Business Moves

Rumors are swirling in Capitol Hill's Broadway business district that the Broadway Market--home to Fred Meyer, Urban Outfitters, a gym, and a litany of small businesses, from a florist to a magazine shop--may soon be overtaken by an expanded Fred Meyer or perhaps a new QFC.

The rumors may be correct--every empty space in the market (there are at least half a dozen) lacks a For Lease sign, implying that a tenant could already be lined up. More telling: A permit application is on file with the city to make "tenant improvements" for an expanded retail store with "added grocery functions." It's possible the Fred Meyer might expand, or be replaced by the nearby QFC. And according to city staffers, the QFC at Broadway and Republican has told its landlord the store plans to move. Broadway Market?

The market's general manager, Madison Marquette's Rob Pittman, did not return a call by press time, and market tenants report management has been mum on any big plans. AMY JENNIGES


Secret Plan

It may sound like jargon, but the Seattle Department of Transportation's (SDOT's) Central City Access Strategy, a long-delayed plan for unclogging downtown streets if and when the Alaskan Way Viaduct becomes, um, unusable, has suddenly become a closely guarded secret. The plan, which urban designer (and anti-highway activist: www.peopleswaterfront.org) Cary Moon has been trying to get her hands on since mid-April, purportedly includes a list of projects that could reduce congestion downtown, by encouraging people to use alternate routes and take public transit. The official line from SDOT: The strategy is still in "idea form," in the words of mobility manager Jemae Hoffman, and isn't ready for release. The conspiracy theory: The city doesn't want to rain on the state's road-building parade by proposing a plan that could eliminate the need for the viaduct. So they're squashing the central-city strategy. ERICA C. BARNETT


Monorail Opponent Misdeed #1

Monorail opponent Henry Aronson, whose group, the now-defunct Citizens Against the Monorail (CAM), which filed a public-disclosure lawsuit against the monorail agency in 2002, has apparently failed to comply with Public Disclosure Commission (PDC) rules requiring campaigns to report such expenditures as attorneys' fees. When CAM filed its last campaign-finance report, the group owed its attorneys, Ronald Beard and Judy Endejan, at least $6,700, although the group's actual costs for the years-long lawsuit were almost certainly higher.

The group's total reported debt--more than $8,000--was never cleared. Nor did CAM resolve a $4,500 overdraft on its bank account, which was still outstanding when the group filed its last report more than a year ago. Neither Aronson nor Beard returned calls for comment. NANCY DREW


Monorail Opponent Misdeed #2

More than a dozen reporters lugged notebooks and cameras to the 32nd-floor offices of Magnusson Klemencic Associates last week to hear local engineer Jon Magnusson explain why his firm had "resigned from one of the... teams" bidding on the monorail. The only problem: Neither Magnusson nor his firm had ever been a part of either of the two teams bidding for the project--something monorail board chair Tom Weeks noted in an e-mail sent to his fellow board members last Friday. "Just to be clear, one can't quit a team on which one is not a member," Weeks wrote. Moreover, Weeks points out, Magnusson is hardly the unbiased source he claims to be: Years ago, Weeks says, he was known for showing up at monorail board meetings and "speaking out aggressively against the project." Magnusson was also the structural engineer for the Washington Mutual Tower on Second Avenue; that building's developer, Matt Griffin, is a member of the anti-monorail organization OnTrack. ERICA C. BARNETT


Godden Plays Dirty

Mayor Nickels' plan to build lighted sports fields at Magnuson Park was scaled back nearly 40 percent (from 11 to just seven fields) at the city council's May 19 parks committee meeting. Council member Jean Godden, who teamed up with Peter Steinbrueck to hijack the meeting, called Nickels' proposal "the [sports] complex from Hell." She argued that the 11-field plan "seemed to put the park totally out of balance [because] the number of acres it would take is just oversized."

What's actually oversized is Godden's rhetoric. The fact is Nickels' proposal would only take up 7 percent of Magnuson's 320 acres. JOSH FEIT