Monorail For Sale

It's a day of reckoning today as the bids are due for the land that was destined for the monorail we failed to make manifest. Properties that were forceably purchased by the Seattle Monorail Project for stations and track right-of-ways are obviously not needed anymore and are being sold back to the public. Simply selling the land back to its original owners is not possible because Washington state law says other bids must be accepted, despite a few proposed bills that were introduced in a recent session in Olympia specifically to deal with the situation.

If the sale goes well it should have a positive impact on taxes or car tabs, but the original land-holders are going to get screwed. Sorry, guys. Today's actually only the end of the preliminary bidding, after which the monorail agency and will review the bids and then hold a second round. Presumably you won't be participating in the second round if you don't have your foot in the door by today, though, so if you were thinking about picking up some prime Seattle real estate now's the time to act.

Here's the list of properties for sale in inconvenient PDF format and here's the website with the bid form and whatnot.