If there are no glitches, Small Faces Development Center will be the new owners of Crown Hill Elementary school next week.
In an email sent out yesterday, Executive Director Lynn Wirta says that Catherine Weatbrook, Kathy Brockman and herself “met with the Community of Economic Development and Trade representative to receive the State grant of $908,000.” This money, combined with the $400,000 grant from the City of Seattle “will be paid to the Seattle School District in the next few days to complete the purchase and sale agreement after 3 years of negotiations,” Wirta writes. The sale is expected to close next Tuesday. Formal celebrations will take place in the next few months, although you’ll probably hear some informal cheers this afternoon. The former Crown Hill Elementary School building is one of several surplus properties being sold by the district. (Thanks Lexy for the tip!)
Purchase of Crown Hill school is almost complete
So lemme' see if we've got this straight: The School District essentially “sold” the public's property – in a time of fiscal restraint – from one branch of government, to the other, at well-below market rates, so that some alt-community could then buy it at less than market rates — so that they could run half-assed, government-subsidized “community” programs.
Awesome.
(Now you wonder why people are fed-up with government.)
Small Faces isn't a “half-assed, government-subsidized community program.” It is a non-profit child development center that has been in the Crown Hill Building and the community for nearly 30 years.
The only government assistance Small Faces gets is for parents of lesser means to help pay tuition, the same as they might get at other daycare centers. The other tenants in the building include other non-profits that receive zero government subsidies.
Get your facts straight before you bash 3 years of volunteer efforts to save a building and preschool that's been a part of the community for decades.
I guess the city could have just sold the building at “market value” to a developer who would have just put in another Starbucks and condos that won't get sold.
Cheers to Catherine, Lynn and Kathy and everyone else who work tirelessly to make this happen.
Thats exactly what they should of done, sold it to a developer. Assessed value of the property is closer to 10 million, why should the school district settle for much less. It seems like small faces is government subsidized, if they go through with this land grab.
Completely subsidized since it is being bought with public money. Why should we, the citizens, basically give away valuable property during a time they are laying off teachers. That property should be developed, nothing special about it anyways.
You guys really want another developer to come in and push hard-working, local businesses and non-profits out of the community to put up another ugly condo? Huh.
$10 million would be the (generously) assessed value of the entire site, which Small Faces didn't actually purchase. What Small Faces purchased amounts to 9 residential lots worth about $200k each. This is based on the value of comparable lots in the immediate area at the time of the negotiated sale (which was at the peak of the real estate bubble), minus what was estimated it would cost to demolish the building, removing the oil tank on the property, and then subdivide it.
The below value argument was actually made in court and held to be without merit.
I guess using tax dollars to pay for education and other community activities is a bad thing for the community. More empty retail space and condos that won't sell is just what Crown Hill needs. After all, Denny's and the Sunset Bowl were both sold to developers and look what benefit that's given the community.
When an evil-doer developer comes in to one of these things, the public should PROFIT from the sale of the property. And please remember that developers (in addition to EMPLOYING engineers and architects, actually BUY things made by people, and EMPLOY construction workers to build houses, financed by organizations where WORKING people SAVE their money, facilitating the finance of these homes. It's called progress…
Get on board…
If you want to get all misty-eyed about a bowling alley with a smokey bar, and a retro Denny's with crappy breakfasts, then YOU can patron them enough to keep them open.
Until then, let the free market do its work.
I'm not sentimental about Denny's nor the Sunset Bowl. Although I did take my kids to Sunset Bowl numerous times. Now if we want to bowl, we (and our money) have to leave the neighborhoood or the city.
I'm merely pointing out that both of these propertiess were sold to developers – the Denny's after a “land grab” for the monrail debacle – and over a year later both lots still sit empty. So the jobs that were eliminated when Denny's and the Sunset Bowl closed have not been replaced with any construction jobs nor retail jobs.
Both the Sunset Bowl and Denny's purchased goods and services from other local businesses (food, alcohol, etc.) and now they don't. If those lots were developed, it would likely just benefit an out-of-town (or more likley, out-of-state) developer. They might buy building materials from local businesses although they more than likely will get materials for such a large project from a national or regional company. They won't be buying sheetrock and flashing at Crown Hill Hardware nor at Fred Meyer – maybe Home Depot, but that's in another neighborhood entirely. Right now, nobody's buying anything ffrom anybody – unless you count the homeless drunks who hang out in the vacant Denny's lot and buy booze at the local liquor store.
Small Faces is a childcare facility that, for nearly three decades, has enabled hundreds of sets of parents to both work, which in turn enabled them to purchase homes in the area and patronize local businesses.
Go ahead and sell Small Faces to a developer who likely won't be able to get financing and it will just become another empty lot like Denny's and the Sunset Bowl. The parents who are then unable to find affordable or acceptable childcare might have to give up their jobs, which might increase the likelihood that they could lose their homes, driving down property values in the area. And it would definitely decrease the likelihood that they have disposable income to patronize local businesses in Crown Hill and Ballard.
I'd much rather my tax money goes to a daycare program that has proven to be extremely valuable in our community than to things like monorail plans that never get built or plans to “beautify the financial district”. Or stadiums that got voted down three times.
I pay taxes so that the money can go toward community services: police, fire, parks department and helping those less fortunate. Quality childcare for a low-income family to be able to work is almost impossible to find in this country. Plus, I know plenty of rich families who pay full tuition to send their kids to Small Faces because it is such a good program.
I am more than happy that my tax dollars finally went to something valuable in the grand scheme of things.
What a strange world you live in, alternating between the nostalgic past (of neighborhood bowling alleys mom-n-pop hardware stores), and the immediate here and now (unless a developer utilizes a space immediately, it is a manifest failure.)
Fact is, we live in a market. For all of those evil “out-of-state” developers, we have “local” developers doing projects in someone else's state. Let's not be so damned provincial about everything. Over-development has caused a glut of housing, which has lowered housing prices, which has simply made home-ownership more affordable to many people. In fact, THAT is the only consequence of the market – sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.
The argument that there is more value in a “local” business versus a “national” business is both: a) specious, and; b) irrelevant.
How/where you chose to spend your money is your decision, and yours alone. There is no greater or lesser good in it. If you think it is “more good” to buy from an allegedly-local business (stocked with national products), then you value things which may only be of value to you. Seattle's effort to place collective value on abstractions like “local” and “artisan” are efforts to gain political capital for social control.
Fortunately, we still have a Constitution that respects the rights of individuals and their property….
I live in a world and neighborhood where, fortunately, the majority of people I know are in favor of this purchase. The only people I've “met” who oppose it are the handful who've posted to this article. Considering that the article about the “sidecar dog” got just as many comments, it would seem that very few people are upset about it.
The Constitution does indeed respect the rights of individuals and their property. It enabled those who were opposed to this purchase to say so and to fight it in court. Which they did, and they lost, so game over.
Why don't you volunteer to join the Small Faces Board? Then you could assist in the creation of the new entity that will ultimately take ownership and collect rent from Small Faces. You could have a say in making sure the new entity gets the full “value” out of the building and property.
Or you could just continue to post complaints about something that's not going to change. Your choice.
Here's what's going to change. Seattle residents pay 9.5%+ sales tax. Money is being squandered on pet projects that draw the sympathies of narrow interests in our neighborhoods, who our at-large city council panders to in scraping-together votes. Now that our city's infrastructure is faltering (Driven on the roads lately? Seen the condition of the parks? Called 9-1-1?), these pet projects are coming at the direct expense of things that truly matter. (Do you think Seattle residents are going to vote for a sales tax of greater than 10%?)
So, in fact, these little civic spending sprees (subsidized give-aways) are now coming at the direct expense of the stuff that keeps a city safe, moving and productive.
So here's what's going to change. Seattle takes one more little step closer to being a Milwaukee, a Cincinnati, a Detroit – cities where more people benefitted from government, than contributed, and the the smart people bailed the hell out.
But go ahead… keep spending city-wide money on things your neighborhood likes. And the rest of Seattle will spend your tax money on things they like. And soon someone has to pay for it all.
My school is sold!