Chronology of Park Land Takings

Olmsted
advice against taking of park land

Strong
warning of Olmsted firm against the taking of land in Volunteer
Park for the building of any facilities (however enlightened) for
purposes other than those for maintenance of the park or for
visitors’ bodily needs.

Quote
from signage in water tower exhibit in Volunteer Park

19??

Hiistory:
Viretta Park land donated by Denny family

Viretta
Park land dedicated in her memory by the Denny family.

19??

History:
Volunteer Park Conservatory

Building
of the Conservatory

1933-
1934

History:
Seattle Art Museum (SAM) erected in Volunteer Park

The
taking of parkland for the erection of the Seattle Art Museum
(SAM) in Volunteer Park

1933

Assesments
of “Garden Court” at designed for SAM in Volunteer
Park

In 1934, American
Architect announced
“For concept, scale, and mastery of materials, the interior garden court must be counted among Gould’s finest spaces.” Quoted in J.K.Ochsner, ed., Shaping
Seattle Architecture: A Historical Guide to the Architects, U.
W. Press, 2014 p.215

Architect
of design change, Sam Miller:

“the
Garden Court is ‘not really a gallery per se’ because
the skylight limits what kinds of art can be shown.”

.”-
Jen Graves, Stranger website Sept 11, 2016

CEO
Kimerly Rorschach on the Garden Court: “To me, when you go in
there it feels a bit of a dead end…it can’t take you
anywhere. I think that we can still have intimate events there.
Depends how you set up the tables and chairs and circulate using
the glassed in lobby.

Some
of the events it gets a little crowded in there.”- Jen
Graves, Stranger
website Sept 11, 2016

Carl
Gould (1873-1939) built several works in the Moderne style, the
first an elaborately detaiiled building for Pacific Phone and
Telegraph in Longview, WA in 1928.

The
Seattle Art Museum was “the first museum in the United
States in a Moderne style, this structure received nationwide
acclaim.”

Ochsner:
Shaping,
p.214-5)

1993-
1997

History:
the taking of Seattle park land for private use: Viretta Park

Seattle
Parks Dept. under direction of Seattle Parks Dept. director, Holly
Miller allowed Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, to stage the
heavy equipment, workers’ vehicles, materials, etc. for the
refurbishment of his home bordering the upper part of Viretta
Park.

Schultz’s
workers erected a gravel road in the park as well as landscaping
to visually separate park visitors from the road, thus taking the
land as his personal property.

.

“Friends
of Viretta Park” sued Seattle Parks and Schultz. The judge
himself visited the park to witness the taking and decided against
Schultz and The Seattle Parks Dept. Parks and Schultz appealed the
lower court’s decision. An appeals court ruling reversed the
lower court’s decision and the use of the land was lost to
the public.

Passed
by Seattle City Council January 22, 1997

Seattle
Ordinance #118477

declaring
the end of the taking of Seattle’s public parks.

“Section
1: All lands and facilities held now or in the future by The City
of Seattle for park and recreation purposes, whether designated as
park, park boulevard, or open space, shall be preserved for such
use; and no such land or facility shall be sold, transferred, or
changed from park use to anther usage unless the City shall first
hold a public hearing regarding the necessity of such a
transaction…..”

“199?

Erection
of the SAM in downtown Seattle

The
Volunteer Park museum was renamed Seattle Asian Art Museum (SAAM).

Statements
of COO Beckerman re storage and growing populations from India

Current
storage of goods having no relevance to SAAM operations is still
in effect.

Statements
of SAM C.0.0. Richard Beckerman at Cal Anderson Park “outreach”
meeting August 20, 2016

2001-

2007

Washington
Mutual Savings and Loan (WaMu) “boomed and Killinger
profited handsomely. Between 2001 and 2007, the WaMu CEO pocketed
an estimated $88 million in compensation.”*

2002

“In 2002, WaMu and SAM cut a deal that allowed the bank to build its
new headquarters on…SAM property.”*

.

“Kerry and Linda Killinger Gallery” established.

Linda Killinger,
wife of Washington Mutual (WaMu)
C.E.O. Kerry Killinger, became a SAM
board member and WaMu became a tenant of SAM.*

“SAM
got construction loans to help build the new wing, which would triple its exhibition space. As part of the creative agreement,
WaMu agreed to a long-term $5.8-million-a-year lease for the eight
floors of office space that exist above SAM’s new four-floor
wing.”

2007-8

WaMu failure

“SAM board member Linda Killinger, gave more than $1 million to the capital campaign that built the new SAM wing.”* A Killinger
gallery still adorns SAM downtown.

“In
the great crash of 2008, WaMu
wasn’t
an innocent victim. It was one of the main perpetrators.”*

*All starred references from Bruce Barcott: website: Shame
and the Redemptive Effects of Philanthropy
June
1, 2009

“Because
of the loss of its rental revenue from its rental of property to
WAMU, SAAM declined to accept the $11 million granted for the
repair of the City of Seattle-owned SAAM building. Seattle used
the funds for another need.”*

2007?

Renovation
or expansion of SAAM?

$11 million

When
Seattle Parks was granted $11 million from the parks bond issue, it was for the purpose of renovating the SAAM building alone, not for
expansion of SAAM into Volunteer Park land.

“The city of Seattle has committed $2 million to the design and
planning of the renovation and expansion, plus $11 million through
the 2008 parks levy which has an escalator clause to account for
current construction costs eight years later.”

–Capitol
Hill Times
Sept 15, 2016.

2015?

$2
million for “design and plsnning”

2015?

$3 million taxpayer bailout for “lost interest”

When
SAAM returned to the Seattle City Council, to demand payment of the original, promised $11 million grant, SAAM also demanded
approximately $3 million “extra” as “lost interest.” It was granted. There
is no known record of SAAM demanding an “interest payment”
of $3 million from Linda and Kerry Killinger of Bellevue, WA, who may have accrued some interest themselves from the $88 million that they culled from investors’ and borrowers’ losses. Nor is there a record of a Parks plan to provide basics to long lines of park visitors such as toilet paper on busy weekends
in one of the two tiny public bathrooms in the park.

Thus, some of the very taxpayers of Seattle who lost their homes and/or
jobs in the WaMu scam and following nationwide recession are now
being taxed to award SAAM an extra, compensatory

$3
million perhaps in recognition of and compensation for the cozy
deals between SAM and the Killingers.

In addition, SAAM is demanding a “small” $200,000 annual payment for the SAAM “maintenance fees as well as the total of about $21 million+ that the taxpayers of Seattle are also
expected to fund for the bulldozing of one of Seattle’s
finest parks. Taxpayers have by now paid $2 million+ for the
latest in a bizarre series of an unsettling parade of bizarrely
mundane re-created glass walls, the latest being a massive
overhang over the former idea of a giant rock pile: all to
provide museum goers with a “connection with the park.”

April
25, 2016

Construction
Permit processed

SAAM applied for a City of Seattle construction permit for “interior and exterior renovations of approximately 9,670 square foot new addition” at a total cost of $15,381,000, the budget for
exterior and interior renovation and expansion.” No notice is made of an additional expansion of a tower on the north side and a three story addition into the east side the total of which
would amount to a total of 13,000 sq. ft.

In two outreach meeting Sept. 10, 2016, SAAM revealed a total
estimated area of the expansion
alone
to the museum of 13,000 sq. ft. With a total cost of over
$50,000,000 of which about 20% would be the cost of the expansion.

S

eattle
Department of Construction and Inspection Permit # 6529634

2015-
2016?

$2 million+ Payment of City grant funds to LMN architects et al. for
“planning.”

According to its “outreach meeting” on September 10, 2016, the $2
million is “mostly spent”

The original design featured a 3-story glass-encased exterior stairway
wrapping around and down to an area of the park to be bulldozed
and leveled. Also planned was a large pile of rocks to be featured
at its base and long concrete slabs laid down for park visitors.

Additional
$5 million request

SAAM:
makes preliminary $5 million additional request for new structure
and renovation

SAAM’s
total demands to the City for demolition and construction alone at
the Park site are now about $21 million.

2015-
2016?

B
y-invitation-only
“community” groups at planning meetings

Over
the entire period of planning, how many notices of the proposed
renovation and expansion plans were provided to the public? When
and how many advisory planning meetings were held and attended by
invitation only?

Of
the $2 million “mostly spent” how could nothing have
been budgeted for public information?

SAM
CEO Rorsach in September 10, 2016: on exclusion of public notice:
“We have not been working in secret. We just have been
working with a smaller, more
knowledgeable
group to get them to a point to where we could show them more
broadly.”

Of
the 200+ people queried in Volunteer Park, about ten had heard
something about the plans, but most were confused by the
well-advertised proposal for the bandstand’s tear-down and
rebuilding and knew nothing about the expansion of SAAM itself.

2015-

2016?

Invitation-only
discussions neglect park users

Will
the discussions of the participants of invitation-only respondents
be reported to the public?

P
ublic
excluded

A

comment from a participant in one of the invitation-only meetings:

2015-

2016?

Obscure
announcements about “public”.

During the
period of planning, how widely were notice of SAAM’s public
relations meetings announced to the public and where were they
held? outreach resulted in virtually no attendance or attendance
only by museum insiders, employees, and “by
invitation-only” event participants.

Two tiny announcements on SAAM website announcing “renovation”
not “expansion”

A website in August featuring a “renovation” to the SAAM
building made only slight mention of an expansion. On a subfolder
at the end of many scroll-downs was a notice of a public outreach
in Cal Anderson Park in August, attended by 4 people.

2016

Unusual
staging and access “ideas” mentioned to participants
at August and Sept. “outreaches.”

How
recently were “nearby churches” contacted to acquire “staging” for construction over a period of as many as 2 years? Specifically, how much acreage was requested?

“Church”
accommodations mentioned by both Architect Miller and COO
Beckerman in August/and by architect on Sept.10

Which
“nearby churches” can accommodate the staging of a
massive SAAM construction site for almost 2 years? No funding
provided for search from the $2million grant already used up?

Aug.

2016

Traffic and staging and circulation on Capitol Hill

What planning, financing, traffic accommodations have been made for the use of City of Seattle streets to provide access for heavy
equipment, material, etc. to Volunteer Park during the approx. two
year project?

Very
detailed plans have been circulated, but no announcements and no
plans allowed to be viewed by the public as of Sept. 19, 2016

Will
neighboring businesses

and
residents be provided with this information?

If
so, when?

2017-2018?

Funding:
Damage to City private and to park staging areas

To
repair damage to Park grounds and Park and City streets by
heaving equipment and traffic, what organization will provide the
funds?

Will
City taxes be used to repair damage to infrastructure?

2018?
And

Taxpayers’
future burden: Maintenance costs paid by City

At
the Sept. 2006 SAAM CEO declared that the SAAM plan includes the
demand that the City of Seattle must pay a “tiny maintenance
fee” of $200,000/annum.

“Rorsach
said SAM has an operating agreement with the citym which is
currently being renegotiated, however the city will continue to
cover utilities and operating costs, such as engineering and
housekeeping which is about $200,000 annually.”- Capitol
Hill Times
Sept 15, 2016.

$200,000/annum:
Insufficient funding according to those with experience in
building maintenance

August 2016

East
park area

What is the source of information that the area east of SAAM which SAAM
CEO Rorsach,

COO Beckerman and architect Miller have deemed an area to be devoid of
park visitors and thus “dead” and “unsafe?”

Rorsach
on the east side of the Park: “There have been changes that haven’t been so happy, and we think we can make that a lot better, we can create better landscaping there.”

Of 200+ park visitors interviewed in summer/fall 2016, all found the area east of the museum to be “safe, restful, fun, beautiful, definitely not ‘dead.’”

All comments from park visitors focused on the illegality of the land takeover as well as the proposed jarring design of the proposed
exterior in a serene area of tall trees. Comments from humor: “Why
put a Circuit City in the Park?” to grimness: “The
Park visitors may need a view out but we walkers will be forced to
walk around it and look at the thing.”

2015-2016?

EIS:
requested/

completed?

When and by whom and of what duration was a study of the area east of SAAM? What organization investigated the area and reported that the vistas, the trees, birds, mammals, insects, and shrubs of that
“dead” (area to be devoid of interest or beauty? What
environmental impact on wildlife?

H
ow
many consultations of park visitors recreating in the park:
playing, picnicking, resting, perambulating with children and
pets, birding, attending park tree lectures, tai chi and other
classes, reading, climbing trees, etc. were made?

What
part of the $2 million spent thus far on planning and design was
allocated to an EIS?

2015-2016?

When
and by whom was an EIS study of the area east of SAAM made which
determined the potential danger to birds anjd other animals from
the addition of 13,000 square feet including hundreds of square
feet of glass to the east and a 3 story tower of concrete to the
north:

a
wall of glass extending the full length of the expansion and a
glass-wall-enclosed “deck”approximately 24 ft. in height, the
addition of additional windows throughout the proposed eastern
walls expansion

The
addition of a concrete tower approximately 40’ high on the
northern side of the building

Audubon
society or other environmental protection organizations?

The
glass wall and roof of the “deck” described by SAAM
to provide an opportunity for museum visitors to observe the
eastern area of Volunteer Park below

August,

Sept.

2016

Characterization
of the eastern section of the park as “dead, unsafe,
unattractive.”

How
was evidence gathered by SAAM to determine that the Eastern
section of the park is “dead, unsafe” or
unattractive?”

CEO
Rorsach:”we haven’t been working in secret, we’ve
just been working with a smaller, more
knowledgeable
group.”

“We
can create a better connection with the Park”- ”-Jen
Graves, Stranger
website Sept 11, 2016

CEO
Rorsach: “We believe the east side of the museum, the back
side of the museum, is not especially attractive. There have ben
changes that haven’t been so happy, so we think we can nake
that a lot better, we can create better landscapng there, and
create a better connection with the park.”-Jen Graves,
Stranger
website Sept 11, 2016

In
200+ random interviews with Park visitors in Aug.-Sept. 2016, all
stated that the eastern park is beautiful. None agreed that the
park area is dead, unsafe, or unused. Over 200 visitors signed a
statement against any taking of park land for the purpose of an
addition to the current museum building. Many commented that “a
connection with the park” could best be facilitated by
walking in it.