Deborah Wang

Stories

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  Boeing Stands By 787 Despite FAA Grounding

  The Federal Aviation Administration is grounding all Boeing 787 Dreamliners in the US. That’s after a 787 in Japan was forced to make an emergency landing

  Jan 16, 2013 at 4:35 pm
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  Two Japanese Airlines Ground Boeing 787s After New Problems

  Major global news services are reporting that two Japanese airlines have grounded all of their Boeing 787 jets. All Nippon Airways and Japan Airlines made

  Jan 15, 2013 at 7:33 pm
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  Old Buildings May Be On Chopping Block In South Lake Union

  Correction: An earlier version of the story stated that buildings cannot be nominated for landmark status if they are too small. The story has been corrected to say that while small buildings can be nominated, they do not automatically trigger a landmark review.South Lake Union in Seattle was once home to timber mills, commercial laundries, warehouses, even a factory making Ford Model Ts. It’s now being targeted for major new development, with the city’s mayor proposing raising building heights dramatically in the low-rise district. But historic preservationists say the plan does not adequately address the area's unique history and they worry it will result in the obliteration of many of the old buildings that provide the city’s connection with the past.  Out With The Old, In With The New?Mayor Mike McGinn’s plan would allow 24-story towers in much of South Lake Union and 40-story towers in the areas closest to downtown. That’s a big change from the six stories that are allowed in most of the district today.For much of its history, South Lake Union has been home to variety of light industries: warehouses, commercial laundries, wood shops, along with relatively modest workers’ housing.Much of the district has suffered neglect over the years.But there still are 14 structures that have been granted landmark status by the city, including St. Spiridon Russian Orthodox Cathedral, the Naval Reserve Armory and the Seattle Times Building. A city survey identified an additional 34 buildings that are of historic importance and that might be eligible for landmark status.Preservationists say that if developers are allowed to build higher, they should also be given a host of incentives to preserve at least some portions of the old structures that remain.“It’s tremendous economic development for the city in many ways,” acknowledged Chris Moore, field director for the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation. “We just don’t want it to erase what does exist.”How To Save A Landmark Paul Allen’s Vulcan Real Estate, which owns the majority of land in the area, has been one of the leaders in the redevelopment of South Lake Union. The company has developed scores of new buildings, including an 11-building headquarters for Internet giant Amazon.At the same time, Vulcan has also committed itself to preserving some of the area’s more important landmarks. It has been involved in five preservation projects, including the restoration of an old brick warehouse, a former horse stable and two 1920s era auto dealerships.Right now, Vulcan is restoring a two-story brick building at the corner of Yale Ave North and Republican Street. The 1906-era building once housed the Supply Laundry Company, one of the many commercial laundries that were clustered in neighborhood.Workers have peeled away concrete panels that covered the original masonry “revealing the bones of the structure, if you will, and all of this beautiful character and detail,” said Brian Runberg, principal architect with Runberg and Associates.Runberg has compiled archival photos of the site. One shows multiple horse drawn laundry trucks parked in front of the building and the words "Supply Laundry Company — Always The Best!" inscribed on the print.“Each of these buildings has a story to tell. You peel back the layers and you find out more and more,” Runberg said. “It’s fun to uncover, and then, hopefully, expose for new generations to see what had happened here.”According to Ada Healey, vice president of real estate for Vulcan, preserving historic structures can add significant cost to a development. The buildings are often in bad shape, they don’t sit correctly on the site and they usually can’t have parking underneath.  “The counterbalance to that is, we believe, preserving that historic building brings character and marketability to your site because it’s a little different,” said Healey.But Vulcan also has a legal responsibility to preserve the structure.The Supply Laundry Company is an official Seattle city landmark. That means the city’s Landmarks Preservation Board has found it to have historic or architectural significance. The designation gives the building some protections and any plan for redevelopment must be reviewed and approved by the board.But there’s a high bar for achieving that status and preservationists worry that many historic buildings that don’t qualify are now at risk.Losing Layers Of HistoryTake a walk around the neighborhood with preservationist Chris Moore and you’ll see why he’s nervous. Under a steady rain, we stop to look at a collection of four old wooden buildings. Moore is surprised to find them boarded up and empty.“The last time I was here, there were no boarded up windows, no boarded up doors, no chain link fences around them,” he said, “which tells me they’re probably already slated for redevelopment right now.”The buildings date back to the beginning of the 20th century. They were probably built for workers at the nearby commercial laundries. According to one historical account, they may have been used as secret munitions warehouses during World War II.“These are examples, I think, of buildings that are really the last vestiges of that first phase of development in South Lake Union, and they’ll be gone," said Moore. "So as a preservationist, you see this and, you know, it makes you a little sad because they are wonderful examples of the early development of the area.”It’s a similar story throughout South Lake Union. There is construction underway on nearly every block. The neighborhood is peppered with white signs that announce "Notice of Proposed Land Use Action."Moore says there is a certain inevitability that buildings like these will be lost during redevelopment of an area. They are too small to trigger a review by the Landmarks Preservation Board and they are in very poor shape. But he thinks there are many other buildings in South Lake Union that are similarly unglamorous, but important to the area’s historical fabric, and that should be saved.  “The worst case scenario is with all the development, all of the construction, you literally lose any sense of those layers of development, those layers of history that exist in Cascade and South Lake Union,” he said.More Incentives, PleaseMoore and other preservationists argue that as the city moves forward with its rezoning plan, it should offer more incentives to developers to preserve old buildings on their sites.In downtown Seattle, for example, the city entices owners to preserve historic structures by giving them the rights to build higher on other sites. That's referred to as the transfer of development rights (TDR).Preservationists want TDRs to be available to historic buildings in South Lake Union as well.In a letter to the City Council, Moore also asked the city to establish a fund for preservation projects, funded by fees on developers, and to identify all remaining properties that may be eligible for landmark status.There are other state and federal tax incentives for historic preservation, but preservationists and developers say they do not adequately defray the cost of preservation.Vulcan has been able to move ahead with its preservation projects in part because it owns such large pieces of land around the historic sites and can work around them, according to Brandon Morgan, Vulcan’s development director.That’s been the case with the old Supply Laundry Building, which sits on the corner of an entire block owned by Vulcan. It will be surrounded by apartments, retail and office space, even a restaurant, which will help defray the cost.“Suppose we didn’t own this and someone else did. That someone else probably wouldn’t be able to make this rehab pencil,” Morgan said.Morgan says it doesn’t make sense that South Lake Union should have fewer preservation incentives than other parts of the city.“The city needs to decide [whether] historic preservation is important or not, regardless of what neighborhood you are in,” Morgan said.City officials say they have heard the preservationists' concerns and are evaluating whether any more preservation incentives can be offered in the South Lake Union re-zone plan.“It’s a balancing act,” said Marshall Foster, the city’s planning director.The current re-zone proposal does provide one incentive for historic preservation. Developers that preserve landmarks can get slightly more development capacity on their sites. But that is only available to sites larger than 60,000 square feet. According to Foster, that’s meant to address two specific landmarks that are "at risk:" the Troy Laundry Building and the Seattle Times Building.Foster says the city is looking into whether it can offer those incentives more widely in the neighborhood.The city is also evaluating whether it should offer the more dramatic incentive, a program to allow TDRs from historic buildings. Foster said that is has proved to be a highly effective tool for preservation in Downtown Seattle.But he said in the South Lake Union plan, a trade-off was made to use TDRs to preserve rural open space instead.The 271-page re-zone proposal is now before a special committee of the Seattle City Council. The committee plans to address historic preservation in South Lake Union in the coming weeks.

  Jan 14, 2013 at 7:18 am

• Future Of South Lake Union Up For Debate

  The Seattle City Council is debating a plan that would transform a huge swath of the city’s center, and that for the first time would allow developers to build residential high rises just a block from Lake Union.

  Dec 13, 2012 at 12:00 am
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  John Urquhart Sworn In Today As New King County Sheriff

  There’s a new sheriff in town, at least in King County: John Urquhart will officially take over as King County Sheriff today.Urquhart was the long-time spokesman for the Sheriff’s Office, and he was well known for his colorful press releases, with titles like: “Two Men Arrested After Dragging Cow With Car.”He officially retired from the department earlier this year and was looking forward to “going golfing, sitting on the beach, fixing my house, doing all those kinds of things that retired people do,” he said.But then, Urquhart said, friends urged him to come out of retirement and to run for sheriff.“I said no, no, no. Then I started looking at what they were saying, and I thought, yeah, I think I can do this job. I think I can do the job that needs to be done,” he said.Urquhart beat out incumbent Sheriff Steve Strachan by a wide margin.He now faces a laundry list of challenges. Two recent independent audits were highly critical of the department, and in particular, how it responded to officer-involved shootings.Urquhart says the audits did not fault the rank and file, but they pointed to a lack of leadership in the department. “And that’s a culture that I want to change,” he said.Urquhart also faces a perennial funding crisis. The Sheriff’s Office has had to cut more than 150 deputies over the last five years. It is also scheduled to close its cold case unit. That unit is paid for by a federal grant, which has run out. Urquhart says he will try to find funding for it locally, but he admits that will be a challenge.“There’s no money, there’s no money for government, and we’ve all been hit by that, including the Sheriff’s Office,” he said. “But public safety is job one for government, and I have to make sure that whatever money we do have, we use it wisely, and we protect the citizens of King County.”Urquhart says his focus will be to ensure that the department is sufficiently staffed to respond to 911 calls, and then, he says, to build out from there.

  Nov 28, 2012 at 6:59 am
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  Are You A Business? Seattle City Light Wants To Give You Money

  Seattle City Light has an unexpected pot of money on its hands. The utility says it needs to give away $5 million before the end of the year.The money is earmarked for businesses that want to become more energy-efficient. It will pay for up to 70 percent of the cost of new lighting, heating and cooling systems, or other energy-efficient equipment.But even with the subsidy, businesses have been slow to sign on this year.“I would say it’s the economy,” said Lori Moen, a manager in the Conservation Resources Division of Seattle City Light. “It’s always difficult to make the economic case to spend money, especially when times are tight. But the benefit to investing in energy efficiency is that it pays back.”This year, City Light set aside a total of $22 million for the program. It’s paid for by City Light customers, and Moen said it helps the utility manage the growth of power usage.She said the program saves about 75 million kilowatt hours of electricity per year. That's about as much energy as would be used by 8,100 homes.

  Nov 20, 2012 at 5:41 pm
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  Record Rain Falls On Seattle, Brings Snow To Mountains

  Western Washington is bracing for more precipitation after record heavy rains snarled traffic and caused localized flooding on Monday.

  Nov 20, 2012 at 12:00 am
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  Record Rainfall Impacts Transportation, Increases Mudslide Risk

  This story is developing and will be updated as details emerge.National Weather Service is reporting a record-breaking 2.16 inches of rainfall in the last 24 hours, and has issued winter storm advisories and flood warnings for parts of the Puget Sound region. Heavy rains in the area are posing a number of potential hazards, from mudslides to highway closures.Commuters are being urged to check their routes as rain continues to fall.  Sound Transit's northbound Sounder service from Seattle to Everett has been canceled for Monday evening. North Cascades Highway is temporarily closed due to heavy snow and avalanche danger.Deborah Wang spoke Sarah Miller with Seattle Public Utilities on Monday afternoon about the emerging problem of standing drainage water."With 80,000 drains in the city of Seattle, we can't be everywhere. We do clean the drains regularly," Miller explained. "However, when the trees drop their leaves, that happens in a relatively compressed period of time. Much as we get out there to clean the drains throughout the year this problem is exacerbated because the leaves drop at the beginning of November and then plug those drainage outlets."Miller has been urging Seattle residents to adopt their local drains, to clear them of leaves and debris.UPDATE at 5:00 p.m. on November 19:Amtrak's Cascades passenger train service between Seattle and Vancouver, British Columbia, has been temporarily canceled. A 48-hour moratorium due to mudslide danger was issued Monday afternoon and may be lifted by Wednesday. Amtrak Cascades announces cancelations and disruptions through their Twitter feed.Regional Weather Resources:NOAA Seattle ForecastNational Weather ServiceUW Atmospheric Sciences' Weather MapTransportation Resources:Sound TransitKing County Metro TransitWashington State Department of Transportation

  Nov 19, 2012 at 3:23 pm
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  Former Hostess Workers Still Picketing Shuttered Plant

  Striking members of a bakers’ union are still picketing a plant in Seattle that makes Hostess Twinkies and Ho Hos. That’s despite the fact the plant is now closed for good.Hostess Brands closed the plant in Seattle, as well as plants in St. Louis and Cincinnati yesterday. It said the strike by bakers’ union members had made operations there impossible.At the shuttered Seattle facility, a small group of union members continued to walk the picket line, holding "on strike" signs under a light rain.“I feel so shocked. I feel locked out,” said 48-year old Shella Robbins.Robbins was a foreman in the facility’s cake shop, and she worked at the company for 24 years. Although she has already found another job, she said she worries for her co-workers.“My heart is crying out for everybody,” she said. “They have families. They have kids.”Company Says Union To Blame For ClosureThe union, which is officially called the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union, went on strike against the company last week over pay and benefits. Company officials had warned the union that if they went out on strike, plant closures would follow.Hostess has been facing serious financial difficulties. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this year, for the second time in a decade.“This is not something that we wanted to do at all. It’s the loss of a lot of jobs,” said Lance Ignon, a spokesman for Hostess Brands. “But we were left with no choice. We don’t have the financial wherewithal to fund a company that is being hampered by strikes.”According to Ignon, if the strike is not settled in the next few days, the company could be forced to shut down entirely. Hostess operates 35 plants around the country, with a total workforce of more than 18,000 employees.The union did not return calls for comment, but a statement on its website claimed the plant closures are not the result of the strike. The company announced during bankruptcy proceedings that it would close nine plants, although it refused to say which ones, according to the union’s statement.“Our members are on strike because they have had enough,” the statement continued. “They are not willing to take the draconian wage and benefit cuts on top of the significant concessions they made in 2004 and give up their pensions so that the Wall Street vulture capitalists in control of this company can walk away with millions of dollars.”Hostess Brands is partially owned by a consortium of private equity firms.South Lake Union IconThe Seattle facility is more than a century old, and it's a fixture in the South Lake Union neighborhood.At Seattle Automotive Inc, an auto body shop across the street, Vanessa Keopraseurt said she will miss the smell that emanates from the bakery in the mornings."It's just like fresh baked cake, it smells so good," she said.Moses Al-Tamimi remembers when he was a kid, the workers there used to give out treats."They would have stuff laying around, they would give it to us, or get little boxes of Twinkies and things," he said.But neither Keopraseurt nor Al-Tamimi are fans of Hostess products today. "I'm more into healthy eating," said Al-Tamimi.The company says it will now look for a buyer for its Seattle facility. The building is located in the fast developing South Lake Union neighborhood, and according to King County records, the property is appraised at close to $8 million.The company hopes to find a buyer that will continue to operate the building as a bakery. But with an overcapacity of bakery facilities in the country, Hostess Brands spokesman Lance Ignon admits that may not be possible.

  Nov 13, 2012 at 6:17 pm
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  Republican Recriminations Fly In 1st District Congressional Race

  The 1st District was supposed to be the Republican Party’s best chance of picking up a Congressional seat in the state this year. But after Democrats won the seat decisively, Republicans are pointing fingers over who is to blame.Republican John Koster conceded the race Friday to Democrat Suzan DelBene. Koster has been trailing DelBene in the vote count.In an email to supporters, Koster blamed the loss on money, saying DelBene’s campaign outspent him 5-to-1. He also criticized both the state and national Republican parties for failing to give his campaign more than token support. The Koster campaign did not respond to a request for comment for this story.Republican leaders took issue with Koster's assessment.“Bluntly, it was a weak candidate on the part of the Republicans and a strong candidate on the part of the Democrats,” said Republican former US Senator Slade Gorton.State Republican Party Chairman Kirby Wilbur said Koster’s claim is a cheap shot.“We did everything we could to help the campaign,” Wilbur said. “They refused to accept advice from us, they failed miserably in their fundraising, and they continued to stumble along and not reassess what was going wrong.”Too Conservative For The 1st District?Koster is a conservative Republican who sits on the Snohomish County Council. Throughout the race, DelBene’s campaign hammered him for his conservative views on social issues. Koster opposes same-sex marriage and believes abortion should be illegal, except to save the life of the mother.In the final days of the campaign, Koster’s off-the-cuff comments about abortion went viral when he referred to rape as “the rape thing.”“John Koster just couldn’t help picking away at the scab of abortion and rape and the like,” said Slade Gorton. “Like Republican candidates for Senate in a couple of other states.”Gorton was one of the architects of the newly redrawn 1st District. He sits on the Washington State Redistricting Commission, which this year gave the state its 10th Congressional seat. During the process, the commission re-jiggered the boundaries of the state’s nine other districts and transformed the 1st District from a Democratic-leaning district to one evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans.Koster was the lone Republican in the race and the top vote-getter in the primary.His opponent, DelBene, is a wealthy former business executive from Medina who hews closely to the Democratic establishment party line. Koster is a Christian Republican from the town of Arlington who believes in sharply limiting government.“The conventional wisdom among Republicans was that Koster was too conservative for the 1st District,” said Chris Vance, former state GOP chair. “I tend to think that’s true.”The Role Of MoneyRepublicans agree that a huge disparity in campaign cash played a big role in Koster’s loss.DelBene put more than $2.8 million of her own money into her campaign. She received three times as many contributions from political action committees as Koster, most notably from labor unions. And she was the beneficiary of more than $1 million in independent expenditures, which largely paid for televisions ads attacking Koster.And Koster said he suffered from lack of financial support from his own political party.“For reasons untold,” he wrote in his email to supporters, “neither the National Republican Congressional Committee nor the Washington State Republican Party stepped up to provide us anything more than token support. To be frank, we were on our own.”The National Republican Congressional Committee provides logistical and financial help to promising Republican candidates around the country.But according to state GOP Chairman Kirby Wilbur, the NRCC gave Koster's campaign a list of conditions to be met before it invested money, and the campaign refused to cooperate.At a conference call in early July, Wilbur says Koster’s campaign manager Larry Stickney accused Mike Shields, the political director of the NRCC, of not liking the Koster campaign because “you’re liberal and we’re conservative.”According to Wilbur, Stickney’s obstinacy was most responsible for the campaign’s failure. “He ran the campaign like it was a legislative race, not a Congressional race,” he said.Koster’s Third LossThis is Koster’s third unsuccessful attempt at Congress. He ran twice against Democrat Rick Larsen in the 2nd District.But in some ways, this may be his toughest loss.Portions of four counties — King, Snohomish, Skagit, and Whatcom — make up the sprawling 1st District. Koster is trailing in the vote count in three out of the four counties, including his home county, Snohomish.But Koster's loss doesn’t mean Republicans can’t win in the 1st District, according to former Senator Slade Gorton. In the governor's race, Republican Rob McKenna has been leading Democrat Jay Inslee in the 1st. “It’ll still be a swing district next election and into the future,” Gorton said. 

  Nov 10, 2012 at 11:09 am