Six construction cranes, working on the same single massive structure (the Washington State Convention Center Addition), all at the same time. pic.twitter.com/k2ds4vOQjq
— It's Matthew (@fcakenterprises) November 8, 2019
Lying across I-5 from Capitol Hill, the massive hole filing quickly with steel girders where the state’s downtown convention center expansion is rising might also need to suck up new financing and federal assistance.
Saying the project is now “at risk,” officials are scheduled to hold a Friday morning press conference about the COVID-19 crisis snuffing out key funding for the massive project and new efforts “fighting for critical federal support to find new financing to keep the $1.8 billion WSCC Addition project under construction.”
“The coronavirus pandemic has resulted in plummeting lodging tax revenues, which support the bond funding that pays for the project,” an announcement of the Friday conference reads. “A long-planned second round of bond financing is required but is lacking sufficient tax revenue to support it.”
Officials including Washington State Convention Center leaders, King County Executive Dow Constantine, and “labor, business and civic leaders” say construction may be halted on the project – “imperiling the recovery in the Puget Sound region and the state” – if federal stimulus funds are not secured.
UPDATE: Crosscut reports the project has a $300 million hole to fill:
But the roughly $1.8 billion project still needs an additional $300 million in financing. Griffin said he had planned to issue two new bonds over the next six to nine months to cover the gap. But those bonds were to be backed by taxes on lodging, which have all but evaporated during the pandemic. Investor interest has disappeared with it. “We are in a financing crisis,” said Griffin, adding, “Obviously it’s bad.”
Crosscut reports that developer Pine Street Group could also end up pursuing a bridge loan “that would be paid back in four to eight years.”
The enormous, million-square-foot expansion broke ground in summer of 2018. The work will create five stories above ground and two stories below of a new convention hall on the land west of I-5 previously home to King County Metro’s Convention Place Station, roughly bounded by Pine and Howell streets and 9th and Boren. Powered by its bonding authority, the WSCC acquired $56.5 million worth of land for the project.
The majority of the project’s budget was planned to be funded from bond sales supported by a tax on hotel rooms.
But with COVID-19 and restrictions in place to help slow spread of the virus, hotel bookings were down around 60% at one point and may have fallen farther.
The pandemic might also raise more questions about the wisdom of a major expansion of the convention center after the conference industry has been decimated by the virus and its economic fallout.
It’s not clear what impact the downturn might have on other elements of the project. As part of the development, the convention center is providing a $80 million “public benefit” package including $29 million in affordable housing, $10 million for Freeway Park improvements, and $10 million in backing for the Pike-Pine Renaissance project to improve the streetscape of Pike and Pine between downtown and Capitol Hill including new Pike/Pine bike lanes.
The convention center expansion has been planned for a 2021 opening.
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This too shall pass. I am always astonished by both pessimism and optimism when the reality is neither. Keep building and let things settle.
Was there ever a good time to build a convention center, much less expand one? It’s a zero-sum game: if your city gets more convention business, other cities get less.
Keep building…with what money? If no one will fund the finish of the project, how do you pay suppliers and workers?
With the changes in how people live – less travel, work from home, avoid crowds you’ve got to wonder if this is now a giant white elephant. It could be 2-3 years before people feel comfortable attending large events….
Well, the truth is Seattle is a global city.
Much more so than even Vancouver, which is often–for some reason–seen as more “international” than us.
Which is ridiculous, since we have far more economic activity and more corporate headquarters.
But anyway…
What this means is we need a world class convention space, Covid or no Covid.
By the time this crisis is over, and the next expansion begins, it would be nice to have a completed, world-class convention space to keep Seattle as one of two “core” tech clusters in the US.
I’ve worked for most of the major tech companies in the area for over a decade.
I admit I can’t think of a single time the presence of this convention center was a consideration in locating an engineering center of headquarters in Seattle — or something I remember our ever using.
What a disaster! If this project (perhaps not necessary in the first place) cannot go forward, it will be a giant eyesore in the middle of our city for years to come.
The EIS had this to say about the carbon footprint of the expanded convention center:
“Note that this tabulation considers transportation-related GHG emissions only in terms of rough estimates of vehicular emissions associated with the project based on gross averages of numbers of peoples and average annual rates of driving. It does not include GHG emissions associated with air travel, which would likely be a major component of emissions stemming from operation of the expanded facility. There is simply no reasonable way to assess such emissions in a comparative manner that considers different meeting locations (i.e., in other countries or cities) and/or modes of travel as options for such facilities.”
If the new Convention Center creates only 1000 yearly new non-stop round trips by air of the distance from Chicago to Seattle and back (a conservative assumption given that conventioneers fly here from Asia), the CO2 emitted in that air travel will be equivalent to 605 people each driving a 20-mile round-trip daily work commute in a gasoline-powered car for a year (assuming 245 trips per year, and that they would be away from home for 5 days and not making the same commute at home for those 5 days when they are in Seattle or in transit).
1000 new non-stop round trips of the distance from Tokyo and back would be the equivalent of about 1700 people commuting 20 miles RT by car for a year.
No matter how bad seems, I alway remember the Curious Case of The Hat and Boot:
The Hat and Boot was on land that was considered too toxic to reclaim, until it wasn’t. When the price of all the land around rose sufficiently, investors decided that the land under the Hat and Boot could be cleaned up and a profit could still be made.
I doubt that Seattle will ever return to days of “Will the last person to leave, please shut off the lights?” at least not before I shuffle off this mortal coil.
Just about the time people get used to seeing the unfinished eyesore of the expansion, the property values will have increased enough again that developers will decide money can be made either finishing the project or installing something else.
I don’t know where people get this unrealistic idea that everything should always progress, every project should always be successful and every neighborhood should always improve. It’s a goal to be strived for, to be sure, but not one that can always be achieved.
Everyone should live by the motto of the American College of Gastroenterology: This too, shall pass.
They should put it on hold. No one is showing up to a convention anytime soon. I generally get deathly sick after I recommend and that’s even when we’re not in a pandemic