Below is the complete text of my take on last night’s Design Review Board meeting on the Charlestown Street Cafe that I sent off the West Seattle blog, which is by far the best community news source I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading:

Hello,

I attended the early design guidance meeting last night on the
Charlestown Street Cafe/Petco site, and wanted to make sure the
details hit your blog — the leading news source in West Seattle if
you ask me!

The presentations of the project by the developer and architect were
unbelievably poor. One member of the Design Review Board said it was
the worst project he had seen in his two years on the board.

First, the developer said that the tenant he’s building for had been
“a member of our community” for 23 years, and they want to “remain a
part of our community”. Yes, he was talking about Petco! Who knew that
a nationwide discount pet-supply big box retailer had such loyalty to
us! This attempt to fabricate community roots was utterly unsuccessful
with the crowd, as it would be with any sentient human being.

The architect went next. He had the gall — or perhaps the stupidity
– to propose that a few trellises attached to the building for
landscaping would make it friendly to the street. He even showed off a
collage of trellises and such they had put onto other projects the
firm “designed”. All of them looked painfully suburban; one was a
Petco that, yes, looked like every other Petco that’s been built in
strip malls everywhere. Clearly, a quality architectural firm.

They are proposing a 1-story concrete block box, taking up about half
of the site. The other half of the site would be parking. (Zoning
allows a taller structure, but for some reason the property owner is
requiring only a 1-story development — curious to know the story
behind that.) The proposed structure would have no windows or doors on
California, absolutely killing any hopes that this section of the
street could develop a lively street life. Like every Petco in
history, the building would face the parking lot. I didn’t think it
was possible, but the proposed project would present an even more
hostile attitude to pedestrian sensibilities than the current Junction
Petco does.

Sentiment in the room was universally against the project, for two reasons:

1. It would destroy a community institution.
2. West Seattle doesn’t want big box development.

The first item was more important than the second for most of the
audience; however, the design review board only has jurisdiction over
the second item. Many were frustrated by the narrow scope of the
issues that could be discussed at this meeting.

The good news is that I think the project can be stopped, or at least
stalled, by attacking the big box nature of the development. The site
is being developed exclusively for Petco, and Petco by their very
nature builds big boxes. Architectural interest is simply not in their
business model, nor is community context. This is actually good news,
because it means that a campaign to stop the developer from building a
big box would have the same effect as a campaign to stop Petco from
moving to the site — and it would be within the design review
guidelines. And stopping Petco from moving in would halt the current
project, because the project exists to serve Petco.

So my humble suggestion is to make sure we all speak up specifically
about the big box design of the structure. Even if that’s not our only
concern, it is important in its own right, and it’s the tool we can
use to get in the way of this hideous development at this very early
stage of the city’s process. The Design Review Board did not seem to
want this project, for various reasons. We need to make sure they have
all the ammunition they need to stand in the way.

We might also want to tell Petco corporate office what we think:

Petco Customer Relations Online:
http://www.petco.com/Content/ContactUs.aspx?PC=contactus&Nav=143

Finally, I’ve always wondered what the heck it would mean to be the
architect of something like a Petco, that’s essentially the same
everywhere it’s built. Last night’s meeting provided the answer: it
means choosing trellises!

To the Editor:

I read the article “Iran Is Seeking More Influence in Afghanistan” with a wry smile. Does Iran really think that road and construction projects, a rail line, and anti-drug efforts are going to help them win support in Afghanistan? As a mature world power, the U.S. government has a far more sensible plan to win support from the Afghani people:

1. Destroy infrastructure via air war. Continue to strafe the occasional wedding party long after victory has been declared.

2. Pay assorted warlords to announce that they’ve become good guys now.

3. Whittle away meager rebuilding funds on profits for private contractors.

4. Let the legitimate economy languish while the drug trade flourishes.

5. Forget country exists, except when the dashing Hamid Karzai models a flowing cape for American photojournalists.

How could Iran think they can beat us at this game by actually helping to rebuild the country?

In today’s NY Times, one of the best corrections I’ve seen in many hours spent on good old page A2 ove many years:

Because of an editing error, an obituary on Sunday about Sid Raymond, a comic actor, rendered one of his jokes incorrectly. It was about a son who sends a prostitute to his widowed father, still a self-proclaimed ladies’ man in his 90s. The prostitute tells the father that she is his birthday present and promises to give him “super sex” (not that she promises to give him whatever he’d like.) The father replies, “I’ll take the soup.”

I’d sure hate to be a copyeditor at the Times — their corrections editor is always blaming everything on “editing errors.”

But I do want to know — who’s the goofball who changed a joke in an obituary. Apparently, the same kind of goofball who thinks they can re-write a joke in an obituary, likely because they didn’t catch the pun on “super sex” vs. “soup or sex”.

Just imagine the angry fans who came upon a butchered joke where a prostitute said “I’ll give you whatever you like” and the elderly Cassanova replied “I’ll take the soup.” Nobody’s been that upset at a comedy routine since I unveiled my “dead milk” series of gags to no acclaim more than 20 years ago in New Jersey.

God help us, Susan Paynter was back in the P-I again yesterday, waxing egocentric about her stolen car and the “nearly” 100 responses she had — “including [from] hardened cops” (though it’s not clear how she knew how hard the cops in question were) — asking about her loss of a child-made ceramic heart in the car theft she’s been obsessing over for more than a week now.

She reports on the odd accounting practices of a man with an unlikely name:

These are people such as Rainier Burgdorfer, who calculates the cost of thievery like this:

“I don’t know how much money you make,” he wrote me. “I can save about $100 per week. So, when the ass(bleep) stole my car, it took me about 15 weeks to make enough money to buy a new ski rack, tire chains, seat covers, music, first-aid kit, fire extinguisher, all-season tires and the rest of the stuff … my insurance didn’t cover.”

The way he sees it, the thief robbed him of 15 weeks of his life.

Come on now, does this really add up to “15 weeks of his life” being stolen? Because he decided he had to apply his savings to things like a “new ski rack”? Sure, something was stolen from him — but jeez, did he really have $1500 worth of “stuff” like seat covers? And is using 15 weeks of savings to buy new stuff really amount to being “robbed” of 15 weeks of your “life”? It’s a shame Enron isn’t hiring accountants anymore.

You know an article is going down a particularly rocky road when vague anti-union suggestions get thrown in there, such as:

“Who would be against stronger penalties?” asked Jack Miller. “The Amalgamated Brotherhood of Crack Heads and Speed Freaks International?”

P-I editors: no, I don’t want a family car to be stolen either. But neither do I want to hear a columnist obsess over it along with others. Yes, it sucks that her car was stolen. But should you really let your legislative agenda be dictated by a personal grievance like this? Come on now.

The article ends on a somewhat revealing note:

Almost every e-mail and phone call brought a bonus of support and sympathy. “I really hope you get the ceramic heart back that was made by your son,” wrote Lonnie McCarron, an auto-theft detective from the Colorado Springs Police Department.

I bet that’s our “hardened cop” right there! From Colorado Springs! And they work in auto-theft themselves.

Then, appropriately enough, this horrifyingly self-involved piece ends with a schmaltzy use of the metaphor of a lost heart.

I did, Detective, and thanks for asking. Even if the mechanical prognosis for my hospitalized Prelude turns out to be bleak, at least my heart is back where it belongs.

Jeezus.

Someone with the unlikley name of “Paulo Freire” managed to get the first comment in on the P-I online discussion about yet-another eminent domain editorial, this one on the Burien case (which frankly, doesn’t sound like the wisest use of eminent domain around.)

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/soundoff/comment.asp?articleID=295500

Posted by paulofreire at 12/11/06 8:58 p.m.

What’s with the P-I’s recent obsession with eminent domain? Has the Institute for “Justice” kidnapped a member of the publisher’s family, demanding two letters and one editorial a week on eminent domain?

If your editorial board were dedicated to good urban planning with the same dedication you have to property rights, I’d have more sympathy. But come on already, enough with the eminent domain.

Our good buddies at the Institute for Justice are hot on the heels of yet another critical case:

As the Akron Beacon-Journal reports, via the AP, Court to decide battle over ‘for sale’ sign

CINCINNATI – A federal appeals court will decide if an Ohio village violated a man’s freedom of speech when it forced him to remove a “for sale” sign on a car parked in front of his home.

Chris Pagan said Glendale police threatened to cite him in 2003 under an ordinance forbidding such signs on vehicles in public areas.

Pagan removed the sign from his 1970 Mercury Cougar and said it hurt his ability to sell the car.

“I sold it under market value, because it was the best deal I could get,” said Pagan, an attorney who later filed a federal lawsuit to challenge the village’s half-century-old sign regulation.

What’s astonishing about this to me is the way they manage to frame their commitment to freedom of commercial speech not in terms of free speech more generally, but rather in terms of a “taking”. The guy couldn’t put a proper for sale sign on his car, you see, and so he ended up having to sell for less than market value, he says. The horror!

(What *is* a 1970 Mercury Cougar worth, you ask? Well, in Kuwait, they apparently go for 8,000 Kuwaiti dollars — but that price is no doubt affected by the fact that this is the only 1970 Cougar in all of Kuwait.)

Damn over-regulated emirate must have laws barring the import of great free American cars, or something. Because everything can always be explained by referencing the freedom to buy, except when it’s all about freedom to sell, or freedom to exploit, or freedom to pollute, or the freedom to behave with utter social irresponsibility.

IJ lays it down this way:

“If they can ban totally harmless speech on a whim, what happens when more controversial speech comes along?” said Jeff Rowes, a lawyer for the institute who is helping Pagan with the case. “If we decide that putting someone in jail is the right way to deal with ordinary speech like a ‘for sale’ sign, the First Amendment is in grave jeopardy.”

But really, now, just how slippery a slope is it from purely commerical speech like “for sale” to political, religious, or some other kind of expressive speech? The line seems easy to draw: selling for the highest possible price just isn’t a critical speech right. And “I want to make more money more money more money” is tawdry selfishness, not protected political expression.

Of course, in my book, keeping suburbs clean of ugly signage isn’t a compelling government interest either — which is why this seems an entirely trivial case.

Has the Hearst media conglomerate transformed the Seattle P-I into a vanity press?

What else are we to conclude from Susan Paynter’s column in the paper today, where she talk at length about how sad it is that her car was stolen. Oddly, she says that the police are doing a good job, as is the city attorney, as is the county prosecutor’s office. Thefts are going down, she reports. But the Legislature needs to take action, she says — because, I guess, *her* car was stolen.

But what action does she want? That, she doesn’t say. No room, I guess, after all the details about how much she liked her poor old car, and how serious a problem car theft is, because, well, her car was just stolen, so it must be very serious indeed.

In Paynter’s defense, she does describe herself as being “like a plaintive holiday caroler” — but remind me again which holiday carols are “plaintive”? I thought they were pretty much all happily describing the birth of Jesus. Oh wait, it’s not the *carols* that are plaintive, it’s the *carolers*. And the carolers are probably plaintive because they got their cars stolen!

What’s next from the vanity-press department of the P-I? Will Joel Connelly eat a moldy strawberry and call for legislative action? Or will Paynter blow all her money on an ebay fraud and beg for the Governor to solve this serious problem? I can hardly wait.

The P-I on Sunday printed a letter by one Edwina Johnston, responding to my letter (which was responding to their editorial — this is getting a little meta, isn’t it) on eminent domain & community renewal. In this letter, it’s recommended to me that I “read the Constitution” (by which she actually means the Bill of Rights — a pedantic distinction, sure, but she started it). She goes on to make a distinction between eminent domain for “use” and for private benefit, which seems somewhat off-point, both in regard to my letter and the larger debate.

It gets better, though:

The Constitution was written to spell out the rights of citizens and to protect them from the power of the government. A government that elevates the “common good” above “individual rights” is a communist government. In our republic, the individual’s right is protected from the tyranny of the majority.

The tyranny of a communist majority?! Where, exactly, has this been a threat?

A quick google search reveals that Johnston is involved with reactionary property rights groups and even wrote a guest column in the Seattle Times in support of I-933 and her case was cited by John Carlson in the King County Journal. Her issue: she can’t fully exploit the imagined value of the 30 acres she purchased in Preston “to retire on.”

So real estate wasn’t a secure retirement investment for her? Shocker, that.

A good opponent to draw out, I think.

Update (11/29): The Seattle P-I prints my letter and with only minor edits!

To the editors:
In your editorial opposing the use of eminent domain to keep Southeast Seattle affordable, you suggest there’s a need for community involvement, but don’t suggest how else to make this happen. A blue ribbon panel, perhaps? Or maybe a toothless neighborhood plan?

The basic principle of eminent domain is that the common good can take precedence over private interests. This is hard to object to – unless, I guess, you own blighted property and want to hold on to it. But even then, you’d receive fair compensation. So who loses?

Sure, area property owners may want to take another spin on the real estate roulette wheel, hoping to hit another jackpot. But they’re already benefiting greatly from public funds and attention to the area—from light rail to rezoning, and beyond. The rest of us deserve something in return: to help make sure there’s room for everyone in Southeast Seattle.

A community renewal agency with eminent domain powers is one of the few tools available with the teeth to give the public a real voice in the process, as equals with private developers and property owners. And I suspect that this is at the heart of the objections to the plan.

The P-I on Sunday takes a strong and strongly misguided position on those use of eminent domain for community renewal. No two ways about this:

But the city’s role must be limited. Forget using the power of eminent domain to acquire, assemble and sell properties for redevelopment.

Why such strong objections to the use of eminent domain? There’s nothing more American than property rights, I guess.