After Five Years, a Taker!

Posted July 31, 2007 at 3:19 pm by Aimee Curl

Even before the new, flashy Seattle City Hall was completed in 2003, officials and architects envisioned some of the airy space being occupied by vendors— a flower shop, a newsstand, maybe a deli. But the only amenity today (and a fine one at that) is a coffee cart operated by City Grind in the main lobby.

That is, for now. The city has finally found a taker for about 3,000 square feet on the Fourth Avenue side, ground floor. And it’s none other than Noah’s Bagels. Yes City Hall denizens, you’ll soon be able to eat all the lox and shmears you can stomach from the Starbucks of bagel bakeries.

Fleets and Facilities spokeswoman Katherine Schubert-Knapp says signing a local company was the city's preference. "But we couldn’t make it work." Why’d it take so long to find a tenant? “It’s a challenging space,” Schubert-Knapp says, adding that it doesn’t help that the location is across the street form the Columbia Center and its gigantic food court.

It’s an odd nook to be sure, tinted red from the paneled doors that separate City Hall from the street (the anger room as some city employees like to call it), just north of the waterfall. City council has to approve the lease and permits still need to be awarded, but if all goes as planned, Noah’s hopes to open before year's end.

Says Schubert-Knapp: “People are excited about bagels.”

Says the mayor’s spokesman Marty McOmber: “It’s been a goal of the city to find a tenant for that space for sometime. It will be nice having another food vendor in the area.”

But Council member Richard McIver, for his part, won’t be a patron. Though he says it’s good to see the space finally getting some use, he’s more of a doughnut guy. Top Pot. Frosted Chocolate Cake.

Topics: City of Seattle

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Tom's Murder

Posted July 31, 2007 at 11:52 am by Rick Anderson

More than ten detectives still work the Tom Wales homicide case fulltime. But is there still hope of solving the 2001 murder of the federal prosecutor at his Queen Anne hilltop home? "If you investigate somebody for five years and you haven't closed the deal, you have to draw inferences from that..." a law enforcement official tells writer Jeffrey Toobin, who reports on Wales' murder this week in The New Yorker. The slaying is a backdrop to the ouster of U.S. Attorney John McKay, one of nine USAs dismissed by the Bush administration, apparently for political reasons, leading to a move to impeach U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales (see item below).

McKay has theorized he was ousted perhaps because he failed to satisfy Republicans with his review of possible voter fraud in the 2004 Gregoire-Rossi gubernatorial election. But McKay's complaints about the lack of enthusiam by the feds, particularly by the FBI, in going all out to investigate the Wales killing may have also raised GOP hackles; it was clear to some that the FBI/GOP didn't consider the slaying a priority because Wales had a liberal's view of gun control, as the leader of Washington CeaseFire. Ex-special-agent-in-charge here, Charles Mandigo, says "we got no backfill from headquarters - that is, additional agents. In other major cases that headquarters really cared about, they'd say, ‘You're not going to bleed resources, and you'll get all the backfill you need.'"

Mandigo and others also talk about their long investigation of chief suspect James Anderson , the ex-U.S. Airways pilot from Beaux Arts - the village near Bellevue - who has been often written about but never named in the Seattle Times. His attorney, Larry Setchell, said Anderson "is an innocent man and an honest man. Tom Wales was liked by everyone, including us. He did the right thing in our case by dismissing it. We were not mad at him." The attorney also denies Anderson wrote an unsigned 2006 "hit man" letter, confessing to a contract killing of Wales. In a current divorce proceeding here, Anderson's estranged wife Andrea delcared her husband "has been and continues to be the chief murder suspect in the Thomas Wales investigation," and she has also testified before a grand jury. James Anderson, in a divorce-court response, says "I am not going to comment on the ‘FBI' material as it is not relevant to this case." 

Says one investigator to Toobin: "This may be as close as you come to a perfect murder."

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Inslee attempts to start the impeachment process of Alberto Gonzales

Posted July 30, 2007 at 3:29 pm by Sean Ludwig

Today, Rep. Jay Inslee announced that he will introduce legislation tomorrow that would require the House Judiciary Committee and the House of Representatives to impeach Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Perhaps Inslee and other House Democrats were reading the New York Times this weekend, which wrote an editorial suggesting that Congress impeach Gonzales for his consistently infuriating (and likely perjured) testimonies. As for recent blunders, first there were the botched firings of nine U.S. attorneys. Then, last Thursday, F.B.I. director Robert Mueller contradicted Gonzales’ Tuesday testimony about the federal wiretapping program.

There’s no assurance that the legislation will pass, but it certainly is exciting to see a local representative making national headlines for something as needed as this. We need a strong leader in our Department of Justice and every time I watch Gonzales not answer an easy, direct question, the more I want him out.

Topics: United States of America

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Aquarium Blues

Posted July 30, 2007 at 12:49 pm by Nina Shapiro

Fresh from a vacation visit to the world-famous Monterey Bay Aquarium, I checked out our own newly expanded aquarium this weekend with high hopes that we might have copied a few things from the awe-inspiring facility to our south. Not really. The huge Window on Washington Waters in the puzzlingly oversized entrance hall is something like what Monterey does. But whereas Monterey's huge windows allow you to gawk at otherworldly fish that take your breath away—giant sea turtles and sunfish, for instance—Seattle's window offers a tame panorama of anemone, rockfish and other sea creatures we've frankly seen before. The idea was to show what it would be like to scuba dive in local waters like those at Neah Bay, which is fine if less than thrilling. But where are those most quintessential of local fish: salmon? Eaten, according to a guide I chatted with during my visit. Aquarium staff put 600 young salmon into the exhibit a few days before the facility opened last month. Within three weeks, the rockfish—taken from the wild and used to finding their own food rather than being fed by aquarium staff—had gobbled them all up. Whoops. The aquarium has more salmon to put in there, but is waiting until they're a little bigger and the rockfish have adjusted to eating what they're fed.

It's a forgivable mistake. Still, the $41 million aquarium expansion seems a let-down. Much of that sum was spent on necessary replacements of deteriorating pilings, but the aquarium also had a chunk of money to play with and spent it mostly on the big window, vacant entrance hall and a café, adding practically no new fish to their exhibits.

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Wipeout

Posted July 30, 2007 at 9:15 am by Rick Anderson

A missing element of today's columns and news stories about relocating a city skate park at Seattle Center is that City Hall could have had enough money to build hundreds of skate parks.

But King Greg and the Council Jesters blew a $50 million opportunity when they sold off the former Center skate site to the needy Bill Gates.

Rather than dispose of $72 million in city property at its valued price, the mayor, with the City Council's acquiescence, opted to give the world's richest man a break so he could use the site - mostly a vast parking lot and the skate park - to build a new headquarters for the world's richest foundation.

The Fifth Ave. N. plot went to the Gates Foundation for $22 million in 2005, and nobody got arrested.

Even a lousy $49 million break could have at least provided $1 million dedicated for a grand new skate park somewhere, with enough left over to fill a few city potholes.

Now the forgetful council has proposed shoehorning the skate park into a site north of KeyArena - and tearing out the much-liked DuPen fountain and sculptures (the decision is on hold for another week).

After two years, this is the only site the council could come up with - ultimately because of costs.

Actually, with that expensive grand entry of unused steps and plazas, City Hall itself would make a fine skate park. I hear the building is mostly vacant anyway. 

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This Just In...

Posted July 27, 2007 at 12:53 pm by Aimee Curl

Leave it to the folks on the East side. At Central Washington Biodiesel’s Ellensburg plant, customers now have a choice: they can fill up using Northwest-grown canola oil-based biodiesel, or they can pick the pump labeled “regular” biodiesel. Either way, they can be sure their petroleum-free fuel isn’t contributing to rainforest destruction. Central Washington Biodiesel guarantees that all of the fuel it sells comes from North American-grown sources— a question that’s been the source of some debate on the West side of the Cascade divide with the impending opening of Imperium’s biodiesel plant in Grays Harbor.

Central Washington Biodiesel CEO Steve Verhey says using as much locally produced oil as possible has been part of his company’s business plan from the beginning. (They opened up shop about eight months ago.) He says the separate pumps are about connecting customers to the local stuff.

“It’s an opportunity to educate people that locally grown and produced biodiesel is available," Verhey says. "If Washington state’s biodiesel industry is really going to be successful, there’s going to have to be branding that identifies Washington-produced product as premium product.”

Plus, be you a light green, a dark green, or a weekend green, at least you know what you're getting. 

Those who choose NW grown biodiesel do so at a premium, $3.75 per gallon compared with $3.29 for the “regular” variety. But price hasn’t been a deterrent so far, Verhey says. “Our first customer this week [a guy from the Seattle area] chose the NW Grown. The price didn’t particularly faze him.”

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Experimental-Drug Death

Posted July 27, 2007 at 9:53 am by Rick Anderson

Targeted Genetics Corp., a downtown Seattle biotech, and the FDA yesterday revealed that one of TGC's gene-therapy patients has died. The FDA has now halted the firm's study of a drug that could be used to treat inflammatory arthritis, and is reviewing programs involving similar experimental drug testing at other U.S. companies. The drug, clinically known as tgAAC94, was injected directly to affected joints of study subjects with inflammatory arthritis, TGC said. Only sketchy details have been released, but in a statement, TGC says the trial was halted a few days earlier "as a precautionary measure after the occurrence of a Serious Adverse Event (SAE) in one subject. The individual who experienced this SAE has subsequently died." Others enrolled in the trial will continue to be monitored. "The investigation into the cause of the patient's illness and subsequent death is intensive and ongoing," an FDA statement says. The trial was launched in October 2005; since then, 127 subjects have received an initial dose of the drug or a placebo, while others were given two injections. The patient who died received two doses, the FDA said.

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More Wreckage

Posted July 27, 2007 at 8:10 am by Rick Anderson

You have law and then you have ideology, which trumps. As a result you have the U.S. Supreme Court decision knocking down Seattle's school racial-balancing plan. Nicholas Lemann lays this out in The New Yorker this week. The long national nightmare - George Bush's perversion of not only Iraq but social justice and common logic - has gotten approval in the one place it can, the friendly conservative high court, where a majority sees red. Lemann cites, as we did in an earlier post, Chief Justice John Roberts' simplistic statement, "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." Snap, it's done. The reality is the Seattle (and Louisville) school-assignment plans were implemented because discrimination isn't going to come to a sudden wishful end. Justice Clarence Thomas' assertion of a color-blind Constitution is an equally grandiose concept that, when used to justify dismantling beneficial integration programs such as Seattle's, is itself an injustice. As Lemann writes:

Justices Thomas and Stephen Breyer [the latter wrote the long dissent in the Seattle case], argue for two clashing ideals: a ‘color-blind Constitution' and integration. Neither of these ideals has been more than briefly and episodically descriptive of reality, or has served, except momentarily, as the principle around which the politics of race was organized, because, alas, not many realms in American life have been either truly color-blind or truly integrated...

The country, Lemann adds, "has slowly ratcheted back a host of policies aimed at the twin goals of black advancement and racial harmony, but it has not abandoned them - and, until now, neither has the Court. In the legislative branch the Administration's preference for simple, moralistic formulations is foundering. In the Supreme Court it is alive and well. The Court would do well to contemplate the landscape of the Administration's wreckage before it considers any other radical solutions, and sweeps away an accumulated body of law and experience."   

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The Unholy Truth

Posted July 26, 2007 at 4:43 pm by Mike Seely

Native Texan Erica Barnett's byline shows up in the Stranger food section this week, in a roundup of the best Frito Pies (Fritos, chili, trimmings) we Northwesterners have to offer. In her quest, the City Hall beat reporter dutifully praises Mike's Chili Parlor, which she describes as "a well-known establishment in Ballard that now sits on the literal precipice of yet another Mars Hill megachurch expansion."

Right about the chili. Wrong about the precipice.

The land which Barnett incorrectly claims is going to be filled with more followers is actually soon to be filled with "a 133,593-square-foot mixed-use development on land formerly occupied by a disposal company," per a Seattle Weekly story on the development over a year ago. We even called Ballard Blocks (that's the name of what will fill the precipice) developer Scott Clark to check and see that he hadn't repurposed some of the land for church use. He says he hasn't. Clark's property is still slated to include a Trader Joe's, a huge parking structure, and other accoutrements. He also reminded us, in the words of our story, that Mars Hill has "purchased two dormant industrial buildings, on Northwest 50th Street and 14th Avenue Northwest, for $3.2 million." That land is to the north of Leary Way; the chili parlor and the precipice are to the south.

Much as you'd like to have more square footage of misogynistic sermonizing to rail against, Tex, Jesus ain't what's gonna fill that there precipice. Organic avocados and tomatoes will, both of which'll go great with your Frito Pie.

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Seattle: North vs. South

Posted July 26, 2007 at 1:55 pm by Aimee Curl

So Seattle Public Utilities doesn't log recycling stats by neighborhood, but they do track it north and south of the Ship Canal Bridge. Who recycles more? In total: the Southsiders— about 1,000 tons more from January to March of this year, according to SPU's figures.

And the south cleaned up on the north in 2006, recycling a total of 34,253 tons compared to the north's 31,119 tons. Also, the south's total tonnage was up 3.5 percent last year over 2005, while the north's efforts only improved 0.4 percent.

But don't go handing out bragging rights yet. When you measure by household the north end comes out on top with an average of 73.2 pounds per home per month in 2006, compared to 71.8 pph in the south. 

Standby to see if these numbers go up as the city's zero waste strategy kicks in over the coming years. (65,000+ tons of annual recycling may sound impressive, but keep in mind that the city sent about 440,000 tons of trash to our Oregon landfill last year.)

The zero waste effort, spearheaded by Council member Richard Conlin, promises to provide (among other things) a program by 2009 that will include food waste pickup for composting at single family residences and more options for recycling construction and demolition waste.

Back to last year's numbers: both the north and south recycle about the same (by percentage) of metal and aluminum. The north recycles more glass. The north also recycles more newspaper, the south more mixed paper. The south turns in more contaminants, less tin, and less plastic.

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Shannon Borg for Poet Populist

Posted July 26, 2007 at 12:14 pm by Karla Starr

Candidate #9: Shannon Borg, 42, The Ruby Group. Day job: lifestyle editor for Seattle magazine - covering wine/dining/entertaining

What is your biggest notable oddball talent?
I can darn. it's a lost art.

Continue reading "Shannon Borg for Poet Populist"

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Felon Vote Reversal

Posted July 26, 2007 at 9:46 am by Rick Anderson

The Washington State Supreme Court today reversed a landmark ruling that struck down state law denying voting rights to felons who had not paid off their court-imposed fines. "We hold that Washington's disenfranchisement scheme does not violate the privileges and immunities clause of the Washington Constitution or the equal protection clause of the United States Constitution," wrote Justice Mary Fairhurst for the majority in the 6-3 decision (besides the majority ruling, justices issued four additional concurences and dissents).

The court left it up to "the province of the legislature to determine the best policy approach for re-enfranchising Washington's felons." In March, King County Superior Court Judge Michael Spearman struck down the felon-voter ban, decreeing it unconstitutional to deny voting rights to those who are too poor to pay off financial obligations incurred as part of their sentences. Chief Justice Gerry Alexander was among the dissenters today, passionately arguing:

Wealthy people who are convicted of a felony and are ordered to pay costs, fees, fines or restitution can pay those [monies] immediately. When they do, they can regain the right to vote almost immediately upon the completion of the remaining conditions of their sentence. The same is true for felons who have friends or family who are willing and able to pay their [obligations]. On the other hand, felons who lack the resources to pay...in full cannot recover their right to vote even after completing the remaining terms of their sentence.

The case was brought by three felons who claimed they were trying to fulfill their court obligations but in the meantime had lost voting rights ultimately because they were not wealthy. The ACLU had called the law the "modern form of the poll tax."

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101 Widows

Posted July 25, 2007 at 3:25 pm by Rick Anderson

The "surge" in Iraq continues, albeit not in the successful way the White House hoped. Our newest War Dead update now shows that 73 service members with state connections have died in Iraq this year. There are still five months to go but that's by far the worst annual local toll yet in the four-year war. Altogether, 237 active-duty soldiers with Washington state connections have died in Afghanistan, the Philippines, Pakistan, and Iraq since October 2001. They are wars that will go on forever for their families. That toll: 101 widows, two widowers, and 128 children. 

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WoW, Wii, and Xbox 360

Posted July 24, 2007 at 4:56 pm by Karla Starr

Blizzard Entertainment, which makes the MMORPG World of WarCraft, has just announced that the game has crossed the 9 million subscriber mark. In other words: there’s an online video game that is now the 90th most populous country on earth.

A gym in Vancouver, Canada, has just added Nintendo’s Wii system to some of its circuit training stations. (One session of Wii boxing, apparently, can burn between 75 and 125 calories.) I can sort of understand that, given how physically active playing the Wii is. But what really bothered me, for some reason, was that the gym is going to add Playstations and Xbox 360s—which require no amount of physical exertion whatsoever—just to lure in younger clients. (But if the 'number of TVs at my gym turned to ESPN-to-douchebag' ratio at my gym is any indication, this may actually be successful.)

And finally, between all of the problems with the Xbox 360—including recalls and warranty extensions (and that's on top of the reported $129 loss that Microsoft sustains selling each unit)—the software giant’s entertainment division now stands to lose $1.9 billion this fiscal year. That said, even as profits are falling—and, from my former days as a video game tester, I can vouch that they do indeed crash quite a bit—the company is still posting a mighty profit of $1.42 per share this year. Because for everyone who’s giving up their console, approximately five others are subscribing to WoW and someone else is calling the Wii their workout. And the addiction potential of video games, they say, needs more study. Go figure.

Topics: Technology

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D'oh! Simpsons Movie Preview Notes

Posted July 24, 2007 at 4:13 pm by Brian Miller

(Image courtesy 20th Century Fox)

I have been to Springfield, and though I can't tell you in what state it's located, both Maine and Kentucky lie adjacent. At least that's the way geography works in the imaginative universe created by Matt Groening all the way back in 1988. Our full review from Scott Foundas of The Simpsons Movie will be online tomorrow (Wednesday), but I'll offer a few observations from today's press screening after the jump...

Continue reading "D'oh! Simpsons Movie Preview Notes"

Topics: Film

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