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2017 August Primary/Elections & Endorsements/Politics & Government/Seattle Mayor

2017 Endorsement Questionnaire: Bob Hasegawa

by Elections Board @urbanistorg on June 28, 2017

As part of our endorsement process at The Urbanist, we ask candidates to complete a standard questionnaire to better understand and evaluate their positions on housing, land use, transportation, and other important issues. We then share this information with our readers to help inform their own voting decisions.

This year we are considering 19 candidates running for Seattle City Council positions 8 and 9, Seattle Mayor, and Port of Seattle Commission positions 1 and 4. We are publishing the questionnaires in full this week, concluding with our official primary election endorsements in mid-July.

The following questionnaire was submitted by Bob Hasegawa, running for Mayor of Seattle.

2017 August Primary/Elections & Endorsements/Politics & Government/Seattle City Council

2017 Endorsement Questionnaire: Sara Nelson

by Elections Board @urbanistorg on June 28, 2017

The following questionnaire was submitted by Sara Nelson, running for Seattle City Council Position 8.

One Center City/Transit/Transportation

Convention Center Delay Provides Time To Prioritize Transit

by Ryan Packer @typewriteralley on June 28, 2017

On Monday, the King County Council voted unanimously to sell the land that is home to Convention Place Station. Convention Place will make way for a $1.7 billion addition doubling the size of the Washington State Convention Center (WSCC), as The Urbanist has covered extensively before. While few doubted the county council would approve the sale, the timing of doing so was a major question–one with major impacts for what our downtown transit environment looks like over the next few years.

One Center City–a joint working group comprised of leaders at the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT), King County Metro, Sound Transit, and the Downtown Seattle Association–made a number of assumptions that limited their planning process. One of the biggest ones was that in September of next year, buses would no longer be able to access Convention Place Station, and by extension the entire transit tunnel. That would mean that 570 buses per day would have to find a spot on surface streets.

But with Monday’s vote by the King County Council, we now know that the earliest buses will be exiting the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel will be March of 2019, with a date of September of 2019 much more likely, as the City of Seattle would have to approve all of the permits by July 1st of next year in order to allow the March date to happen. We should take the extra time and come up with the best plan that we’re able to execute.

2017 August Primary/Elections & Endorsements/Politics & Government/Seattle Mayor

2017 Endorsement Questionnaire: Jessyn Farrell

by Elections Board @urbanistorg on June 27, 2017

The following questionnaire was submitted by Jessyn Farrell, running for Mayor of Seattle.

Architecture/Art/Civics & Culture/Link light rail/Transit/Transportation

Mountlake Terrace Station Reaches 60% Design

by Stephen Fesler @safesler on June 27, 2017

Sound Transit has released updated designs for Mountlake Terrace Station, the penultimate station on the Lynnwood Link extension slated to open in 2023, marking the 60% design milestone. Earlier this month, Sound Transit released updated designs for two stations in Shoreline on the same line. The 60% design milestone is an important step toward final design set mid-way between the 30% and 90% design phases.

60% Station Design

The new designs of Mountlake Terrace Station have brought clarity as to how the station will look and function. Renderings show a mix of textures and materials to be used, including green paneling accents, copper metal pieces, pavers, and concrete. The station will be elevated running next to the existing parking garage and cross 236th St SW, just east of I-5. Plaza space will be below the elevated station footprint, though a major change from the 30% design includes a larger south plaza. Part of that will be delivered during the initial Sound Transit investment, but an extension of it eastward from the elevated station footprint would come later. The overall design concept otherwise remains the same from the one presented in the fall.

Economics/Land Use & Development

Seattle Booms Because Amazon Is The Master Of Platform Capitalism

by Doug Trumm @dmtrumm on June 27, 2017

Earlier this month Amazon announced a deal to buy Whole Foods for $13.7 billion in cash. The news precipitated a $32 jump in Amazon’s stock price–which equaled a $15.6 billion increase in market capitalization–leading some commentators to declare Amazon had purchased Whole Foods for free.

The deal hinted at why the regional economy is booming: Seattle’s confluence of tech monopolies makes it ideally situated to capitalize on the economic changes we’re seeing. But that market dominance also puts a tremendous amount of pressure on Seattle’s housing market. The restructuring of the national economy has elevated the fortunes of some metropolitan areas while leaving others to stagnate. There is no housing affordability crisis in Cleveland or Detroit. The crisis in shrinking cities like those is that vast swaths of housing have so little value that owners earn little equity and local government can’t gather enough property tax revenues to pay for maintenance and social services. Many stagnating cities used to manufacture goods that Amazon has gotten rich importing, distributing, and selling more effectively than anyone else. Their loss is Seattle’s gain.

The Whole Foods deal added yet another industry into Amazon’s empire and funneled even more data into its platform, which Amazon has been particularly good at leveraging for growth and profit. In his recent book Platform Capitalism, Nick Srnicek suggests Amazon is better at playing the game than its competitors, even other members of tech’s ‘Big Five’, a pantheon of the largest and most influential firms which includes Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon.

Platforming With The Best Of Them

Srnicek defines five different types of platforms: advertising platforms, cloud platforms, industrial platforms, product platforms, and lean platforms. The platforms are all alike in using their respective application to gather massive amounts of data to monetize in a number of ways, such as fine-tuning a product, offering targeted advertising, or selling or using internally as market research. He suggests Amazon is more diversified across the types of platforms than perhaps any other company:

2017 August Primary/Elections & Endorsements/Politics & Government/Seattle City Council

2017 Endorsement Questionnaire: Ty Pethe

by Elections Board @urbanistorg on June 27, 2017

This year we are considering 19 candidates running for Seattle City Council positions 8 and 9, Seattle Mayor, and Port of Seattle Commission positions 1 and 4. We are publishing the questionnaires in full this week and next week, concluding with our official primary election endorsements in mid-July.

The following questionnaire was submitted by Ty Pethe, running for Seattle City Council Position 9.

2017 August Primary/Elections & Endorsements/Politics & Government/Seattle City Council

2017 Endorsement Questionnaire: Pat Murakami

by Elections Board @urbanistorg on June 26, 2017

This year we are considering 19 candidates running for Seattle City Council positions 8 and 9, Seattle Mayor, and Port of Seattle Commission positions 1 and 4. We are publishing the questionnaires in full this week and next week, concluding with our official primary election endorsements in mid-July.

The following questionnaire was submitted by Pat Murakami, running for Seattle City Council Position 9.