Cascadia Report

If vancouver fails at wooing the Chinese...

Vancouver isn't doing enough to woo Chinese business, according to a Vancouver Sun article explaining how the city is trying to catch up.

"We didn't even have a protocol person until last year," said Mayor Sam Sullivan. The city created a position in October just to handle foreign visits. Fourteen official Chinese delegations have visited since January and one or two unofficial ones visit each week, the paper said.

Contrast that focus on building business ties to Seattle, where Mayor Greg Nickels is mired in debate over $3,400 the city spent on a video about replacing the waterfront viaduct. Meanwhile Governor Chris Gregoire gets criticized for not addressing "the potential downsides of globalization."

One result of the attention: Vancouver has 52 nonstop flights a week to China, promoting economic and cultural ties. Seattle has none.

Cantwell gets help

Seattle radio and newspapers are prominently covering Senator Maria Cantwell's fundraiser Monday night with Bill Clinton at Benaroya Hall. Supporters paid $250 to $2,500 or more for the event.

But outside the hall, the campaign still hasn't caught on. While Cantwell's campaign is still mostly visible from occasional cable TV ads, challenger Mike McGavick is shoring up support outside the Seattle media spotlight. A report about his recent campaign appearance in Moses Lake shows how he needs to artfully criticize national Republican policies even when he's in agreement with the incumbent. One example: Senate Republicans vetoed funding for popular veterans' programs that Cantwell supported.

McGavick is running against D.C., not against Cantwell. If McGavick can continue to do an end run around Cantwell with his broad critique of D.C.—he could win. And Cantwell is letting this happen. She needs to make McGavick run against her—and things like her VA funding vote— if she wants to short-circuit McGavick's charming attempt to co-opt public anger to his advantage.

Is the appearance of this analysis in one of Seattle's liberal weeklies proof that the race is closing?

Need a passport to cross the border?

Would requiring a passport to cross the international border prevent terrorism? It didn't stop the 9/11 hijackers, who were in the U.S. legally.

So why does Senator Maria Cantwell support a passport requirement to go between the U.S. and Canada? She said she does because -- you guessed it -- security is a top priority. Surprisingly for a Republican challenger, Mike McGavick said he doesn't support the Bush Adminstration's passport plan.

Often going against the Homeland Security Department's wishes, Cantwell and Senator Patty Murray have supported no-nonsense ideas like additional guards on the border and more stringent security at our ports. So why support the passport requirement, which will hurt this region?

Just last month, Governor Gregoire and Premier Campbell united in opposition to a passport requirement. Such a rule would hamper existing business and make it more difficult to for Cascadia to profit from the 2010 Olympics. All without demonstrably improving our security.

How do we make more room?

Seattle needs to squeeze more people inside its borders, but how? Take a look at two pieces on the subject in Tuesday's Seattle P-I.

A Wallingford resident rails here against city plans to allow backyard housing units. Already 70 percent of the city is zoned for single-family homes so the only nod to extra units in most of the city is allowing about 1,500 mother-in-law apartments, according to this report.

Critics say allowing more units threatens Seattle's still-suburban character. It's a scheme by the "young and restless at City Hall" to get rid of cars, which would ruin gardens and cut down trees, increase risk of fire and put kids at risk, the Wallingford resident says.

The fact is we need to add more density, both in central core neighborhoods and in areas of single-family homes. Housing more people in less overall space conserves resources, makes transit investment more efficient and lowers the cost of housing. The only question is how to do it well.

That's where a review of small urban housing projects comes in. There are several examples of homes built close together on small lots but with plenty of personal space and landscaping so residents can live together comfortably. It's more Vancouver or Portland than Seattle.

The trouble is that the homes are listing for north of $600,000, which prices out most of the city. The article says that affordable projects may not be possible inside the Seattle city limits. Why not? The city should be streamlining the permit process and accelerating community design reviews to keep costs down. This is a case where developers are the city's friends.

Too-pricey design and angst over density are linked. Seattle needs to solve the first problem in order to ease the second.

Oregon law a bad model for Washington

Oregon's new "property rights" law, which spawned copycat Initiative 933 in Washington this fall, got more national attention today.

A New York Times story highlights the case of a man who wants to build a power plant on land he owns inside a national monument near Bend. According the law, which was passed as a ballot measure in 2004, government either waives land-use rules to let him do it or pays him $203 million. Guess which is more likely?

Being compensated for the loss of ability to profit from your own property sounds great. But the consequences are dire.

Oregon property owners have filed 2,755 claims covering 150,455 acres, according to a Portland State University institute that's tracking the measure’s impact, the article says. The claims could amount to more than $3 billion in compensation if they were paid. Instead Oregonians are getting ready for houses and strip-malls as landowners subdivide their lots.

“Measure 37 has disabled the tools used over four decades to prevent sprawl and preserve agriculture and forest land in Oregon," wrote Sheila A. Martin, a professor of urban planning at the university, in the article.

The story makes the case that mainstream Oregonians are flummoxed to see their model land-use laws dismantled by an end-run around growth-management laws passed by the people's representatives. Hopefully Washington voters realize that harmless-sounding ballot measures can have painful consequences.

In Washington, the fledgling campaign against Initiative 933 is here.

Now B.C. cracks down on boaters

Hot on the heels of its decision to staunch Victoria's raw sewage outfall into the Strait of Juan de Fuca, British Columbia said that boaters can no longer dump into the water.

Dumpers face fines of up to C$1 million after the new rules go into affect in September, according to an announcement Monday. Detractors say there aren't enough places to dump sewage along the coast and, anyway, the amount of pollution from boaters is negligible.

Seattle needs to save downtown landmark

Preserving the 100-year-old Methodist Church building in downtown Seattle from yet another skyscraper project is key to protecting the physical fabric of the city. Thankfully, a group of concerned citizens is struggling to put together a deal to save the building and move the church to a less costly location downtown where it can continue its social outreach.

So why is the Seattle Times prepared to give up on a deal?

The paper's take:

If the path is demolition, a towering skyscraper and construction of a new church on another downtown site, the city will have to live with that decision.

First United Methodist Church does not carry the burden of stewardship of Seattle's heritage, especially in a community that has discarded and abandoned buildings — sacred and secular — as so many disposable tissues.

No, Seattle doesn't have to live with a hypothetical decision to destroy the building. We shouldn't stand by and lose another piece of history.

It shouldn't be allowed to get that far, of course. We should exhaust every possible avenue to protect the building, precisely because our history of tearing down important structures leaves us with so few still standing. A group including King County Councilman Dow Constantine coordinated a package with developer Nitze-Stagen that would preserve the sanctuary and relocate the church's operations.

Short-sighted, defeatist logic has already cost Seattle much of its heritage. Remember when the Music Hall was destroyed by wrecking balls in 1992? At the time, the need for an ornate building in what was then still a wasteland downtown wasn't obvious. Now, with the Paramount, Fifth Avenue, Cinerama and Coliseum all restored in some form, that beautiful building remains a terrible loss.

No one disputes that the church needs to continue to do good works. But Seattle should demand a solution that also preserves the city's urban fabric for the future. Don't just give up.

Cantwell's ground campaign still lags

TV spots for Senator Maria Cantwell are blanketing the cable channels, a sign that her high-priced reelection campaign is finally underway. But what about the ground campaign?

A 500-mile roadtrip around southwestern Washington this weekend found a single Cantwell sign (just outside South Bend, in Pacific county). That puts the ratio of her signs to challenger Mike McGavick's at roughly 1 to 500+, at least in the state's southwest.

This week's edition of the Pacific County Press, the local weekly, has a photo and small story of McGavick's visit with loggers in the area in early July. His campaign Web site has detail on the visit and the how to get involved. Cantwell's new site shows no sign of any organization in the area.

Clearly Cantwell doesn't expect to win rural counties, instead planning to use advertising to win big in the Seattle area. But with McGavick making a challenge in King County, will that hands-off approach be enough?

Victoria told to clean up its act

Victoria was ordered to stop dumping raw sewage into the Strait of Juan de Fuca, a major step toward plugging one of Cascadia's most egregious pollution sources.

The British Columbia capital and its suburbs pipe 34 million gallons of untreated sewage into the Strait each day, relying on the cold water and swift currents to handle the refuse. The practice has been a major irritant to communities like Port Angeles and Sequim, which lie just across the Strait and have invested in costly sewage-treatment facilities.

Whether to treat the outflow or not has been debated in B.C. for years. But a recent study concluded that the status quo wasn't a long-term option, especially with international attention related to the 2010 Olympics. The provincial government gave Victoria until next June to come up with a better plan.

Cantwell campaign begins

Senator Maria Cantwell's reelection campaign has officially begun, with the first commercials on TV and a new Web site online. And it's not a minute too soon.

Last Saturday there were several Cantwell signs in the lawn of the middle school in West Seattle where an energy forum put together by 34th district Democrats was held. Inside, an unstaffed campaign table had dozens of extra signs and stickers, and a volunteer sign up sheet with no names on it.

After the forum, I drove 200 miles to south-central Washington and didn't notice a single sign of the campaign -- but plenty for challenger Mike McGavick. The Goldendale Sentinel had a half-page ad for McGavick's "Open Mike!" tour, which had been, of course, well received there.

In the last week Cantwell has made strides sowing up support from the left by hiring one of her former challengers. The governor of New Mexico stumped for her during the weekend and Bill Clinton is due later this month. Yet she still faces a primary election challenge and there will be a Green and Libertarian on the November ballot.

The question is will Cantwell hold enough of rural Washington AND energize her urban base enough to hold on. Or is it already too late?

the week the train left the station

This may someday be remembered as the week that the train left the station. Sound Transit's board on Thursday decided that rail should be extended from Seattle across Lake Washington to Bellevue and Redmond.

The vote comes after the cities of Bellevue, Redmond, Kirkland and Issaquah decided to support rail over bus rapid-transit, monorail or other modes. It's the first time that the pluses of eventually knitting together the Seattle area together with transit won.

The decision to go with a permanent transit system is huge because the city is likely to grow around the stations -- just look at Vancouver and Portland as examples. It could eventually lead to more affordable housing and a better sense of community, this editorial notes.

Of course it could be remembered as yet another false start in the region's sad transport history. Building the lines depends on voters okaying a tax increase in fall 2007 and withstanding years of potential lawsuits and the politics of delay. Already some people claim their neighborhoods would be ruined by a train line. Remember that the current downtown-to-SeaTac line, which is supposed to open in 2009, was approved by voters in 1996.

Puget sound isn't as healthy as it looks

Beautiful scenery, easy access and abundant sea life mask the fragile health of Puget Sound, according to an exhaustive report released this week.

We already knew that the Sound is one of Cascadia's key features yet is threatened by habitat loss, pollution runoff and contaminated sediment. The governor created the Puget Sound Partnership in 2005 to come up with ways to stem the deterioration.

"If leaders aren't able to persuade and inspire the public to get involved in improving the sound's health, "I'm not sure we can win," said Brad Ack, director of Gregoire's Puget Sound Action Team, according to the AP.

"There's this disconnect between what the actual state of the sound is and what people's impression is, because it looks beautiful - the water sparkles, the mountains glisten," he said.

The report identifies problems and calls for a coordinated clean-up made of local efforts overseen by a regional body. It doesn't say who should lead it or how much it should cost. Those issues are supposed to be attacked in another report late this year.

Here's a readable summary of the interim report, from Tuesday's Olympian.

is gridlock just a myth?

Complaints about traffic in the Seattle area are so common that it's easy to believe it's actually as bad as it seems. But maybe we're exaggerating? Maybe we should simply adjust our expectations?

I remember finishing a meeting in downtown Vancouver and needing to make another an hour later at Delta Port past Surrey. My hosts downtown said I should just forget it -- there's no way to get there through the traffic. Of course Vancouver lacks freeways so you crawl through city streets. But I ventured out anyway.

Consider this opinion piece from Sunday's Los Angeles Times. We suffer from "a deflation of greatly raised expectations," the writer argues, because we actually expect to travel across vast metropolitan areas at high speeds. I think nothing of going from Redmond to Ballard to South Seattle and back in a single evening. But fewer people would do the equivalent in Vancouver.

Cascadia envy?

Seattle broke ground today on a new 1.3-mile streetcar line that could one day link a series of dense, livable in-city neighborhoods. But let's not forget how incremental this step is.

Take a look at this thoughtful story that the Seattle Times resurfaced online today. Writer Bill Dietrich shows in painful (for a Seattleite, anyway) detail how the Vancouver and Portland have become models for development while the Seattle area has dithered.

It's all here: the historical differences between the cities, the different mentalities about growth and the prospects for the future. Dietrich describes what I've sensed over and over during trips north and south -- Seattle has wasted its opportunity. And he includes a challenge:

IF ALL THIS seems a little harsh, go visit downtown Portland and Vancouver. If you haven't been there for awhile you'll be astounded by their urban atmosphere. Ask yourself why our downtown parks are so few and uninviting, in comparison. Why our waterfront access pales. Why our transportation choices are so much more limited. Why our sidewalks are plainer, our street trees fewer, our housing choices narrower, our towers uglier, our choices so nonsensical.

Cascadia has grown more integrated since this article appeared. But I wonder how much we've learned?

McGavick can win

Democrats seem to think that Republican Mike McGavick's campaign for Senate against Maria Cantwell is a lost cause. They should reconsider.

McGavick's strategy is to gradually build a likable image with a thorough campaign and avoid fleshing out most policy details as long as possible. That way he avoids discussing issues that divide Republicans and that could alienate the average moderate voter (things like abortion, Iraq, gay rights, etc.). The strategy almost worked for Dino Rossi's campaign for governor in 2004 -- a campaign that McGavick advised.

McGavick rolled out the personality offensive again Monday with another kickoff for a statewide bus tour. He's already made headlines by calling off attack dogs. "We're going to change politics and start by changing the way of the campaign," he told a crowd of about 50 volunteers and supporters at the campaign headquarters in Seattle.

So far the feel-good campaign seems to be working, closing McGavick's gap with Cantwell. His campaign website provides details about his statewide organization, a full calendar of events and exactly how to get involved. It's easy to tell who to call in Okanogan County, for example, if want to volunteer there.

Cantwell is already having trouble generating volunteers, according to the state Democratic leadership, yet her website still fails to provide any information on her campaign. Even if someone WANTED to get involved it's extremely difficult to find out how.

Liberal bloggers seem to think that McGavick's campaign is a long shot because of President Bush's unpopularity. Others have told me they're surprised at how poorly McGavick's campaign is being run, with its emphasis on civility. But McGavick doesn't need a majority to win. A Green Party candidate may take 2 percentage points from Cantwell, while a Libertarian candidate may take one point from Cantwell and two from McGavick.

Judging from its silence so far, Cantwell seems to be banking that voters aren't thinking about November yet. But it looks like McGavick's campaign is ready.

Can Democrats win with gas?

Washington state Democrats won't let Republicans go unchallenged this year, according to new Democratic Party Chair Dwight Pelz.

The party recently added a full-time PR person and plans to add another, he said. It unveiled a revamped website and plans to field candidates in most districts statewide.

It also plans to go for gut issues: "Last time, Republicans got us with guns, gays and God. Now we have a 'G' -- gas," Pelz told a group of about 40 party organizers at a recent meeting in Renton.

But will it be enough? Gas costs have fallen slightly in the last month to an average of $3.04 a gallon statewide, according to AAA. While that's still almost 70 cents more than a year ago, the change suggests that gas could be a short-lived issue.

Meanwhile, to many, "guns, gays and God" remain a constant threat. And it seems that Democrats who are close to those issues may be in the party's crosshairs.

U.S.-Canada deal not a fix

The U.S. and Canada signed an agreement to finally cool the long-running dispute over the trade of lumber. But the landmark deal likely isn't the end of the story.

Negotiators in Geneva signed the pact late Saturday -- Canada Day. The main feature seems to be that both sides agree to drop existing lawsuits and agree to abide by the terms of the new agreement for three years.

Canadian lumber producers will get a partial refund of the billions of dollars paid to the U.S. in the form of tariffs on shipments over the last several years. But otherwise the deal seems similar to the status quo. It calls for a new surcharge on Canadian wood shipped into the U.S. if the price falls much below the current level, which is in a historically high range. And Canada gets to keep its current 34 percent share of the U.S. wood market.

Eliminating lawsuits is an accomplishment. But unfortunately the deal doesn't solve the market imbalances that cause the trade friction in the first place. The dispute will return as long as Canada has a massive supply of government-owned trees and U.S. consumers demand cheap wood.

The biggest reason that the deal isn't a fix? The Canadians didn't get all they wanted and will finger the U.S. every time a Canadian mill closes and puts workers out of jobs.

Canada's parliament still has to okay the deal. You can be sure that the proposal will get lots of scrutiny, at least in Canada. On Sunday the deal was front-page news for the Victoria Times-Colonist. The Seattle Times put a wire story on A6.

Remember the ties that bind

Most of Alaska isn't part of Cascadia but the huge state still affects this region. Alaskans have a love-hate relationship with Seattle. That's why it's good to see a column in a Seattle paper celebrating the connection between the U.S. Northwest and the 49th state.

The columnist visits the Chamber-of-Commerce types in Anchorage with a delegation from Seattle and reaches some obvious, yet useful, conclusions:

For many people in Anchorage, Seattle is so familiar it blends into a single business card. Seattle's strength and size influence Alaska every day. Without Alaska, the Puget Sound region would not be the megalopolis it has become.

Our history is intertwined and we remain connected by business and politics. We can agree on that and still vehemently oppose logging in Alaska's national forests and oil drilling in the Arctic wildlife refuge.

Cascadia gains a few hundred thousand

The increasing traffic around Cascadia isn't an illusion. The region added a few hundred thousand people in the last year, bringing the total to nearly 14 million.

Washington added 120,000 people, the largest gain since the early 1990s, thanks to rapid job growth. The total was about 6,375,600 on April 1, according to the state. About one-third of the influx came from California.

British Columbia jumped by 53,807 to 4,292,166. International immigration accounted for 80% of the province's gain, according to Statistics Canada. The province has added 265,536 since the beginning of 2000.

The latest figures for Oregon put the state's population at 3.6 million as of July 2005.

How to transform a historic area?

A walk through Seattle's Pioneer Square on a warm weekend afternoon reveals at least as many boarded up buildings, vacant store fronts and homeless people as ever. Seattle's current development boom seems to be leaving the historic core behind. Will it catch up?

There are plans to fill the stadium's huge parking lot with new housing and other deals would provide a counterbalance to the area's street population. But the going is slow.

This week a deal to finally put retail/housing on the eyesore parking lot on Main and Occidental fell through this week. Developer Greg Smith wanted to build a taller building in exchange for hosting a maintenance shed for the waterfront streetcar. Since the zoning change didn't come through the developer said he may pull out of the deal.

Meanwhile the Seattle Weekly chimed in with an analysis of the Pioneer Square area. Basic gist: the balance of historical/funky atmosphere in the area will be tough to maintain if a couple thousand new residents move into the area as planned.

What about examples around the region, like Vancouver's Gaslamp?