Seattlest Pix 09Nov08
Weekly Around the -Ists
Seattlest Pix 09Nov09
Can't Miss It: Monday
Ram Brewery Mug Club Open Enrollment Coming 11/16
If we were a building older than sixty years or so in Seattle right now we'd really think about going on the lam, laying low for the next few years, maybe sending the wife and kids off to her sister's lake cabin, although they'll probably come for that, too, eventually. It's just not safe for an old landmark building in the current environment. Next up on the block is the Rainier Cold Storage Stock House in Georgetown--It's owners are planning to demolish it. The Stock House is a part of the 5.5 acre Rainier campus that was declared a Seattle Historic Landmark in 1993. "Historic Landmark" might as well be a death sentence in Seattle.
The Stock House was built in 1903 and a combination of factors make it as American as...well, its huge bulk, its involvement in the mass-producing of pilsner and its history as a company town make it as American as it gets. Yeah, some of it's in some pretty rough shape, as you can see in Part 1 and Part 2 of the Vintage Seattle Blog's recent tour.
Sabey Corp bought the Rainier Cold Storage campus last year for $9.9 million and made commitments to honor the leases of the current tenants, which most prominently includes Georgetown Brewing. Here's what Sabey CEO Dave Sabey told the Puget Sound Business Journal at the time of the sale:
"We believe this investment represents a great opportunity to support the revitalization of Georgetown as a thriving business and community center while helping preserve an important chapter of our local history."
This is from a statement from Sabey about a recent assessment of the Stock House building, courtesy of the Paper Moose Blog:
Coupled with the life/safety issues involved, they advised us to immediately vacate the the building tenants and move to demolition of the building. They emphasized that they want long term people out, but that walk throughs are permitted. Further, danger to Airport Way isn't imminent, but is of sufficient concern that it is prudent to expedite demolition. Therefore, we have applied to the Landmarks Board and are working on a permit application with DPD to proceed accordingly.
Here are the permit applications that, if granted, will allow Sabey to demolish this Seattle Historic Landmark. Those documents describe the damage done to the Stock House by 60+ years as cold storage. The coolers were turned off in 2002 and the building started to move.
Further, the building was used to produce ice on the 3rd floor, which involves the use of caustic heavy salts. This has leeched into the masonry and reinforced concrete to destroy the structural integrity of the east side of the building. We took numerous soil samples under the Stock House, measured movement in the wall on Airport Way, and installed 53 crack monitors inside the building in late January. Our engineers (KPFF, represented by Paul Diedrich and Bryan Tokarczyk) measured the movements while we assessed redevelopment possibilities, with an emphasis on trying to save the building. In June it became clear that the building was too unstable and deteriorating to save.
Oh well, what are ya gonna do. It's unsafe. Sabey, for it's part, seems genuine in lamenting the pending destruction of the Stock House, but they haven't replied to emails, and the dilapidated state of the Stock House seems to be on the previous owners anyway. In any case, this seems like a situation where, if the building is at all salvageable, at any price, the city or the city citizens should help them out somehow and get it restored. How much can a proper restoration cost? More than a wedding? To say that we have a poor track record for funding this kind of thing, though, is an understatement, Pike Place Market being the exception, not the rule. Seattlest can't help but feel that another city might spend some resources to make the Rainier campus safe for occupation with an eye towards keeping these buildings around for another hundred years. Pullman, in Chicago, for example, is from a similar era, and huge swaths of that company town are in no danger of disappearing. Sure, it's all gentrified, but at least the structures are still there, and will be there.
Georgetown has its hands full trying to keep out both condos and garbage dumps--It doesn't need to start losing the neighborhood's crown jewel piece by piece. Yeah, yeah, "the only thing that stays the same is change," and all that, and Seattle continues to feed its future with its past. Someday soon all we'll have left will be the Underground Tour and HistoryLink's few bits sitting on a hard drive.
Images courtesy of JvA of the Mid Beacon Hill Blog.
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West Coasters hate history. It's no surprise Seattle has no respect for it, either, particularly considering it's own unseemly one.
This will be a huge loss. Very sad.
As someone who would love nothing more than to see the building preserved in its entirety, I also have to say that I saw for myself how it is literally sinking into the earth. The decades of use as a cold storage facility created a vast ice ball under the building, and as it melts, the building continues to sink.
Inside the building, you can see brand-new molding already shifting away from the floor. You can see how cracks in the wall are splitting like fault lines, making visible progress from month to month. It's not just structural repairs that are necessary -- somehow the earth beneath it would need to be fixed, all the way down to the bedrock.
I'm surprised and disappointed that Sabey didn't return your e-mails. Jim Harmon has been pretty forthcoming with community members. When I e-mailed him and told him I haddn't been able to make it to the meeting at which the demolition annoucement was made, he gave me his cell phone number and told me he'd explain it to me personally.
Fortunately, most of the complex will be saved and restored. It's only the Stock House section that will be demolished. Yes, I know that this will irrevocably change the whole look of Georgetown (the Stock House is in the center of the complex), but from what I saw, I do believe them that nothing could be done.
Did any structural engineers go on any of the building tours? I'd love to hear what an engineer has to say about the state of the building and whether it could somehow be saved.
--JvA from Mid Beacon Hill
Well, that's a reason to change my mind about moving to GT.
So why not make them sign something, some terms, saying they preserve the facade or recreate it to preserve the feel and spirit of the place? I'm thinking of the Pearl in Portland. I agree, it's like a Rob Zombie movie in there... But if one of those stucko, faux-Euro, trashy condo Belltown thingies takes its place...Aaaaack!
Well I just don't know what. I think we can fight the dump, and we can take on the yups, and bring home the Field Roast, and fry it up in a pan...
-mdutton
Precisely. I, too, was thinking of the Pearl District in PDX when reading this. In a rather similar example, they took the old Henry Weinhard's brewery building and made classy apartments/condos/restaurants out of it while maintaining the building's original character and feel. From the Henry Weinhard's wiki page: "The brewery was a fixture of an old industrial and warehouse district which, beginning in the 1990s, has become known as the Pearl District in downtown Portland, and its closure marked the beginning of a massive urban rejuvenation project." Hmmm...sounding more and more like Georgetown... Though gentrified up the wazoo, Pearl is a really cool artsy neighborhood. I've heard great things about Georgetown too, with it drawing the young artist type, rather than Belltown's young professional type. Bring it on, and don't rubber-stamp another glassy steel condo on top of what little old-town character this city still has.
I took a tour of this building last month, and to be honest, this building is fucked. Most of them are fucked. This is a 9 million dollar headache.
I have a great appreciation for what Sabey is trying to do, and they seemed genuninely interested in protecting this great piece of history, but one of the buildings where the tenants are has sunk over an inch since January. All the drywall and kick trim put up is now cracking.
The building was cooled to 12 below zero, so the soil below the building froze to the bedrock, 13-24 ft below, and only half- HALF! - of it has defrosted since 2002. They estimate 5 more years before it is totally defrosted. Until then, you can't do any improvements.
And there are other problems too, like the sandstone on the Airport Way side has been eroding, and the rebar under the salt baths in the building are completely rusted out. How do you fix that? These guys want to keep this building and its history, but try and appreciate what they are up against. This building is rotting.