Nickels Panders
Seattle's monorail project is running up against its perennial nemesis: Seattle's political and business establishment. And when I say establishment, I mean Seattle's largest landlord, Equity Office Properties--and its new friend, Mayor Greg Nickels.
Equity, which owns or manages $387 million worth of property along the monorail's proposed Second Avenue route, including the Washington Mutual Tower, is a $3.2 billion Chicago-based Fortune 500 company that owns a 12 percent hunk of Seattle's office market.
While Equity Office Properties, along with other major downtown property owners like Alhadeff Properties, Inc., Pine Street Group LLC, and Martin Selig Real Estate, has certainly been public about its anti-monorail position (backing anti-monorail group OnTrack), the group's most effective efforts have taken place behind the scenes, where it has been busy lobbying Nickels. The success of Equity et al.'s backroom strategy, and its devastating impact on the monorail, leaked out like a sarin nerve gas attack on Friday, April 30, when people got a look at the crippling monorail agreement Mayor Nickels sent to council.
(For months, the mayor has been working on an agreement, known as the Transit Way Agreement, with the monorail agency. The agreement gives the Seattle Monorail Project permission to use the city's right-of-way under certain conditions.)
According to people at city hall who saw the document, Equity et al.'s handprints were all over it--loading the agreement with unfair conditions that would kill the project.
It's not surprising that Nickels would cave to pressure from the likes of Equity. OnTrack is largely made up of powerful property owners (representing Second Avenue property with an assessed value of $670 million) who have a history of making handsome donations. The 20-plus OnTrack members have personally given nearly $60,000 over the last three municipal elections. It's interesting to note that Second Avenue property owner Aaron Alhadeff, who's given $1,550 to council members and the mayor in the past six months alone, made his first donation to Nickels just last February, right as the transit way negotiations were heating up. Ditto Second Avenue property owner Gary Carpenter.
Nickels is obviously susceptible to the attention. Liberal on housing and labor issues, Nickels has pissed off downtown folks throughout his term. He squared off against Second Avenue property owner Martin Selig, for example, over a union effort at Selig's properties. Nickels could be vulnerable in next year's election if Second Avenue folks line up against him.
Thankfully, while Nickels believes his bread is buttered by rich property owners, council president Jan Drago and council member Nick Licata are more interested in doing the people's business: building the monorail. Drago has the option of sidestepping Nickels' agreement and presenting her own substitute council bill. Go for it, Jan: Stand up against Nickels' monorail monkeywrenching and his kiss-assy electioneering.
