Category — Jail

The city finally unveiled its consultant’s low-rise vs. high-rise jail analysis.

It just doesn’t seem right that they are unveiling this now after they’ve already conducted community forums in the impacted neighborhoods - by not releasing this report until July 30th (yet all the while saying that a low rise jail option was more affordable than a high-rise jail) the city basically robbed these neighborhoods of the chance to question the assumptions made by the consultant in this report.

Reading through the report, here are some of the things that were or weren’t in the analysis that that stood out for me.

1) The city would need to hire 10 more staffers to service a high-rise job. (That’s a drop in the bucket for a city that already has 10,000 city employees.)

2) The consultant said there should be no difference in travel and transportation costs regardless of where the jail is located? Really?  There are no increased fuel costs from transporting an inmate from downtown Seattle to a downtown Seattle courthouse vs. transporting one from South or North Seattle back to downtown? How about an increase in an officer’s time in transit? I really find this hard to believe.

Low rise cost                                                              High rise cost
Travel $ 0.08 0.1% $ 12,848                                      $ 0.08 0.1% $ 12,848
Transportation Costs $ 0.65 1.2% $ 104,390          $ 0.65 1.1% $ 104,390

In fact, here are the driving distances using Live Maps and cost of driving (doesn’t include officer staffing costs) to each of these locations from the Municipal Jail of Seattle downtown. (I use the $.56 a mile cost of driving a car announced by APTA that make up the $8,400 in annual savings they say you save by using Metro instead of driving)

                                          One-way     Round-trip   One-way cost    Round-trip cost
9051 Myers Way S -     6.6 miles      13.2 miles     $3.70                  $7.40
1600 W Armory Way - 4.5 miles        9 miles        $2.52                  $5.04
11762 Aurora Ave N  -  8.8 miles      17.6 miles     $4.94                  $9.87
Highland Park W        -  6.2 miles      12.4 miles     $3.48                  $6.96
Proposed Civic Square- 0.1 miles       0.2 miles     $0.06                  $0.12

3)  Where is the carbon impact study for the low-rise vs. high-rise versions? Aren’t we committed to the Kyoto Protocal and doing the right thing in terms of reducing our city’s carbon emissions. I mean, looking at the consultant’s report, I don’t see how the ’sprawling’ low rise jail could be greener than the ‘dense’ high rise jail. C’mon Mayor Nickels, you say it yourself, you can’t hate density and hate sprawl at the same time. Or does this only apply when it’s convenient for you? You know, playing the ‘Green’ and ‘Taxpayer’ cards at different times can be a pretty risky move in this town - you never know when one is going to call your bluff on the other.

                                                      Low rise              High rise
Site Square Footage                   304,500               43,500
Building Footprint SF                169,048                37,536
Floor Area Ratio                         0.65                      4.71
Roof Area                                    169,048                37,536

4) But according to the report, the are no other costs that, ‘are nearly as significant as land acquisition cost.’ And in this report it is assumed that acquiring land downtown would cost $40million. Sure, downtown real estate is pretty pricey, and I completely agree that buying downtown property is expensive…but I wonder who actually owns a usable block of land downtown….who possibly could the city buy this land from? 

Oh wait, the city already owns an entire city block that just happens to be right by city hall and the brand new Municipal Jail of Seattle. Of course, they have other plans for this block - they want to hand it over city land to a developer in exchange for building a high-rise office/condo building, a small city park, and a ’sustainability cafe’.

So…hmmm…if you built here, you wouldn’t need to pay $40 million for the property - and you could even save the estimated $15 million estimated to acquire the low-rise property.

The sad thing about this, the city council and mayor are willing to torment neighborhoods in Interbay, South and North Seattle - by proposing to dump this project in their developing neighborhoods while in the city council’s own backyard they only want to bring in high-quality economic development. You know, the kind of investment that these four neighborhoods wish they could get.

Want to comment on the Interbay jail location? Make sure to head on over to the Seattle Center Exhibition Hall, located at 225 Mercer Street tonight from 6 to 9pm. 

And, if you’re against any new jail in Seattle - Rick sent over these handouts/fliers.

• jails_small-1.pdf
• noseattlejail2.pdf 

Now, don’t get me wrong - I think all four of the city’s low-rise jail locations are bad choices (the jail should be built on existing city property that is already downtown because the services and transit are already there).But…I have to admit I have one a personal interest in opposing the North Seattle location - and that’s because it’s where one of the best Korean restaurants in town is located.Just look at the super-fiery, delicious soup below (it’s called yuk kae jung) - mmmm!!!Anyway, Merinae doesn’t get alot of publicity (you won’t find it in either the Seattle Weekly or The Stranger’s online restaurant reviews), but it really would be a shame to lose such a great place. 

Why do developers have one-year warranties on their new homes? Generally because their homes have a few missing fit and finish issues that need to be taken care of after the new owners move in.

And the same thing happens with jails, or at least it did with the King County Regional Justice Center when it opened up in 1997.  Here’s a link to a Seattle Times article from ‘97 where nearby Kent residents were a little irked when a couple of violent inmates who were able to escape.

So the county added some extra razor wire here, maybe replaced some vandal-resistant cords there - you know, all those fit and finish items. Anyway, just pointing this out as a question to ask how the city plans to deal with this ‘break-in’ (no pun intended) period.