by Josh Feit and Erica C. Barnett Henry Aronson, the Second Avenue property owner who ran the anti-monorail campaign two years ago, doesn’t approve of the monorail recall campaign that filed with the state last week. It’s not that Aronson supports the monorail today–in fact, he’s part of a Second Avenue property-owner group that’s trying to stall the project. But as Aronson sees it, the recall campaign faces an overwhelming task: showing that the monorail agency has “significant financial problems” and then rounding up 54,000 signatures in 90 days. And besides, Aronson’s anti-monorail group, OnTrack, may have a savvier idea.
Attorneys for OnTrack reportedly looked into ways to undermine the project and, realizing that the monorail’s recent revenue shortfall didn’t offer a compelling case that the monorail was financially untenable, suggested two complementary strategies: Delay the project and spike costs.
OnTrack member and Second Avenue property owner Howard Anderson says his group is not trying to sabotage the monorail–they’re only trying to get the Seattle Monorail Project (SMP) to “do it right.” “They’ve got a project, and they don’t think anyone’s going to stand in their way,” says Anderson, who owns Second Avenue property assessed at $4 million. “If we ask questions and get them to do it right, at least we could get it adjusted and it could be tolerable.”
Monorail board member Cindi Laws doesn’t believe that Anderson and OnTrack have the monorail’s best interests at heart. “It’s not about providing oversight,” she says. “It’s about stopping the project. What does this group provide that the 16 public entities overseeing the project don’t provide? The only way they can stop the monorail is to drive up the costs.”
Call Laws paranoid, but there’s cer- tainly evidence that–in the guise of “improving” the project–OnTrack’s gang of Second Avenue business owners are working to stop the monorail in its tracks.
Consider the endless debate over how far the monorail should be set back from adjacent buildings on Second Avenue. Originally, property owners on Second Avenue criticized the SMP for its plan to run trains as close as five feet to their buildings. The agency responded by moving the trains–and columns–a full traffic lane away. The change got the columns farther away from buildings, as property owners had requested, but required larger, bulkier columns than originally planned. “We could shrink the column size back down and move it closer to the buildings again, but that isn’t what they want. Column size is what gives,” SMP director Joel Horn says.
The SMP’s final proposal–which would preserve the only bike lane through downtown, eliminate one parking lane (reducing the odds that bicyclists will get hit by opening doors), preserve three traffic lanes and a bus lane, and keep the monorail nine feet from buildings–still wasn’t good enough for the Second Avenue property owners, who asked the SMP to move the monorail again, this time 14 feet from the buildings. The change would require the agency to move a huge underground electric utility bank at a cost, according to analysis by the city, of some $32 million. It would also mean as much as a 10-year-long shutdown of Second Avenue, and the loss of the only bike lane through downtown. (OnTrack publicly advocated eliminating the bike lane, which it claimed is little-used.) “Can you imagine the reaction we’d get if we actually recommended that?” Horn says. “People would go nuts.” Horn, a developer by trade, wryly comments that it’s “interesting, isn’t it, that you’ve got property owners on Second Avenue who want you to disrupt the traffic for up to 10 years on Second Avenue.” He said the monorail agency has made its case: “We said, ‘You just tell us what you want. We can do smaller columns, or we can save a lane, or we can put it further away from the buildings. What we can’t do is not build the monorail on Second Avenue.”
While city hall staffer Martha Lester, who’s overseeing monorail implementation for the city council, says outlandish $32 million ideas like moving the underground electric duct bank don’t have much traction, it does spotlight OnTrack’s game plan: They were never serious about moving the electric duct bank. They only suggested it in hopes of driving up costs, stalling permits, and ultimately stopping the monorail from being built.
With negotiations to approve the monorail’s plan beginning in earnest between the city and the SMP this week, OnTrack now sees a potential beachhead to launch its attack. As the city and the SMP hammer out the specifics of the project (the city must approve the monorail plan by granting building permits through what’s known as a transit-way agreement), OnTrack has a chance to lobby the city to place an array of expensive obligations on the agency. These could include neighborhood wish lists that the city can’t fund but may try to jam into the monorail budget, such as costly sidewalk fixes that don’t have anything to do with monorail construction.
“Lots of people want their sidewalks fixed, [but] the city doesn’t have money to fix sidewalks–so it would be a natural thing for the city to ask us to do that,” Horn said Sunday, after spending the afternoon meeting with city planners as negotiations kicked off. “But it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Some of [the sidewalks] are half a mile away from the monorail. This is about building a monorail system. We didn’t go to the voters with a neighborhood improvement fund, we went to the voters with a monorail project.”
However, there’s certainly reason to believe that OnTrack has the clout to bog down the monorail by demanding expensive improvements. The group is largely made up of powerful property owners (representing Second Avenue property with an assessed value of over $450 million) who have a history of making handsome donations to city council members and Mayor Nickels. The 20-plus OnTrack members have personally downloaded $56,670 over the last three municipal election cycles to mayoral, city attorney, and city council candidates. OnTrack member Aaron Alhadeff, for example, whose property group owns three sites along Second Avenue assessed at $22 million, donated $1,550 to council members and the mayor in the past six months alone. It’s interesting to note that Alhadeff made his first-ever donation to Nickels just last month as the monorail debate began to heat up.
The contributions are particularly tempting for Nickels, who has landed on the opposite side of downtown business folks on a number of issues in the past few years. For example, he squared off against OnTrack member and Second Avenue pro-perty owner Martin Selig over labor issues at Selig’s properties. Facing reelection next year, Nickels could be vulnerable if the wealthy Second Avenue crowd lined up against him. Word is, Nickels is delaying the legislation and calling for more studies.
Nickels’ newfound skepticism toward the monorail–historically, he’s been a steady supporter, voting to give key funds to the beleaguered Elevated Transportation Company back in 2000 as a King County council member and stumping for the project as mayor in 2002–has sent chills through the ranks over at the SMP. Team Nickels denies it’s had a change of heart. Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis says, “The mayor continues to support the project,” while adding, “we have a responsibility to make sure the finances are there.” However, when Nickels’ monorail point people at the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT), director Grace Crunican and monorail program manager Ethan Melone, suddenly started talking late last week about adding expensive items into an agreement that the SMP had already spent months negotiating with Melone, it made SMP staffers wonder what was going on.
SDOT’s Crunican wouldn’t offer details of the negotiations. As to any expensive obligations for the SMP, Crunican says, “There are no new elements. All the items we’re talking about have been around for a while. They’re all still on the table and still in the mix.”
SMP director Horn says he isn’t irked by “new” suggestions: He’s irked because he thought the issues were already resolved during months of negotiations with SDOT. “We’re not for or against some of these amenities,” Horn says, “we’re just not sure if they’re necessary. Let’s get the system built first.”
After the mayor’s office and the SMP agree on a plan, Nickels will send the agreement to city council. This is slated to happen in mid-April. While the council, under the leadership of council president Jan Drago and veteran Nick Licata, is leaning in favor of approving the monorail plan, the council vote is likely to be another battleground for the SMP. The council’s resident monorail critic, Council Member Richard Conlin, is already hinting that OnTrack’s strategy of adding costs will color the council debate. “I’m not interested in jacking up costs,” Conlin says coyly, “but there are serious concerns on Second Avenue.” (This from the transportation chair who gave $50 million of city money to Sound Transit for community development. What a hypocrite!) “However the chips may fall, that’s how they fall.” With Conlin echoing much of its agenda, OnTrack will have another shot to stop the monorail by pushing for expensive “improvements” and more process.