in your anecdote, what damage did arena sports cause? i played soccer there a bit, and thought it was a decent use of the space. the fact that they are offering services to the community free of charge on top of agreeing to maintain the buildings seems great. this, in spite of my initial reaction that business shouldn't be given more space there.

The MPAC committee mentioned above is made up entirely of the traditional NIMBY crowd at Magnuson that has opposed every positive development in the park. Bonnie Miller, Lynn Ferguson, Jeannie Hale, and Jeanette Williams (RIP; now represented by her closet-case son Rusty). These are the exact people who bitterly opposed the installation of public housing in the park & ran an implicitly racist scare campaign about crime and property values. They opposed the off leash area. They ran a decade long campaign against building ball fields in the park, which added millions to the final pricetag, they delayed the creation of the wetlands as a stalling tactic. Basically these folks have been viciously opposed to anything that will serve any part of the public that does not live in the adjacent neighborhood, cloaking their obstructionist agenda in whatever cause seems like it might be effective. Now they are want to designate building 41 (a 50's era brick gas station of no great character) in order to strangle the progress of creating a Tennis Center in the park.
With regard to building 11 project, its probably a lousy deal, but not for any of the reasons listed. As crummy as the building is, its not as urgently deteriorating as 18 and its improvement is not as helpful as redevelopment of the west wing of 30 or the back side of 47 would be. The proposed tenants (with the exception of a possible restaurant) would add nothing to public benefit. That said, its not clear that most of the current tenants add much public benefit either... Micro Planet is a private for-profit energy technology company that the Nickels administration forced Parks to put in the building even though Micro Planet did not meet the criteria for being a tenant in the parks... and lets face it, the artists themselves are private for-profit entities, not non-profits arts organizations. With regard to Sand Point Arts and Culture (SPACE), Parks has been actually very aggressive about fostering the arts, but hasn't had a viable partner, well, ever... Parks recruited and brought in Seattle Musical Theatre and provided a theatre space in building 47, created the artists colony in building 11 which is now so upset, provided workshop and storage and rehearsal space for Greenstage, Circus Contraption, and others, created a free summer concert series and been aggressive about trying to find funding to improve West 30 for...efforts which the art scene citywide has been somewhat disdainful of. Superintendent Tim Gallagher in empowering this Gang of Four has once again demonstrated his pathological unwillingness to learn local Seattle politics (anybody remember the smoking and spitting ban? The senseless war on public nudity? Why does this man still have a job? Hello, is anybody paying attention?)