Theater Washington Hall Is the New Oddfellows
posted by on February 22 at 12:25 PM
We saw it coming, though we hoped it wouldn’t—Velocity Dance Center has been priced out of Oddfellows Hall. They’ll move out July 31st, 2008.
This is a tragedy, not so much for dance (I am confident Velocity, which won one of The Stranger’s first Genius Awards, will find a new home), but for architecture: Velocity is one of the prettiest theaters—one of the prettiest anythings—in Seattle, with its gleaming blonde wood floorboards, frieze of roaring lions, ceilings so high they make a person dizzy, and, in the foyer, dark wood tables and benches that look like they were carved and pieced together by someone long ago, maybe on the beach of a tropical island, and floated over to Seattle in the hold of a tall ship.
(The furniture’s nice, but the hardwood floors are my favorite. You can’t tell unless you look closely, but the wood—that, from any normal distance, glows like skin—is beautifully scarred with thousands of tiny pockmarks. “Somebody went crazy with a staple gun,” former director KT Niehoff told me two years ago, for this column about Velocity’s tenth birthday. “A handful of us spent a week, all day and all night, just pulling up staples.”)
You should drop by Velocity soon, just to admire its insides.
Kara O’Toole (dancer, choreographer, and current Velocity director) says the dance center needs a temporary residence for about three years and hopes to eventually move into Washington Hall, the dilapidated building with a dignified history on the corner of 14th and Fir:
The building used to be home to On the Boards and its stage has been graced by W. E. B. Du Bois, MLK, Count Basie, Jimi Hendrix, Ray Charles, Duke Ellington, and so on.
The Sons of Haiti currently own Washington Hall, but Historic Seattle is trying to buy it in the hopes that CD Forum and, now, Velocity can move in.
Back in November, Ted Schroth, the new owner of Oddfellows, wrote: “Paying retail for a building and not tearing it down creates the economic reality of having to raise rents to market levels in order to make retaining the building feasible from an investment standpoint.”
Two months later, he said, more directly: “I don’t want to sound like a victim, because I’m not, but I can’t afford to subsidize the arts.”
Don’t be mad at Mr. Schroth. He is as good as his word.
Still—July 31, 2008 will be a dismal day.
So if he couldn't afford the building why'd he f@#cking buy it? Oh, yeah, right--inalienable right to own whatever you can talk someone into fronting you money for. Sure hope that "investment" pans out.
And the normal rhythms of city life go on. This is pretty much exactly what's supposed to happen.
If developers can reserve the right to earn a profit no matter what effect it has on the surrounding community, the surrounding community can reserve the right to hate them for turning everything interesting about the neighborhood into homogenous crap so they can make a quick buck.
He gets his money, we get our spite.
It's not Schroth's fault. Why not blame the previous owner that sold it to him at a price that requires that the rents be adjusted to market. Or how about the City for not subsidizing the tenants so they can afford to pay a market rent.
How 'bout making them all first against the wall when the Revolution comes?
It's the Fremontization of Pike-Pine. Where do we go next?
It's all about Density.
So the answer is: Nowhere. We'll all just have to stand together a lot closer.
And everything will cost a lot more, and it will be harder for most people to have Nice Things.
Gosh--density sounds a lot like gentrification.
I wonder what The Stranger thinks?
i don't know where 14th & fir is. i've never seen that building in 17 years of living here.
but i likes it.
I think that's near that cool veg restaurant (2nd floor) on 14th ...
Anyone hear where Freehold is headed?
Fir is like one block north of Yesler.
@4 - Schroth came up with the price he paid on his own. I believe it was a cold offer, and the price was deliberately astronomical to make it hard to turn down. Trust me, plenty of people are also upset at the previous owner, but Schroth's plan all along was to swoop in and turn the building upscale. The "poor me, I'm forced to triple the rents" act is completely transparent.
Washington Hall is just north of the Urban League building on 14th and Yesler
Love Washington Hall!!! My maternal grandparents met there in 1922... they performed plays there in the 1920's and 1930's... so did my mother (1961), and sister (Lori Larsen 1986). So much family history there and proud of my Danish heritage there, too. Personal memories too... of the place.
If you've ever ridden down 14th from P/P to get to rainier you've passed the building, although you may not have seen it. You're rolling down various tree streets that way. I think @13 is spot on. I think Ted shot himself in the foot by saying anything at all around the building purchase - It was an arts building, he knew the rents and only philanthropists buy art buildings to continue that use, so why all the bs around subsidizing the arts and claiming not to change it. Its unfortunately disingenuous at this point, and he seems like he's not a disingenuous dude.
I know Schroth. Used to work with him. Total fucking asshole. TOTAL FUCKING ASSHOLE. Can I say it again? TFA. The man doesn't have a fucking soul. Believe me. Where's the lunatics with the knives when you need them?
Sad, sad day for Velocity and the Oddfellows hall...but I worked at OTB a bit 'back in the day,' and I know what a sad waste it has been for that space to go unused for so long. I have deep (for me) roots in the immediate neighborhood, and I am thrilled at the prospect of Velocity moving in.
And the shut-ins who don't know where Washington Hall is (turn right at Piecora's, walk 15 minutes) should really try leaving the hill sometime. There's a really nice city out there.
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