The Weekend Wrap Strategically Defaults to Meerkats

Photo: Ryan Hawk/Woodland Park Zoo

The meerkats are coming! May 1 is the date for their cute blitzkrieg on the Woodland Park Zoo.

Eight Rikki-Tikki-Tavi relatives will take over a newly renovated exhibit in the zoo's Adaptations Building. They've been away for ten years, and now they're returning to settle old scores by zooming along tunnels or poking their heads out curiously with their WIDDLE NOSES!

Now, back to hard-nosed news. Underwater? Scrambling to pay the mortgage? If only you could "strategically default," like the owner of the Columbia Tower, plus nine other office towers and buildings in Seattle and Bellevue, as reported in the Seattle Times. 

With office rents plummeting due to an almost 20 percent vacancy rate in Seattle, Beacon Capital Properties says its rental income covers (after expenses) covers only 20 percent of its loan payments.

The Teamsters threw an on-again, off-again strike to protest Waste Management, Inc., raising their share of health insurance costs. You'd think garbage collection was a stable revenue stream, but I checked WMI's annual report and revenue fell about 15 percent last year. You know what didn't? Health insurance costs.  

Down at City Hall, the Mayor vetoed the anti-aggressive-panhandling bill, after a 5-4 City Council vote in favor. All nine members of the Council signed on to a firmly worded letter  to the Mayor, asking him to lift a hiring freeze on new police officers. McGinn, on KUOW, said the Council had passed an unbalanced budget. (Nyah, nyah.) So that's going well. Image-wise, everyone comes out wearing the same size clown shoes. In the meantime, here's SeattleCrime.com's map of where you can go to get robbed.

In other testy government-epistle news, the Sustainable 520 Coalition sent a letter to the Governor laying out the grounds for redesigning 520's replacement to carry light rail from day one. Washington's rich people have had it with the spineless legislature! If they won't pass a high-earner's income tax, they'll do it by initiative. If BNET's crystal ball isn't cracked, we're incubating a substantial increase in new jobs over the next ten years. Group Health Credit Union is changing its name to Salal Credit Union. Huh.

Capitol Hill is all ready for high-earners and their gourmet tastes--CHS announced the opening of an independent cheese shop and butcher shop this week. CDNews says the Drug Market Initiative worked well for about six months, but that open-air drug dealing is reviving with spring.

Wrangling continued in Ballard over the Burke-Gilman "missing link" (borrowing a page from the just-add-light-rail 520 debate, Ballard businesses suggested separate cycletracks, rather than running the trail roadside). Once again, nothing happened in Fremont. A 275-unit residential/retail building will replace the old QFC building, across from Seattle Center in Queen Anne. Out in West Seattle, it's park vs. sewage.

Here on The SunBreak, Seth covered the M's record-low attendance and the Seahawks' choices in the NFL draft. Rachel read New York Times food writer Kim Severson's Spoon Fed and talked with her about it. Tony chatted with Exene Cervenka, and interviewed director Alan Rudolph in preparation for SIFF's Rudolph fest this weekend, and Audrey caught up with "Awesome" in advance of this weekend's show at OtB. Jeremy talked with Scotto Moore about his sci-fi play at the Annex, and I went to see Amelia Reeber's whimsical, intriguing "this is not a forgery."