Recent Stories with tag construction

To fully understand the city of Seattle's economy, character, and beauty, you sometimes have to head out on the water.

The Port of Seattle has been conducting educational tours of key Port facilities to alert community leaders and media to the importance of Seattle's maritime industry and the many issues challenging that industry.

This past Wednesday, the Port hosted Ship Canal 101, an afternoon cruise from Fishermen's Terminal to the Fremont Bridge, then to the Hiram Chittenden locks, and back to the Terminal. The tour was narrated by many of the business owners and employees of the--surprisingly--large number of businesses in this short, narrow corridor.

There's no doubt that such tours are good PR, but that aside, there's plenty to learn.

Leaving from Fisherman’s Terminal, you get a great view of the size and scope of the city's Pacific fishing fleet. For all the talk of Seattle as a biotech center, a software empire, and aviation powerhouse, a large chunk of the city's economy is still tied up to the docks at the terminal, one of the major fishing ports along the coast prized for its protected freshwater berths (salt water is murderously tough on steel hulls), access to repair facilities, and transportation to waiting markets. The Port estimates that the activity at the port annually generates 4,000 jobs, half a billion in wages, $200 million in business revenue, and $37 million in state and local taxes.... (more)

"Rainy season" by shutterbug zenobia_joy

I don't know, but I'd like to. To me, The McGuire tear-down is not most interesting from a "smoking-gun" point-of-view--though I'm certainly as curious as anyone else how it turns out--but as a worst-case scenario that asks us to reconsider the sheer volume of water-damaged condominium buildings in Seattle.

Up to this point, multi-thousand-dollar assessments for water-damage related issues were a "headache" or a "nightmare," but confined, on a building-by-building basis, to whomever lived in a problem structure. Leaking windows, especially, are a common but not at all new cause of legal suits flying between residents, developers, and contractors.

Now The McGuire has redefined "nightmare" for everyone, and even the city is scrambling to determine if any more debacles like that are lurking in DPD files. That response is all to the good, but the hard truth is that it rains a good deal in Seattle--maybe not a lot, but often. It rains during construction, it rains after the grand opening, it rains the life of the building.

When you search on Seattle condos and water damage, you'll find an enormous amount of "buyer beware" stories, full of hard-luck tips. It's hard to escape the feeling that if Seattle condos were a car, they'd have been recalled by now. With that in mind, I emailed Seattle's Department of Planning and Development, and asked Alan Justad a few baseline questions:

#1: Per the Seattle Times: "He said the city does not inspect structural components of large buildings directly, but instead relies on a private report from a third-party inspection firm selected by the contractor." What's the thinking behind allowing contractors to pick their own inspectors? 

#2: Is the use of a rain screen system solely at the discretion of the architect/contractor? If so, has the city considered implementing guidelines to promote (if not require) use of a system?

#3: Given the area's long-standing history with water damage to condos, can you update me on the DPD's actions in response to the general issue?... (more)

Slightlynorth gives you...Belltown!

(Follow-up post on the architects, structural engineers, and general contractor here.)

The McGuire apartment building, at 210 Wall Street in Belltown, opened its doors in 2001. Now, just nine years later, it's closing them for good. Though the marketing copy, ironically, boasts "exceptional attention to detail in design construction," the 25-story building, with 272 units, is suffering from "corrosion of post-tensioned cables and concrete material and reinforcement placement deficiencies," according to legal real estate advisers Kennedy Associates. (Their full press release, with full grout details, is after the jump.)

Since repair is financially infeasible, residents are being relocated (with larger incentives the sooner they leave), and the building will be dismantled. Everyone must go by the end of this year. This comes as a bit of a shock to residents of the upscale building, who are paying $1,000-$1,500 per month just for studios. But investigation of the defects revealed that conditions were becoming unsafe, and Seattle's Department of Planning and Development is requiring the building's owner to submit periodic inspection reports to track the building's health.

Carpenter’s Tower, LLC, is the named owner, a partnership of the Carpenters Union, Local 131, and MEPT, the Multi-Employer Property Trust. They're suing the general contractor and architects (not named in the news release). Since it's unlikely the general contractor built just one structure, I've got a call in to find out who it was.

In the heyday of building before the real estate market crashed, roughly from 2001 onward, just-add-water condos sprouted up quickly. Nine years was enough to do The McGuire in--that doesn't seem that long. But the Seattle Times just reported on Northgate's Thornton Place condominiums, and the settling problem that 20 of the 109 units are experiencing, just a year after project completion. Floors and walls have separated by half an inch so far.... (more)