Cafe Nordos Erin Brindley contemplates a void where a staircase should be.
Cafe Nordo's Erin Brindley contemplates a void where a staircase should be. Kelly O

Well, that didn't take long. This week's paper included a story about Cafe Nordo trying to finish their new Culinarium in Pioneer Square—in the old Elliott Bay bookstore—which was being delayed largely due to a staircase. They said their contractor, Seattle Construction, claimed there was a "steel shortage" because of all the building in the city, so they couldn't get the metal they needed to reinforce the stairs and bring the building to code.

Forty-eight hours after the story came out—which included some reporting indicating that there is not, in fact, a steel shortage in the city, though some custom fabricators are very busy and have a backlog of work at the moment—Seattle Construction turned up and started building the staircase.

Because Nordo has a show ready to open, this latest delay was going to cost them around $15,000. (The opening of a show is a delicate thing when you've got all the actors booked and rehearsed, but can't start selling tickets because of a building problem.)

Erin Brindley, Nordo's cofounder and artistic director, says they still don't have the steel yet, but she's happy that progress has begun.

The strongest denial of the steel shortage came from Scott Lewis, at Engineering News Record in New York City, which has been tracking the prices of 67 different building materials in 20 US cities (including Seattle) for more than 50 years.

He saw no jump in the price of steel in Seattle lately, though there was a small price increase for pine and fir two-by-fours.

The moral? If your contractor says there's a shortage of a certain kind of material, call Engineering News Record—the data might tell another story.

Godspeed, Seattle Construction and Cafe Nordo.