Seattle's Clise family cashes in a big pile of blue chips
The 12-acre Denny Triangle land sale opens up options for downtown development, but it also could be a chance to right some wrongs – if we play our Trump cards right.
Recently, Clise Properties – the real estate concern of the Clise clan – announced it was selling a huge, little-developed 12-acre chunk of the Denny Triangle to the highest bidder. This is an area in Seattle bounded roughly by the South Lake Union neighborhood, Belltown, and downtown. The move was called unprecedented. The land alone might sell for more than $200 million, and its eventual development could mean billions of dollars of investment in the area.
This is land where the city recently relaxed height limits, thereby tempting developers to build big and, apparently, tempting the Clises to cash out. The move is controversial and took the city by surprise: It's rather startling to see an old-time Seattle family with such deep roots downtown take the money and run, especially so soon after a generous giveaway by the city. "No one expected that they were planning to cash in this way," City Council member Peter Steinbrueck said. The Clises themselves acknowledged it was a major change in direction.
It throws future development in the area into question, in part because a single developer – probably not local – can reshape the city at a single blow. For those city officials who felt like they were doing the Clises a favor in giving them value and incentives to develop this tract, the move felt like a flip of the old bird.
It is not the first time the Clises have made big civic moves (they helped to found Children's Hospital and Medical Center) or controversial ones. There was the demolition of the historic Music Hall in the early 1990s. And more recently some questioned the coziness of Clise interests with the late Seattle Monorail Project.
But perhaps the greatest bird-flipping gesture of all was when empire founder J.W Clise, head of the Seattle Chamber of Commerce, took a bunch of business leaders on a "goodwill" tour up the Inside Passage to Alaska in 1899. On that jaunt, he became ringleader in the theft of a Tlingit Indian totem pole. The junketeers brought it back to Seattle and hoisted it in Pioneer Square as a civic symbol. The sleazy escapade is well documented and well told in Coll Thrush's excellent new book on the history of Seattle and its Native American inhabitants, Native Seattle: Histories from the Crossing Over Place (University of Washington Press, 2007).
The pole was hijacked and erected not as a symbol of love or respect for Northwest natives, but in the same spirit as the Romans who raised appropriated Egyptian obelisks in Rome. It was a souvenir of imperial conquest, a declaration that Seattle was the gateway to Alaska and our civic domain extended to everything in between, including the land of the Tlingits, who were not even a Puget Sound tribe, except when they paddled south on raids of their own.
Clise and his cohorts, whose cruise was funded the booster-happy Seattle Post-Intelligencer, were indicted for the theft by an Alaskan court, but the judge tore up the indictment after he was wined and dined by Seattle's good old boys at the Rainier Club. A small payment was made for the pole, but years later it was torched by an unknown arsonist and later replaced with a new one that wasn't hot merchandize.
So, the Clises have rolled the dice for our booming city. As people imagine the opportunities in this prime downtown Seattle real estate – a central park, public square, urban dog spa?), I have a modest proposal.
First, the Duwamish Indians have been seeking recognition as a full-fledged tribe from the federal government. They were approved by Clinton I, but that decision was overturned by Bush II. Maybe they'll get luckier under Clinton II. Recently, the Duwamish broke ground on a new longhouse in South Seattle that will remind us of their important role in both the founding of the city and before. If they do eventually get recognition, they'll need land, and might I suggest that we turn over some of the Clise property in the name of poetic justice? Nothing could be a more appropriate gift than valuable land offered in symbolic reparation for the shenanigans of J.W. Clise and all of us who followed the Dennys.
Second, we also know that Donald Trump is eyeing investment in Seattle and looking for something appropriately "world class." Perhaps he could link up with the Duwamish and build a high-rise casino in the shape of a giant slot machine that will remind us how business is done here: Pump your dollars into City Hall and get a big payoff every so often. Some think an Indian casino in Seattle is just a matter of time.
There would be little room for official complaint if either or both of these options occurred. Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis recently said that anyone in the industrial Georgetown neighborhood complaining about a new garbage transfer station there was wrong to gripe. "It's no different from people building a subdivision in the middle of a farm community and complaining about the smell of cow," he told Seattle Weekly.
Well, complaining about development by Trump and world-class casinos in the Denny Triangle could be just as hypocritical, because with the kind of civic stewardship we've had, developers and land-owners could be forgiven if they were picking up on signals to "go for broke." In short, it's just what we've been asking for, and the savvy Clises have figured that out.
Comments:
Posted Mon, Jun 25, 7:26 a.m. inappropriate
What Surprise?: Let's see how this works. Two Clise employees were on the Planning Commission when the zoning relaxation was approved by the Commission. Having steered it to a vote they recused themselves from the vote. Wouldn't want any appearance of impropriety would we? As soon as the City Council approved the Planning Commission recommendation these agents resign from the Commission. Now comes the sale and City Hall is caught by surprise. What a bunch of dolts!
Posted Mon, Jun 25, 2:01 p.m. inappropriate
The Totem Pole Story, But Accurate: First, the Seattle businesspersons lead by J.W. Clise who took the pole from Tongass Island--and a very famous Tlingit pole is was--thought they were taking it from an almost deserted village, because they didn't realize all the men were off fishing and the women were working in canneries.
Second, they got permission to remove the pole from the only two Tlingits present, elderly men who said they were honored that the people of Seattle wanted to enjoy the art and culture of their village.
Third, the controversy over whether the pole was stolen was kept fresh and hopping for months longer than it deserved by the Seattle Times and Seattle Star, because the publisher of the PI, E.B. Piper, was one of the group that removed the pole (as were those obvious thieves and liars the Reverend J.P.D. Llwyd, Rector of St. Marks Cathedral, Jacob Furth, President of Puget Sound National Bank, and James D. Hoge, Jr., President of First National Bank) and his competitors greatly enjoyed embarrassing him as much as they could.
Fourth, the pole was taken not as some imperial trophy, but to give Seattle something to commemorate a very successful trip calling on Alaska merchants. Your story, Friend Berger, reads like they took it because they'd just wiped out the village, like it was a very big cedar scalp.
Fifth, admittedly they might have made more inquiries about the ownership of the pole, but the fact is there were dozens of native villages up and down the Inside Passage that were deserted by the time Clise and friends came by in 1899, and anthropologists, museum operators and others from all over the world had been cutting down and hauling off poles from these villages for years. (Seventeen poles had been removed from that very same village the previous year by the Harriman Expedition and given to colleges in the East.) If you look at the current collections of Inside Passage art in museums around the world, you can see a lot of material stolen from the Tlingits, Haida, and other native peoples. It is not just for local color that the wonderful collection of Kwakwaka'wakw art in Alert Bay is in a facility called the U'mista Cultural Center, U'mista being the Kwakwalla word for "returned treasure," because it is all work stolen from the Kwakwaka'wakw (formerly called the Kwakiutl) and finally returned after sixty years.
Sixth, the original pole indeed partially burned, but an exact replica was carved in 1940 (by Tlingit artist Charles Brown, who apparently didn't think he was recreating stolen goods) because the original pole was discovered post-fire to have dry rot. That's the pole in the Square today.
Seventh, right you are, they showed the judge on his way to Alaska a very good time in Seattle, and practically the first thing he did on arriving up there was to kill the indictments that should never have existed in the first place.
And finally, the Clise family wasn't just involved in the creation of Children's Orthopedic. Anna Herr Clise, J.W.'s wife, founded that place, putting together originally a group of 23 local matrons to help her sell the idea and raise money--which is why CHMC has always had an all-female Board. Anna Clise's motivation for this work was the death from inflammatory rheumatism of her son Willis. He was five years old.
Posted Mon, Jun 25, 3:28 p.m. inappropriate
RE: The Totem Pole Story, But Accurate: Never mess with a guy who buys corduroy sport coats by the carload!
The Piper
Posted Mon, Jun 25, 3:36 p.m. inappropriate
Transportation Oriented Development?: One of my pet projects, at least for talking about, is connecting the viaduct rebuild to I-5, via the Denny corridor.
Basically this means a branch of the Battery Street Tunnel heading due East to a rebuilt interchange at I-5 - right through the heart of the 'Denny Triangle'.
How about the Clise's pony up some monies and leadership to accomplish that? It wouldn't even need a final viaduct proposal to get started and it might even help spark some of the type of civic/business activity that might solve that particular problem with integrity.
Certainly the 1999 Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce would benefit from that type of leadership.
BTW, I love both sides of the 1899 story!
-Douglas Tooley
Tacoma, WA
Posted Mon, Jun 25, 6:22 p.m. inappropriate
Native American Asymmetric Guerrilla Warfare: Reverse Totem Pole Theft: When I was in high school we had a gym teacher who moonlighted as a security guard at the Space Needle. We used to joke that some night we'd come by and steal the thing. Years have gone by, but I offer the idea to the Tlingets as part of the reparations they are obviously due. They could replant it on Clise property gifted to the Tlingets and open a sumptuous Trump Casino on top. I'm sure we could pull this off if we got King County to trade its airport for the rest of the property and if the City of Seattle commissioned the Tlingets to built a Tlinget Canoe Canal where the Viaduct runs now with an underground observation tunnel/freeway beneath it that ended up at a Sound Transit station directly beneath the Needle...
Posted Mon, Jun 25, 10:17 p.m. inappropriate
No Quid Pro Quo? How Shocking!: Truly shocking, Seattle insiders do a favor for an old Seattle land family and they simply offer to sell their land to the highest bidder! What ever happened to cozy insider dealings, scratching each others backs, etc?
Here's a radical suggestion: maybe Seattle should zone and plan without consideration for the good-old-boys network. You want something back in exchange for up-zoning a parcel? Put it in writing, make it part of the code.
Anyone who feels this is a slap in the face is admitting to believing in undemocratic insider dealings as a principle of zoning and land use.
Posted Tue, Jun 26, 6:31 a.m. inappropriate
Wheat from the Chaff: It is an unfortunate thing that business has such a reputation so that any insight into a large transaction is viewed as a problem. FWIW the most corrupt 'business people' I've run into are those former crusaders who believe you **must** sell your soul in order to succeed, and justify their actions thereby.
Personally, I think every person of even modest ambition should view their career as a business. In any case it always takes a willingess to communicate and negotiate. FWIW, I only do 'business' with those that respect my right to negotiate and don't go around accusing me of harrassment or such. That doesn't mean I'm anti-business or a labor loonie, it's nothing but good business, where the SAME RULES APPLY TO ALL.
I've met a lot of people in Greater Seattle and have opinions on most. I've never met a Clise, though I have known divorcee's who lived in their Mercer Island Shorewood Apartment complex in order to keep their kids in that School District.
Kibitzing certainly is appropriate and the Clise's should know they will be judged based on the final outcome of this project. But condemning it aforehand doesn't seem to be justified, least not yet.
I'm still holding out for a result that measures up to, say, Stimson Bullitt's 'Harbor Steps' between the Waterfront and SAM, regardless of whether it includes my suggestion or not. I'd certainly feel proud if it did.
Anything wrong with that?
-Douglas Tooley
Tacoma, WA
Posted Tue, Jun 26, 8:58 a.m. inappropriate
Planning Commission: As a former member of the Seattle Planning Commission, I can state plainly that Clise employees did not "steer" the commission to approve new downtown zoning. First, the Seattle Planning Commission does not have the authority to approve zoning changes. It has only an advisory role, and never voted on the zoning changes. Second, the commission has people with many viewpoints and we simply saw those from Clise as another viewpoint to consider--they had no special influence and were treated no differently from others. While the commission was (is) interested in increased density downtown, in my view our major focus was in assuring that adequate public benefits were included, such as affordable housing, open space and historic preservation.
Mimi Sheridan
Posted Thu, Jun 28, 7:31 a.m. inappropriate
Who Will Get To Us Next Week?: I'm happy for Mimi Sheridan that she is confident the City wasn't had by the developers. Much as the developers of the Arctic Building aren't pulling a fast one over on City Hall this week.
The business of developers is to screw the people they do business with, their customers, partners, lenders, contractors, the government and the public. That is how they make money and that is their business.