10/14, A Tale of Two City Halls

Did you see the "Seattle Times" article today (9/14) about the exciting plans for the City of Snoqualmie's new city hall? They plan to design their roof slope to create a waterfall! AND, the waterfall run-off will be captured to water the landscaping! Wow. What a winner! On top of that, the 14,000 sq. ft. structure will use building materials reflecting their railroad heritage.

A few strong comparisons can be made between Snoqualamie's city hall with our new Redmond hall:

• both cities consolidated multiple stand-alone administrative offices into one big hall for efficiencies.
  
• both will win GREEN awards - Redmond already has a "Silver Certificate" and one can only surmise Snoqualmie will receive a "Gold" or even "Platinum" Certificate for their novel design. More later...

Unfortunately, that's as far as it goes for the positives:

• Snoqualmie's city hall waterfall is aesthetic and functional. Redmond's outdoor-art "waterfall" pond is not GREEN. Rather, it actually creates an electrical hazard from the underwater lighting of the outdoor art. The hazard is so dangerous that Redmond's own Public works permitting department had to shut down the art lights permanently! Unfortunately, without it's lights our outdoor artwork is masked and untrue to the artist.
  
• Snoqualmie hall will be built with a mix of materials inspired from their railroading era. The Redmond Hall is built with imported tiles, waterless urinals, and modernistic materials and a design that gives NO thought or recognition to our heritage. Where are the photos of our previous mayors?!
  
• Snoqualmie's city hall is designed so it can easily be remodeled. Our city hall's wide hallways and intimidating cathedral ceilings are not functional. In fact, the Director of Finance has repeatedly asked Council for "more storage space"!
  
• About the "grab for GREEN". Just what does our "Silver Certificate" mean to the environment? Redmond taxpayers pay $600,000/year in maintenance & utilities for this monstrosity. It appears our tax-dollars are flying out the window with the structure's heating, ventilation , and window washing, etc. bills.
  
• Regarding costs, I'm not sure how Snoqualmie's $4.9 million Hall compares to our Hall. However, it's known that Redmond's $40 million Hall cost $290/SF and affluent Bellevue's is only $207/SF. Worse - the city doesn't own our Hall, it rents it.

Mayor Ives has been in a legacy-building mode for the last four years and she's been doing it on our dime. If John Marchione or Jim Robinson were our mayor one wonders how they would envision our City Hall?

John Marchione emphasizes budget prioritization and efficiencies. He has a strong sense of heritage and history. For example, Marchione voted to save Anderson Park (4-3). It's safe to say John's city hall wouldn't be what we have now. Though Jim Robinson says he's traveled the world for Boeing's procurement department and even though he voted against saving Anderson Park, he certainly wouldn't be so grandiose as to design this monolith.

I looked all over the Redmond city website using their search engine and could find nothing about our *LEED 'Silver Certificate" award. Both Council Pres. McCormick and councilman Robinson have talked about it as one (of the few) positives of the City Hall.

* LEED - "Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design

KIM ALLEN:
In the interest of full disclosure, you should add that Jim Robinson did NOT vote for Redmond's new City Hall and John Marchione did vote for it. We need not speculate about what kind of City Hall each would build-they already cast their votes. Kimberly Allen
Sunday September 16, 2007 -

YODER:

True, Kim, but neither John nor Jim were mayor when they voted on City Hall. The mayor lives, eats and sometimes even sleeps in City Hall. The present mayor is also leaving office after 16 years of work as "chief administrative officer". She was deeply vested in the approval of this Hall. My opinion is that neither John nor Jim would ever approve of this "money pit" if they were Mayor...as has Mayor Ives.
Sunday September 16, 2007 -