city’s landmarks preservation ordinance. (The designation standards are also listed in plain English here.) Steinbrueck’s legislation does not deviate from those very precise, very clearly delineated factors, whatever pissed-off downtown businesss owners happen to believe.
2) Art Skolnik thinks so. And he’s a former historic preservation officer for the state!
“I want to see as much history preserved as possible,” says Skolnik, who helped craft the ordinance that created Seattle’s Landmark Preservation Board. But, he says, “You have to maintain the trust with the property owners or you throw out years of progress.” He adds: “Shame on Peter Steinbrueck, getting his name out there at a time when he’s running for mayor.”
Then, later in the story, this:
Skolnik’s helping to organize building owners for what could be either a lawsuit against the city or a ballot initiative that makes landmark designation a voluntary process requiring property-owner permission. He says there’s a lot of interest so far. “In terms of general public appeal, you have to think of this in terms of the whole city. The fact is, they can designate your house,” he says.
Let’s do a bit of Reporting 101. First rule: Consider the source. Art Skolnik—last seen seeking landmark status for the Alaskan Way Viaduct and sending the council vituperative letters for “failing” to save the Kalakala (a historic boat that was doomed in part by Skolnik’s political bumbling)—has a long history of “organizing” “movements” that fail to go anywhere—his fight move to save the viaduct being only the most recent example.
And Curl’s story raises an obvious question (one that she should have asked or at least addressed in her story): Why would a historic preservation advocate suddenly turn against historic preservation? The answer can be found in the second paragraph above: Skolnik wants downtown businesses to hire him to fight downtown historic preservation. Skolnik, in other words, needs a job. (He also ran for City Council in 2003). But his job search isn’t the one Curl’s interested in.
(Also, fact check: “They” can’t “designate your house.” As Curl knows, the downtown upzone to which the downtown historic landmarks survey was attached only applies in a small area of downtown, not citywide.)
3) The city’s going nuts with landmark nominations! Why, after years with virtually no landmark designations whatsoever, they’re nominating dozens! It’s a wholesale effort to halt downtown development in its tracks!
Last month, the city released a list of 37 downtown properties eligible for nomination as Seattle landmarks. They include everything from low-slung slabs to tall towers and five of the city’s waterfront piers. An additional 56 buildings were identified to be considered for nomination next year. […]Skolnik says nomination of 37 buildings would represent a “nuclear pace” compared to the average of two buildings annually that the city typically nominates for landmark designation downtown.
The first paragraph is true, sort of: The city released a list of 38 (not 37) properties that qualify as “category 1” candidates for landmark designation under the process approved by the council last year. (And yes, they do include those silly piers—which, at more than 100 years old, just happen to be the oldest structures up for landmark status). Those properties will go through a lengthy process to determine whether all or part of each structure qualifies for landmark status. (Their owners then get two appeals if they don’t agree.) The 56 additional properties “to be considered for nomination next year” are properties that didn’t make the initial cut, meaning they’re lower on the city’s list and less likely to be designated. The remaining properties—Category 3s—are those deemed unlikely to be designated historic.
“Nuclear”? Hardly. The city began the process of funding a downtown historic-building survey nearly two years ago (incidentally, before Steinbrueck knew he wouldn’t seek reelection). So it’s hardly news to anyone, least of all downtown property owners—much less erstwhile historic-preservation advocates like Skolnik. And the reason for the “nuclear” pace, as Curl mentions briefly later in her story, is that the city finally has the funding to move forward with nominations—thanks to legislation approved, again, by the entire city council last year.
4) Designating 38 structures as landmarks is obviously an attempt to freeze development and harm property values downtown.
“When you throw the net out to 37 properties, you freeze a lot of real estate downtown,” [Skolink] says. “It’s an abusive action that threatens the cooperation between property owners and government to the point where it could undo that relationship.”
OK—except that the whole reason the downtown historic-preservation survey was approved in the first place was because the council gave developers between 30 and 40 percent more development capacity, in the form of height increases, last year. The historic-building survey was one of the tradeoffs developers accepted in exchange for higher property values. So it’s pretty disingenuous to say Steinbrueck did it without their “cooperation.”
5) Steinbrueck wants to keep people from fixing up their buildings. Worse, he wants to designate landmarks that aren’t even pretty!
If Two Bells is designated a historic landmark, for example, Lee could be prohibited from painting her storefront or adding signs. If the city finds value in the interior, Lee could also be prevented from changing things like the molding or the bar. (The City Council can also grant property owners relief by allowing rezoning to accommodate different uses, or bending building-code rules to make the building more marketable.) […]“It’s not the Pike Place Market. It really isn’t,” she says of the Two Bells building. Without the facade, she says, it’s a “cinder-block building on a cement slab with a tar roof.”
The city’s landmark process is a negotiated process, not an arbitrary one. If the Two Bells’ interior isn’t historic, it won’t be designated historic. And landmark status doesn’t de facto prevent property owners from making changes; it merely requires that they bring their request before the landmarks board, which frequently allows changes to historic buildings, particular their interiors. Moreover, whether Two Bells (or Cinerama, which is also on the list) is pretty or made of “cinder block” is immaterial. The question is whether it’s historic and deserves to be preserved on that basis.
Two additional points:
1) Landmarks status actually makes financial incentives available to property owners, including grants, tax exemptions, tax credits, and zoning and use exemptions; a full list of federal, state and local incentives is available here. So it’s not a one-way street in which property owners lose value under oppressive city regulations; property owners gain value, too, in ways that are not available to owners of non-historic buildings.
2) Curl notes that historic preservation is “in [Steinbrueck’s] blood,” giving wink-wink credit to his late father Victor for helping preserve Pike Place Market and Pioneer Square. But Peter Steinbrueck has been a longtime advocate of historic preservation, too, working to preserve the Market (in the 1990s, when he founded the Citizens Alliance to Keep the Pike Place Market Public), the Pioneer Square pergola, First United Methodist Church downtown, and, ironically, the Kalakala.
I swear to God, a tumbleweed brushed by my cube while reading this.
i'm missing my tumbleweed. has anyone seen it?
Peter has been running like a treadmill for mayor for a long time.
Erica cannot read the signs?
It is a great issue for him cause DADDY looms in the background at every mention of preservation in the city --- for ever.
Get it Erica?
That list is such crap. The only surprise is that the Viaduct is not on it.
Rotting piers, how very urban elite ... habitat for worms and barnacles ... if not so stupid, would be funny.
Some dude by the name of Steven Blum busted through our 14th floor window and grabbed it before anyone was harmed. He didn't have a cape, so I paid him no hurrah.
What people are really afraid of here is property values. If a new buyer doesn't have the option of knocking the building down and putting up a big new condo development, it automatically reduces the property's value.
Following a little wind last week, there were a lot of tumbleweeds collecting in the door/entry to the Stranger offices ... folk from the great West Desert know well of what I speak ...
Perhaps there has been a mystic effect on the Stranger staff ...
God, do they burn - the tumbleweeds ...
J.H. Christ do they pay you buy the word woman???
Who the hell but jobless emo slackers has time to read something like this?
@7: How does emo factor into this at all?
>>anyone who has watched an election in Seattle, ever, knows that if you want to run for mayor, the last people you want to piss off are downtown business owners
So, since Steinbrueck clearly *has* pissed off downtown business owners over this, you're absolutely certain that he's *not* going to be running for mayor? Can I quote you on that?
Great post! Thanks for clearing up some confusion the Weekly piece might have caused if anybody read that piece of shit anyway. Skolnik's a weasel.
@5: The thing is that any property owner who wants to tear down his or her building has to put the building through the landmarks process anyway. (It's state law.) So it actually saves money for the property owner.
Will someone wake me whe Erica finally finishes writing this bad take off on War and Peace? Sweet Baby Jesus do they pay you by the word?
Wait, wasn't ECB on Steinbrueck's staff in the past? If so, that may largely explain the length of her post.
Seattle Weekly: Trying Hard to Stay Irrelevant.
Here's a hankie, Erica, to wipe that spot of brown off your nose.
Wow. I guess Peter's getting his reward for having drinks with you (photo printed on SLOG).
There are so many logical fallacies in your attack on the Weekly that only one needs mentioning: since Steinbrueck has no hope of ever getting the downtown crowd, he has to play to other groups. So duh on that.
And second, what's with your attack on a good new writer at The Weekly? A little jealous, hmm?
I don't think ECB said that Peter wasn't running for mayor, only that this isn't proof.
And fuck off, Mr. Poe.
Jesus shit the fucking bed, what a bunch of whiners. "Oh, Erica's posts are too long! Waaah, she's talking about preserving rotting old piers!" Boo fucking hoo. What're you guys, hooked on phonics? It's a few hundred words. It should take you about a minute and a half to read and I'm pretty confident that none of you dipshits have anything better to do with your time.
Meanwhile, yes, the piers should be preserved, not least because they provide perspective on how the city used to function as an economy and as a physical structure for the transfer of goods and services. Those pier warehouses are evidence that people used to live next to their industrial centers -- that, indeed, those industrial centers were the foundation upon which settlement patterns were established. This reality is particularly important to keep in mind while we're all debating about transit options and exurban development. A lot of people complain that it's simply unreasonable to ask them to live where they work. Those piers are evidence that, prior to the advent of the automobile, living where you work was a basic reality of life.
They are also, IMHO, cool looking.
This goes for many of the older structures remaining in downtown Seattle. They serve as anchor points for people to understand not just what the city used to look like, but what's possible in urban design; it gives them a sense of scale and helps them understand the priorities of economic organization during an industrial age that was, in some important respects, more sustainable and rational than the economy that's replaced it.
@17: I don't think it's unreasonable to live near where you work. I just can't afford to.
#18: Just to clarify, do you mean you can't afford a single family house near where you work?
Oh, and for all you haters out there, if Erica wanted to work for USAToday, she would. When critiquing someone else's work, it's good to be specific and not just bitch briefly and randomly.
One thing that has remained odd to me about living in Seattle is its almost total lack of history. I've traveled quite a bit in Europe and Asia, and everywhere you go you see buildings that are hundreds of years old. Occasionally even over a thousand years old. Just seeing some of these old buildings (now often used for completely different purposes than originally made for) gives a real tactile sense of history that doesn't exist in Seattle. A true sense of character.
No, we don't need to preserve every building that was ever built. But there is value in preserving selected interesting and historically relevant buildings.
Peter has been running for Mayor most his adult life.
Perhaps the big land owners should hire ECB since their people have missed the economic advantages of landmark status.
Once landmarked the options are to a large extent controlled by the LMPB. The Space Needle needs to have the awnings' colors approved.
Does USAToday even have a gossip columnist?
No ECB never has been on PS's staff at least not officially.
Why wasn't the Bimbo building landmarked?
@19: I can't afford a single family house, a condo, or even rent on an apartment that isn't a tiny shoebox in a bad neighborhood with no parking. The average price for a 2BR apartment in Seattle is $1500.
What anti-sprawl types always miss is that downtown land in many cities is expensive and desirable. Property taxes in such areas are also high. That makes for high rents and high condo prices. People don't commute because they like to drive, they do it because they have to live where they can afford housing.
@16
Oooooh! I see I've hit a nerve there! I'd apologize if you weren't for your intrusive response.
Perhaps ECB could clarify:
Are you saying that Peter's actions couldn't possibly be politically motivated, because who would be so stupid as to piss off downtown business owners and run on this issue?
One point that doesn't need clarification, because the evidence is right there in the Weekly article: downtown business owners *are* pissed over this. As ECB points out, they can make or break a mayor. If the perception is out there among them that Peter's actions are politically motivated, it's worth reporting.
*it. Fuck.
Personally, I'm glad to see Erica write articles driven by facts and research.
Your reading of the quoted passages from the Weekly article is quite bizarre. Talk about putting words in someone's mouth! That writer didn't say half the things you accuse her of saying. I admit though I could only make it through half of this post before the tedium of it got too much. It's gotta be a couple thousand words--what's up with that? I guess something that's critical of Steinbruck AND in the Weekly just sends you into conniptions.
Oh, and Dan Savage -- do you tell people to "fuck off" so freely in person, or are you only such a tough guy online, when you don't have to worry about having your blubbery ass beaten to a pulp?
Since Erica is from rural Texas - the nom de plume - Ms. Tumbleweed might just be kinda funny. Humor, you know, the Frito bean paste lunch type of self mocking humor.
A little esoteric for the secular Big City types - and the core Stranger readers who fear leaving Capitol Hill like they fear bathing but for us rural rooted folks - I like it.
Judah - making hipster romance out of hard core working class stuff is just plain stupid
Seattle has a history of near starvation of the working class when the busts happened - often and into recent memory
And the economy of the last three decades is FAR better than that of the past - fueled by one simple word, diversity/much change of who employs here and what generates money.
Get a grip, I like the piers, I love the water front - rotting wood, worms, decay - seem to call out for recycling to modern uses and concrete and steel.
Preserve pix, and let the future silly billies like you pine for starvation and poverty - oh, forgot you leave that out - oh, all is so cool.
No. 21: And your point is... that the space needle doesn't make any money at all??
ECB - my point was not that the space needle doesn't make money (and you knew that) but rather that as a landmarked building they must get approval for very trivial changes or even just updates. Although you did state that all a landmarked building owner needs to do is go before the board, I didn't think you made it clear that this process could be required for something as small as a color or material change for an awning. And the board does not approve whatever the owner wants which can cost an owner time and money. Some of these owners like of the Twos are not large landowners.
Whatever: Right, and my point is--who cares? The approvals get rubber-stamped, and the Space Needle goes on raking in money--precisely because it is a historic building that has been preserved as such.
@ 32: No, the Space Needle keeps raking in money because it's the Space Needle. When you landmark a dumpy commercial building (say, the Two Bells) or a low-rise apartment block, the owner of the property always loses money on the deal, both through new restrictions on the building itself and the loss of the right to redevelop the property (or sell it to someone else who wants to redevelop it). The incentives available to owners of landmark buildings are few and hard to obtain.
Landmarks protections are important, but they should be limited to legitimate landmark-quality buildings. There are very few of those on the city's current list.
You write a massive post entirely about an article in the Weekly, and you don't even link to it? Not once? I've never seen a blog posting that didn't link to the original article, even if it is a highly critical posting. Is this some kind of policy? No linking to the Weekly? That is really bad form!
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