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City Council, Density, Development, homelessness, housing, Mayor Durkan, Morning Fizz	 November 23, 2020 November 23, 2020
Morning Fizz: Downtown Hotel May House Homeless; Mayor Bullish on Homeless Agency Hiring; a Look Back at Pedersen's Provisos
1. PubliCola has learned that the city is in conversation with the downtown Executive Pacific Hotel to provide temporary housing to hundreds of unsheltered Seattle residents using federal COVID relief dollars. The hotel is one of at least two in or near downtown Seattle that the city hopes will serve as way stations between homelessness and permanent housing. The city has pledged to fund as many as 300 hotel rooms for 10 months; the plan is to move people quickly from living on the street to either permanent supportive housing or market-rate apartments, using temporary "rapid rehousing" subsidies.
Mayor Jenny Durkan's office would not confirm that the Executive Pacific, which has 155 rooms, is under consideration for the program. "The City is in negotiations with a number of hotels and it would be premature to announce any possible locations as that may impact those ongoing negotiations," Durkan's communications director, Kamaria Hightower, said.
The city contracted with the Executive Pacific early in the pandemic to provide rooms for first responders. As PubliCola reported, most of those rooms remained vacant while shelters continued to operate at full or nearly-full capacity.
2. At a meeting of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority's governing board last week, representatives from the Hawkins Company, a recruiting firm hired to help identify a director for the new agency, said they they expect to start "preliminary candidate screening" by early December, with a goal of narrowing the list down to between 5 and 8 candidates by the end of the year. The official application period ends in less than two weeks, on December 4.
Given the high qualifications for the position, and the challenges of running a joint city-county homelessness agency with dozens of constituent cities with competing views about homelessness, it seems likely that the Hawkins Group could face some challenges in recruiting 5 to 8 fully qualified candidates for the position. Since the city of Seattle and King County itself are the most prominent partners in the new authority, I reached out to the offices of Mayor Durkan and County Executive Dow Constantine for comment.
"We are confident The Hawkins Company will present an initial pool of five to eight qualified candidates."—Mayor Jenny Durkan's office
Constantine's office did not respond. Hightower, speaking for Durkan's office, said the mayor is "confident The Hawkins Company will present an initial pool of five to eight qualified candidates" and that Hawkins is "well on their way to the goal." Hightower noted that Hawkins recruited the executive director for the LA Homeless Services Authority, and reminded me the "the Mayor is part of a group of decision-makers" at the county authority. However, Durkan and Constantine, as the executives of the county's largest city (and the biggest financial contributor to the authority) and the county itself, are indisputably the most prominent of those decision makers.
3. Throughout the budget process that wraps up this afternoon, freshman city council member Alex Pedersen has promoted an anti-development agenda that will be familiar to anyone who paid attention to his 2019 campaign. And although most of the slow-growth amendments, provisos, and statements of legislative intent Pedersen proposed this year didn't pass, it's worth taking a look at them together to imagine what their impact would have been if they had. Collectively, Pedersen's proposals would have placed significant new process barriers in the way of housing in Seattle, including new reporting requirements, new fees, and new regulations making it harder for land owners to remove trees on private property.
Here are just a few of the land-use amendments Pedersen proposed as part of this year's budget process. Except where noted, these measures did not make it into the final budget. Continue reading "Morning Fizz: Downtown Hotel May House Homeless; Mayor Bullish on Homeless Agency Hiring; a Look Back at Pedersen's Provisos" →
Filed under: Alex Pedersen, budget 2021, density, development, Executive Pacific Hotel, regional homelessness authority
City Council, Development, Featured, Health, housing, land use	 April 27, 2020
Council Vote Allows Stalled Housing Projects to Move Forward Without Usual Lengthy Review
Not Seattle.
After more weeks of debate than any other piece of emergency legislation to come out of the COVID crisis so far, the Seattle City Council voted this morning to ease the requirement that certain developments go through the lengthy full design review process, allowing dozens of buildings that were already in the process pipeline to continue moving forward. The legislation died last week for lack of seven votes (the requirement for emergency legislation) but was brought back this afternoon with a new amendment from council member Tammy Morales, who initially voted against the bill on the li grounds that it would expedite gentrification in historic districts like the Chinatown/International District and the Central District.
Public comment, which returned last week, was split between people who insisted that streamlining design review, even for a few months, would lead to the wholesale destruction of neighborhoods and the decimation of urban forests, and those who argued that building housing was critical to the city's recovery. Several speakers who opposed the bill said that the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections "can't be trusted" and suggested that city land-use bureaucrats were hellbent on scraping single-family lots of trees and vegetation to build dense, "unaffordable buildings" in the middle of their single-family neighborhoods.
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Last week, Morales proposed an amendment that would have eliminated a provision allowing city staff, rather than historic district and landmark review boards, to approve changes in historic districts. That amendment failed, and Morales voted against the legislation, along with Lisa Herbold and Alex Pedersen. This time, she came back with a more narrowly tailored amendment specifically prohibiting any online meetings of the city's International [District] Special Review District on the grounds that the community includes many people without access to technology and translation services. That amendment passed, and Morales voted for the final bill, calling her vote "my first and last concession in the name of easing process or relieving administrative burdens if it means that it will accelerate disaster gentrification."
Council member Andrew Lewis proposed an amendment, which failed to pass, that would have halted work on three projects that are participating in the city's Living Building pilot program by requiring them to continue through the full design review process. "Living buildings" get some extra height and density in exchange for being built to high environmental standards, but like other buildings that receive height bonuses, they tend to be controversial among traditional neighborhood groups. Lewis said he had heard concerns from "the community" that allowing these projects to shift to administrative design review, which doesn't require in-person meetings but does allow public feedback, would lead to inferior buildings. The amendment failed despite an assist from Herbold, who encouraged Lewis to reiterate his reasons for believing that projects shouldn't shift from full design review to a less process-y process midstream.
"This will be my first and last concession in the name of easing process or relieving administrative burdens if it means that it will accelerate disaster gentrification." — Council member Tammy Morales
And what about Herbold, who voted against the bill last week after her own amendment, which would have eliminated a provision that exempts affordable housing from design review for six months, failed? City rules prohibited her from bringing up the same amendment again (as they did with Morales' unsuccessful changes), and she voted against the bill a second time, arguing that the affordable-housing exemption violates Gov. Jay Inslee's order restricting cities from considering legislation that is unrelated to the COVID emergency. Council president Lorena Gonzalez, who said she had consulted on this question extensively with the city clerk and city attorney's office, disagreed, and the legislation passed 7-2.
The upshot of all this is actually more significant than the last few weeks' arcane finagling suggest. Dozens of projects, including affordable housing projects, have been on hold since Inslee's order halted in-person public meetings, putting a critical economic sector in a holding pattern until the city decided what to do. Now, and for the next six months, these projects can get back underway. As Queen Anne Community Council board member Justin Allegro put it during public comment, "We don't want to look back and regret that we missed out on huousing opportunities now just because we weren't willing to trust our city employee experts to make design review decisions for the next few months."
Filed under: Andrew Lewis, city council, design review, development, Lisa Herbold, tammy morales
Development, Featured, homelessness, housing, Mayor Durkan	 August 7, 2019 August 8, 2019
Mercer Megablock Sells to Real Estate Equity Firm for $143 Million
Mayor Jenny Durkan announced today that the city will sell the "Mercer Megablock" property—three parcels in South Lake Union totaling just under three acres—to Alexandria Real Estate for a total of $143 million. (I was first to report that the city had chosen Alexandria as the buyer last month.) The sale of the property, one of the largest undeveloped properties in South Lake Union, will net $78 million for various affordable housing uses (including both low-income and middle-income housing); pay back several loans the city took out against the future sale of the property; and provide $5 million for unspecified homelessness-related programs—including, perhaps, the restructure of the city and county's homelessness response systems into one regional agency.
The $143 million price tag includes a $38 million "discount" in exchange for Alexandria's guarantee to provide affordable housing; the price without affordable housing would have been just over $171 million. "It's a new benchmark number in terms of price for square foot" on the portion of the property Alexandria plans to develop, Steven Shain, from the city budget office, told reporters during a briefing on the plan last week. "I think we did a great job negotiating. … I don't want to characterize in the press that they're overpaying [but] they are going way above to make sure that they won this project."
During last week's briefing, Mayor Jenny Durkan called the deal "one of the most consequential property deals the city of Seattle has ever done. … I think it will be one of those things that people look back and say, that really was a generational opportunity for the city of Seattle and they were able to seize it and make our city better because of it."
Here's a detailed look at what the project will look like and where the money from the sale will go.
What will be included on site:
The project will primarily be a life-sciences campus like the ones Alexandria has already developed in cities like San Francisco, San Diego, and in South Lake Union—"creating … hundreds of new jobs, if not thousands of new jobs, that will lead to our ability to be the city that cures cancer and other things like that," Durkan said.
In addition to commercial space, the project will include a community center of up to 30,000 square feet, according to Shain, at no rent to the city, and will a single, large building (up to 12 stories tall) combining 175 units of low-income housing—the minimum number the city asked for in its original request for proposals—with about 38 moderate-income units built under the city's Multifamily Tax Exemption (MFTE) program, which grants developers a property tax break if they keep units affordable to moderate-income households for 12 years. (City officials who briefed reporters on the plan last week said the developer could build as many as 190 units in addition to the affordable ones, but has not committed to a specific number, which will determine the exact number of MFTE units).
The affordable units, according to Shain , would be distributed throughout the same building as the market-rate apartments—"there wouldn't be two separate doors"—and would be available to people making less than 60 percent of the Seattle area median income, or about $45,600 for a single person. The new units would mostly be studios and one-bedrooms, not the family-sized units that are most lacking in Seattle, particularly in the downtown core.
Alexandria would also be responsible for building two blocks of protected bike lane on Mercer St. and to open a pedestrian path through the campus on the block between Mercer and Roy. The company has agreed to pay for pay for environmental remediation on the site, which has been the site of a dry cleaner and a gas station, among other things; Shain said the cost would probably be a "significant eight-figure number." Continue reading "Mercer Megablock Sells to Real Estate Equity Firm for $143 Million" →
Filed under: development, Mayor Durkan, Mercer megablock, South Lake Union
Affordability, City Council, Density, Development, housing, Mayor Durkan, Morning Crank, neighborhoods	 July 2, 2019 July 28, 2019
Morning Crank: "I Have Not Seen Any Speculative ADU Bubble"
1. The city council finally adopted legislation to loosen regulations on backyard and basement apartment construction Monday, 13 years after the city allowed homeowners to build backyard cottages in Southeast Seattle on a "pilot" basis in 2006. The city's analysis found that the new rules, which would allow homeowners to build up to two accessory units (such as a basement apartment and a backyard cottage) on their property, will add up to 440 new units a year across Seattle, or about one unit for every 80 acres of single-family land.
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The city expanded its initial backyard cottage pilot to include the rest of Seattle in 2009, but it never took off in a major way, thanks in large part to restrictions on lot and unit size, owner-occupancy requirement, and parking mandates that made accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, difficult and expensive to build. Efforts to make it easier to build second and third units ran against the usual objections from single-family homeowner activists, who claimed that changing the law would turn Seattle's exclusive neighborhoods into triplex canyons, and from left-leaning development opponents, who claimed that loosening the rules would lead to a frenzy of speculative development, with builders snatching up affordable single-family rental houses and destroying them to make way for new houses with two additional units, which they would rent out at higher prices or turn into Airbnbs.
Litigation by a group of homeowner activists dragged the process out for years, but the city prevailed in May, enabling the legislation to finally move forward. Although council members generally supported the proposal, some of them wanted to add new restrictions, such as owner occupancy and ownership requirements and even a ban on leasing the units as short-term rentals, which would have subjected backyard cottages and basement apartments to more stringent anti-Airbnb rules than any other kind of housing in the city.
Ultimately, the only one of those amendments that saw the light of day on Monday was Lisa Herbold's proposal to require homeowners to own a property for one year before building a second accessory unit—a provision Herbold said was necessary "to address the speculative market that will flip these units"—with even socialist council member Kshama Sawant saying that she saw no reason for the restriction. While she is concerned about "corporate developers" building luxury apartment towers, Sawant said, "I have not seen any speculative ADU bubble anywhere."
The legislation, which Sightline called "the best rules in America for backyard cottages," passed 8-0, with council member Bruce Harrell absent.
2. Often, when the council passes a piece of legislation they have been working on for some time, Mayor Jenny Durkan sends out a press release praising the council for passing "the Mayor's legislation." That didn't happen with the ADU bill that passed yesterday—not because Durkan didn't have her own version of the proposal, but because she never sent her own version of the ADU legislation to the council. Instead, after a team of staffers spent months working on draft legislation and crafting an outreach plan for an alternative proposal, the mayor apparently decided to support O'Brien's legislation after all.
It's hard to quantify how much staff time the mayor's office and city departments dedicated to drafting legislation that never saw the light of day, but the sheer volume of communications in the first three months of 2019 suggests it was a substantial body of work. (I filed my request at the end of March and received redacted records in mid-June, which is why I don't have any documents dated later than March 31).
At the moment, it's also hard to know what problems Durkan had with O'Brien's proposal, since most of the documents her office provided about her strategy and legislation look like this:
I would show more, but it just goes on like this.However, series of text messages between two mayoral staffers that were provided without redactions shows that one of the changes Durkan was considering was an even longer ownership requirement than what Herbold proposed—two years, rather than one, before a homeowner could build a second accessory unit.
I've asked the mayor's office for unredacted versions of the documents I received in and will post more details about her proposal when I receive them. In the meantime, here's one more page from those redacted documents—this one a list of ideas the mayor's office had to "further allay concerns" about "speculative development."
Filed under: ADUs, backyard cottages, city council, DADUs, density, development, kshama sawant, Lisa Herbold, Mayor Durkan, mike o'brien, single-family zoning
Affordability, City Council, Elections, homelessness, housing, human services, Mayor Durkan, Morning Crank, neighborhoods, Politics, zoning	 April 5, 2019 April 5, 2019
Morning Crank: "As a Seattle Native"
If we allow backyard cottages, it could open the door to neighborhood character-destroying duplexes like this
1. The city's hearing examiner heard final arguments late last month in the latest effort by Queen Anne activist Marty Kaplan to prevent homeowners from building mother-in-law units and backyard cottages (accessory dwelling units, or ADUs) on their property. (Kaplan has been filing legal challenges "as a Seattle native" since 2016, arguing that allowing two ADUs—e.g., a backyard cottage plus a basement apartment—will destroy the character of Seattle's exclusive single-family neighborhoods and lead to rampant speculation by developers). The preferred alternative (there's no actual legislation yet, since the proposal has been locked up in litigation) would also remove the existing parking mandate; establish restrictions on the size of new single-family houses in an effort to thwart McMansion-style developments; and lift the current owner-occupancy requirement in favor of a new rule requiring that a homeowner who has one ADU and wants to build a second must own the property for at least a year before beginning to build.
If the hearing examiner rules that the environmental review of the ADU proposal, sponsored by council member Mike O'Brien, was adequate, the council can move forward with actual legislation as early as next month. Their goal is to finalize and vote on the legislation no later than August.
But hold up. Mayor Jenny Durkan reportedly hopes to negotiate with the council to get some amendments to the legislation, starting with the owner-occupancy requirement. ADU opponents, including Kaplan, have argued that allowing up to two secondary units on a lot will open single-family neighborhoods up to "speculative development," unless the city mandates that any homeowner who wants to build an ADU has to live on that property in perpetuity. The specter of developers descending greedily upon single-family property for the privilege of building a secondary unit (and then, after owning the property for a full year after that, building a third) might strike anyone familiar with Seattle's existing real-estate market as absurd, but to spell it out: There's no evidence of a speculative boom in backyard apartments in other cities, like Portland and Vancouver, where they're easier to build; the scenario in which developers build backyard apartments, then sit on those properties for the year before building another unit, makes little financial sense; and fans of missing-middle housing for middle-class people who can no longer afford to buy anything in Seattle might consider a little development a good thing. Nonetheless, Durkan reportedly wants to put owner-occupancy requirements back on the table, and to reopen the discussion about parking requirements. Council sources say the parking idea in particular is probably a nonstarter.
The hearing examiner is expected to make his ruling by mid-May.
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2. The city's Human Services Department found itself on the defensive in late February, after Mayor Durkan claimed in her state of the city speech that the city had "helped more than 7,400 households move out of homelessness and into permanent housing." As I first reported, that number was misleading at best—the city actually counted 7,400 exits from programs, a number that almost certainly overstates the number of actual people who have gotten out of homelessness because it counts every program as an exit (so that, for example, a household of two who stopped using five homelessness programs would count as five "exits.")
At the time, HSD officials and the mayor's office expressed frustration to reporters who asked questions about the discrepancy, insisting that they should have "known all along" that when the city said "households," they really meant "exits from programs," and that reporters should focus not on what the numbers specifically represent, but on the fact that they're going up. "No matter how you look at it, it's getting better," HSD deputy director Tiffany Washington said. Nonetheless, several other reporters considered it newsworthy that the city did not know how many people it was actually helping, despite the city's insistence that it was not a revelation.
Even as the city was telling reporters that they shouldn't have been surprised that "households" does not mean "households," internal communications between mayoral and HSD staffers, which I obtained through a records request, show that prior to the mayor's press conference to discuss the numbers the Monday after my story ran, the city decided to remove all references to "households" in a talking-points memo bound for the mayor's desk.
The shift was fairly abrupt. On Thursday, February 21, for example, HSD spokeswoman Meg Olberding wrote in an internal email that one of the department's top speaking points was "30% More Households Exit (Maintain) to Permanent Housing." One day later, and several hours after my initial story on the "households" vs. "exits" discrepancy, the mayor's homelessness advisor, Tess Colby, emailed the mayor's office and HSD staff to say that she had "revised the memo to Mayor to replace 'HHs' with 'exits' solely in the interest of precision."
In all, 12 references to "households" were removed from the memo. For example, the top bullet point, which referred to "the 7,400-goal … for exiting households from the system and maintaining permanent supportive housing clients" was changed to "exits from the system and maintaining permanent supportive housing clients." A sentence that originally read, "In 2018 431 Native American/Alaska Native households exited homeless services programs …and 2,979 Black/African Americans households exited homeless services programs" was changed to read, "In 2018 there were 431 exits among Native Americans/Alaska Natives from homeless services programs … and exits of Black/African Americans increased to 2,979." And a reference to enhanced shelters "exiting nearly twice as many households" in 2018 than the previous year was changed to say, "Exits to permanent housing increased nearly two-fold."
These changes may seem minor, but they (and their timing) are significant. The mayor's office got called out for overstating its success in responding to homelessness. Publicly, they went on the defensive, telling reporters they were making a big deal out of nothing. Privately, though, the mayor's office appeared to realize the confusion was warranted.
3. Speak Out Seattle, a group that fought against the head tax for homelessness, opposes tiny house villages and encampments, and backed an initiative to ban safe consumption sites, held a forum for District 2 council candidates Thursday night, although only four of the seven declared candidates decided to attend. (Two, Tammy Morales and Christopher Peguero, had previously stated their intent to boycott the forum). The remaining candidates were bounce-house rental company owner Ari Hoffman, Socialist Workers Party Henry Dennison, Seattle Police Department crime prevention coordinator Mark Solomon, and Rainier Valley community organizer Phyllis Porter.
I live-tweeted the event, which was attended by an incongruously white audience given that D2 is the least-white district in the city. I've included a few key moments below, and collected all my tweets in a Twitter moment here.
Ari Hoffman, D2 candidate, suggests removing homeless people from streets and relocating them en masse to trailers in "a place like Harbor Island" where they can then be "triaged" into services and treatment.
— Erica C. Barnett (@ericacbarnett) April 5, 2019
Phyllis Porter: "We need to stop allowing people to live in the unsanctioned encampments. We need to have them moved to the sanctioned encampments. Take them away from the encampments that are unsanctioned."
Ari Hoffman, who previously said that he has had multiple bullets whiz through his office, now says an RV fire next to his office almost took out two businesses yesterday. He also says he's witnessed rampant "child prostitution" outside his office.
Phyllis Porter says her brother entered drug treatment three days ago (a disclosure that, frankly, I think was not hers to make). Says he wouldn't have gone into treatment if safe injection sites existed.
Ari says he spends time sitting in on recovery meetings and says that the thing people say over and over is "thanks God I hit rock bottom." Says "forced treatment" might be the answer for "people who refuse to accept services."
The candidates who did NOT show up at the District 2 forum I was livetweeting tonight are Matthew Perkins, @TammyMoralesSEA, and Christopher Peguero.
Just in case any D2 voters were reading and thought the four people I was quoting were their only choices.
Filed under: ADUs, backyard cottages, density, development, Election 2019, homelessness, housing, Marty Kaplan
City Council, City Hall, Density, Development, Elections, housing, Morning Crank, Politics	 February 17, 2019 February 17, 2019
Early Morning Crank: Wills Confirms Council Rumors, Johnson Denies Early Departure, Incentive Zoning Delayed
via Twitter.
1. Former council member Heidi Wills will soon declare her candidacy for city council in District 6, after District 6 incumbent Mike O'Brien announced that he did not plan to run for reelection. The news came courtesy of Wills' Facebook page over the weekend, when Wills posted the following in the comments to a post by—of all people—former council member Judy Nicastro, who was ousted along with Wills in the wake of the Strippergate scandal in 2003:
Heidi Wills Thank you, Judy! I ❤ Seattle. We're growing so fast and facing big issues. I'd like a seat at the table to elevate all our voices for a more common sense, inclusive, equitable and sustainable city. Campaign logistics will be in place soon. Stay tuned!
I first reported on speculation that Wills would run in December. After losing to one-term council member David Della, Wills spent almost 15 years as the executive director of The First Tee, an organization that teaches golf to disadvantaged youth.
2. City council member Rob Johnson denies rumors that he plans to leave his council position to start a new job advising the National Hockey League on transportation issues related to KeyArena as early as May. (A more recent rumor had Johnson leaving as early as next month.) "It's not true," Johnson says. "I have no plans to leave early." However, in the next breath, Johnson appeared to leave the door open for an early departure, adding, "I've got a firm commitment from [the NHL] that we won't even start talking about that until we have concluded MHA"—the Mandatory Housing Affordability plan, which will allow more density in some areas in exchange for affordable housing. That process is supposed to wrap up in mid-May.
If Johnson (or any of the other three council incumbents who have said they will not seek reelection when their terms end this year) does leave early, the council will have to appoint a replacement; the last time that happened was when Kirsten Harris-Talley replaced Position 8 council member Tim Burgess, who left the council to serve as mayor after former mayor Ed Murray resigned amid child sexual abuse allegations. Harris-Talley served for 51 days.
3. One issue that won't come before Johnson's committee before he leaves is a planned update of the city's Incentive Zoning program—another density-for-public-benefits tradeoff that has been partly supplanted by MHA. Incentive zoning is a catchall term for a patchwork of zoning designations that allow developers to build more densely in exchange for funding or building affordable housing or other public benefits, such as child care, open space, or historic protection through a transfer of development rights (a program that has been used to protect historic buildings, such as Town Hall on First Hill, from demolition.) Once MHA goes through, incentive zoning will still apply in downtown and South Lake Union as well as parts of the University District, Uptown, and North Rainier neighborhoods.
The whole program was supposed to get an update this year to consolidate IZ standards across the city, strengthen some green building requirements (barring the use of fossil fuels for heating, for example), and impose minimum green building standards throughout downtown (currently, the city's standard, which requires buildings to be 15 percent more efficient than what the state requires, are only mandatory outside the downtown core). The proposed new rules would also remove "shopping corridors" and publicly accessible atriums from the list of public amenities allowed under incentive zoning, since these tend to be public in name only.
Last week, the city's Office of Planning and Community Development sent out a notice saying that "Due to the volume of land use policy and legislation work that the City of Seattle is currently undertaking, the Incentive Zoning Update has been temporarily delayed." The notice continued, "There is currently no revised schedule for release of public draft legislation or transmission to Council. While there is still a possibility that legislation could be transmitted to Council for consideration in 2019, it is likely that the legislation will be delayed until 2020."
City staffers say the delay is largely because the city's law department, which reviews legislation, has been backed up not just with MHA, but with a backlog of litigation, from challenges to city rules allowing backyard apartments to defending legislation gerrymandering the Pike Place Market Historical District to include the Showbox. Developers, meanwhile, may be breathing a sigh of relief. In a letter to OPCD last year, NAIOP, which represents commercial real estate developers, objected to the new green standards, arguing that they would lead to higher housing costs and jeopardize MHA's ability to produce more density. NAIOP also argued that because the new energy standards have advanced faster than the technology that would enable builders to comply with them, the city should reduce the amount by which it requires new projects to best the state-mandated energy code. OPCD disputes NAIOP's characterization of the current standards, but acknowledges that there may come a time when they need to be revisited.
Filed under: city council, development, Election 2019, Heidi Wills, incentive zoning, mandatory housing affordability, NAIOP, Rob Johnson
City Council, Density, Development, Historic Preservation, housing, land use, Mayor Durkan	 February 4, 2019 February 4, 2019
Anxious About Durkan's Decision, Council Members and Housing Advocates Scheduled Last-Minute Press Conference on Density Plan
Image via City of Seattle
For months, advocates for a denser, more affordable city have been waiting with gritted teeth to see how Mayor Jenny Durkan would put her imprint on the citywide Mandatory Housing Affordability plan, which was developed under her predecessor, Ed Murray. The plan, which has already been implemented in a handful of neighborhoods, allows more types of housing—duplexes, townhouses, and apartment buildings—in more parts of the city, including 6 percent of the land currently zoned exclusively for single-family housing. Given Durkan's somewhat spotty record on key urbanist issues—stalling bike lanes downtown and in North Seattle, siding with housing opponents on the Showbox, and delaying the First Avenue streetcar—density advocates worried that any changes Durkan made would only water down the proposal.
Last week, it looked like the advocates were about to get the bad news they were expecting: Durkan, under pressure from the city attorney's office, was reportedly poised to call for a supplemental environmental impact statement (SEIS) to examine the plan's potential impacts on historic resources (like the Admiral Theatre, above)—an additional layer of process that would have added months of delay and created new avenues for MHA opponents to appeal the plan, perhaps into oblivion. Instead, MHA advocates wanted the city to limit its additional historical-resources analysis—required by an otherwise favorable ruling by the city's hearing examiner last November—to an addendum to the final environmental impact statement, which would require only a 14-day public comment period and could not be challenged. The ruling marked the conclusion of a yearlong appeal by single-family neighborhood activists, who argued that MHA should not go forward because of its supposed negative environmental impacts.
The city attorney, whose spokesman said he could not comment on any legal advice the office provides to the mayor, reportedly expressed concern that doing an addendum, rather than a full SEIS, could open the city up to legal liability.
Durkan's office did not respond to questions about whether she initially leaned toward recommending the more arduous, time-consuming EIS process. But representatives from the Housing Development Consortium, Vulcan, the Chinatown/International District Public Development Authority, and several city council members were apparently concerned enough about the potential for more delay that they planned a press conference this past Friday morning at Sound Transit's Union Station to encourage the mayor to move forward quickly with the plan.
According to a planning email obtained by The C Is for Crank, pro-MHA city council member Teresa Mosqueda's office billed the event—officially a kickoff to Affordable Housing Month— as an opportunity for participating organizations "to speak directly with members of the press about the importance of moving MHA forward by March… and why you and/or your organization is excited to support this legislation that has been years in the making!" In addition to Mosqueda, council members Rob Johnson and Lorena Gonzalez were scheduled to speak.
And then, without notice, the press conference was called off. One participant says they showed up to find no one there. Mosqueda would not comment on why the event was canceled; nor would Johnson, the chairman of the council's land use committee and a longtime vocal MHA proponent.
However, sources inside and outside city hall who spoke on background say that Durkan met last week with a coalition of MHA advocates, including developers whose plans would be impacted by more delay, who strongly urged her to go with the less onerous addendum option. As, indeed, she ultimately did: The city's Office of Planning and Development will publish the addendum on Thursday, eliminating one of the last potential roadblocks to MHA's approval. At some point between now and March, the council will approve the plan (with amendments) and a companion resolution, which could call for mitigation plans to protect historical resources inside the MHA boundaries.
The mayor's office provided a statement about the decision to move MHA forward:
Mayor Durkan believes the Mandatory Housing Affordability requirements are critical to building more affordable housing while ensuring that our fastest-growing neighborhoods can be vibrant, livable places for the next generation. In November 2018, the Seattle Hearing Examiner ruled that the environmental analysis of MHA conducted by the City adequately addressed the impacts of the proposal with the exception of the analysis of historic resources. As required by the Hearing Examiner's remand, the City has been working diligently to conduct a thorough environmental review of historic resources, and this week OPCD will publish the addendum in order to move forward on a path for the City Council to pass MHA this Spring. Understanding appellants have challenged MHA every step of the way, the City will continue to successfully work to increase development capacity and support affordable housing requirements.
If MHA does move forward in March, it will mark the end of delay tactics that have resulted in the loss of hundreds of units of affordable housing, worth an estimated $87 million, over the year that MHA has been locked up in appeals. It will also represent a significant moment in the Durkan administration—a decision to move forward, rather than delay, a program that will create a significant amount of new housing despite the fact that it's controversial with the single-family homeowners who helped the mayor get elected.
It's not clear exactly why Durkan made this decision when she did—whether, for example, she was swayed by the specter of a big press conference starring three council members, Vulcan, and the county's largest affordable housing coalition, or by direct appeals from developers themselves. But tensions were reportedly high at City Hall right up until Friday, after Durkan decided to support the fast-track option— if you can say that a process that has taken nearly two years is on a fast track.
Filed under: density, development, mandatory housing affordability, Mayor Durkan, MHA, Rob Johnson, Teresa Mosqueda
Affordability, City Council, Density, Development, Equity, homelessness, housing, Poverty	 January 23, 2019 January 27, 2019
As Council Moves to Protect Mobile Home Park, It's Important to Remember How We Got Here
Next week, the city council is expected to adopt an emergency one-year moratorium on development at the Halcyon Mobile Home Park in North Seattle, to prevent developers from buying the property while the council crafts legislation to preserve the park in perpetuity. That future legislation, which will be developed in council member Rob Johnson's land use committee, would most likely create a new zoning designation allowing only mobile or manufactured homes on the two properties, similar to a law Portland adopted last year.
If this is the first you're hearing about the plight of the Halcyon Mobile Home Park, you're not alone. Although the park, which houses dozens of low-income seniors and their families, has been on the market since last June, it recently caught the attention of council member Kshama Sawant, who called a special meeting of her human services and renters' rights committee last Friday afternoon to discuss her emergency legislation, which she said was necessary to prevent "US Bank, a big financial institution that does not care about ordinary people, [from] selling the property to a corporate developer called Blue Fern."
Urging Halcyon's elderly residents to write to the council and turn out in force for public comment at the full council meeting on Tuesday afternoon, Sawant did not mince words. "It's important to remind the council that if they don't act on this, they will be kicking Grandma out, and that's going to be on their conscience, so we need to make sure that they understand what political price they have to pay for it," Sawant said.
"It's important to remind the council that if they don't act on this, they will be kicking Grandma out, and that's going to be on their conscience, so we need to make sure that they understand what political price they have to pay for it." —Council member Kshama Sawant, urging residents of the Halcyon Mobile Home Park to write the council
The sudden "emergency" was news to council member Debora Juarez, who said she couldn't attend Sawant's special committee meeting on Friday due to a prior commitment. (Sawant's committee ordinarily meets on the second and fourth Tuesdays of every month, although it has only met once since last July.) On Tuesday, after Sawant repeated her claim that "the developer, Blue Fern, could vest literally any day now," Juarez took the mic to "correct the record."
Among those corrections: Blue Fern has not filed plans to develop the property. The property is not owned by US Bank. And no development plans are in the offing.
It's true that the property, which was owned by one family but is now part of a trust, of which the University of Washington is a beneficiary, is on the market—with US Bank as the trustee and Kidder Matthews as the broker—but Blue Fern, after inquiring about the preapplication process last October and attending a meeting with the city in December, has decided they do not plan to move forward with the proposal. According to a spokesman for Blue Fern, Benjamin Paulus, "Neither Blue Fern Development, LLC or its affiliated companies are under contract to purchase this property."
The sudden panic—the last-minute committee meeting, the declaration of emergency, the chartered bus that ferried Halcyon residents and supporters to today's council meeting—was, in other words, at least partly based on misinformation. Confronted by her colleagues about this, Sawant said the specific details didn't matter, because "it is only a matter of time before another corporate developer comes along and decides to buy this property, so the residents haven't been misled."
Every individual decision to "save" a property, however justifiable in isolation, puts off until another day a discussion we've been avoiding since well before the current building boom. Imagine if the city had reexamined single-family zoning and adopted mandatory affordable housing laws 20 years ago, back when the council was busy arguing over every dilapidated apartment building being torn down in South Lake Union. Maybe we would have built thousands of units of affordable housing, and the "luxury" apartments of that era would be affordable to middle-income renters today. Maybe residents of Halcyon Mobile Home Park, and other naturally-occurring affordable housing, wouldn't feel so desperate at the prospect of moving elsewhere if we had built somewhere else for them to go.
Many of the residents themselves—one of whom fell down during yesterday's council meeting, causing a brief hush in the room —appeared to believe, as late as yesterday afternoon, that they were at imminent risk of losing their homes. Several residents choked back tears as they testified, saying they were terrified about becoming homeless. These are real, legitimate fears—of nine mobile home parks that existed in Seattle in 1990, when the city council passed a series of similar development moratoria, just two remain—but it's hard to see how stoking them, by suggesting that the bulldozers are practically at the gate, serves the interests of vulnerable low-income seniors.
Mobile homes are naturally occurring affordable housing, and developing them into other kinds of housing—in this case, townhouses or apartments—creates a very literal kind of physical displacement. It's understandable that the city council, faced with the prospect of tossing dozens of senior citizens out of their homes, would do everything in their power to prevent that from happening, including creating special new zones that protect mobile home parks in perpetuity.
But there's a larger question such parcel-by-parcel anti-displacement efforts elide: Why are apartments still illegal almost everywhere in Seattle? Every time the city decides to preserve one apartment building, or one mobile home park, without asking about the opportunity cost of that decision, they are putting off a crucial conversation about Seattle's housing shortage, and how to solve it. Every time the city walls off another block from development—whether it's the Showbox, which also got the "emergency moratorium" treatment, or a mobile home park for low-income seniors—without addressing the astonishing reality that two-thirds of Seattle is zoned exclusively for suburban-style detached single-family houses, they are making a deliberate decision that this same thing will happen again.
None of these choices happen in a vacuum. Every individual decision to "save" a property, however justifiable in isolation, puts off until another day a discussion we've been avoiding since well before the current building boom. Imagine if the city had reformed single-family zoning and adopted mandatory affordable housing laws 20 years ago, back when the council and anti-displacement advocates were busy litigating the fate of every dilapidated apartment building being torn down in South Lake Union. Maybe we would have built thousands of units of affordable housing, and the "luxury" apartments of that era would be affordable to middle-income renters today. Maybe the residents of Halcyon Mobile Home Park, and other naturally-occurring affordable housing, wouldn't feel so desperate at the prospect of moving elsewhere, if we had built somewhere else for them to go.
Filed under: affordability, affordable housing, Debora Juarez, density, development, Halcyon Mobile Home Park, kshama sawant, Rob Johnson
Cops, Crime, criminal justice, Density, Development, Environment, land use, Morning Crank, Urbanism, zoning	 December 20, 2018 December 19, 2018
Morning Crank: Incongruous With Their Fundamental Mission
1. For years, environmental advocates who support urban density as a tool against sprawl have grumbled about the fact that the anti-sprawl nonprofit Futurewise has two men on its board who make a living fighting against the foundational principles of the organization—attorneys Jeff Eustis and David Bricklin. Both men were ousted from the Futurewise board last month after the board voted to impose term limits on board members, who will be limited to no more than three successive terms from now on.
Both Eustis and Bricklin are crossways with Futurewise on a number of high-profile local issues, including the question of whether Seattle should allow more people to live in single-family areas, which occupy 75 percent of the city's residential land but house a shrinking fraction of Seattle's residents. Eustis is currently representing the Queen Anne Community Council, headed by longtime anti-density activist Marty Kaplan, in its efforts to stop new rules that would make it easier to build backyard cottages and basement apartments in single-family areas. Bricklin represents homeowner activists working to stop the city's Mandatory Housing Affordability plan, which would allow townhouses and small apartment buildings in 7 percent of the city's single-family areas.
To get a sense of how incongruous this work is with Futurewise's primary mission, consider this: Futurewise is one of the lead organizations behind Seattle For Everyone, the pro-density, pro-MHA, pro-housing group. Bricklin co-wrote an op/ed in the Seattle Times denouncing MHA and calling it a "random" upzone that fails to take the concerns of single-family neighborhoods into account.
Bricklin's firm also represents the Shorewood Neighborhood Preservation Coalition, a group of homeowners who have protested a plan by Mary's Place to build housing for homeless families on Ambaum Blvd. in Burien on the grounds that dense housing (as opposed to the existing office buildings) is incompatible with their single-family neighborhood. The Burien City Council approved the upzone, 4-3, after a heated debate this past Monday night at which one council member, Nancy Tosta, suggested that instead of allowing homeless families to live on the site, the city should preserve it as office space, since "part of the way of dealing with homelessness is to have people make more money."
Bricklin is still on the boards of Climate Solutions, the Washington Environmental Council, and Washington Conservation Voters.
2. Seattle City Council members reached no resolution this week on a proposal from the mayor's office to approve the city's purchase of GrayKey, a technology that enables police to easily (and cheaply) unlock any cell phone and review its contents, including location data, without putting the technology through a privacy assessment under the city's stringent surveillance ordinance. If the city determines that a technology is a form of surveillance, the city has to prepare a surveillance impact report that "include[s] an in-depth review of privacy implications, especially relating to equity and community impact," according to the ordinance. The process includes public meetings, review by a special advisory group, and approval by the council at a meeting open to the public. In contrast, technologies that intrude on privacy but aren't considered surveillance only require a "privacy impact analysis" that is not subject to formal public process or council approval. Previous examples of technologies the city has deemed to be surveillance include license-plate readers (used to issue traffic tickets) and cameras at emergency scenes.
The city's IT department, which answers to the mayor, determined that GrayKey is not a "surveillance technology" after the company submitted answers to a list of questions from the city suggesting that the technology would only be used if the Seattle Police Department obtained a warrant to search a person's phone. In an email appended to that report, Seattle's chief privacy officer, Ginger Armbruster, wrote, "If phones are acquired either under warrant or with suspect[']s knowledge then this is not surveillance by ordinance definition." In other words, Armbruster is saying that as soon as SPD gets a warrant to break into someone's phone and scrape their data, the surveillance rules, by definition, no longer apply.
ACLU Technology and Liberty Project Director Shankar Narayan disagrees with this interpretation, noting that the surveillance law doesn't include any exemption for warrants. "The ordinance is about the entire question of whether it's an appropriate technology for an agency to have, and encompasses a much broader set of concerns. If the warrant serves the same function as a surveillance ordinance"—that is, if anything the police do after they get a warrant is de facto not surveillance—"then why do we need a surveillance ordinance? The intent of the council was to put scrutiny on technologies that are invasive—as, clearly, a technology that allows police to open your cell phone and download data about the intimate details of your life is." It's the technology, in other words—not how the city claims it will be used—that matters.
The city's initial privacy assessment is brief and unilluminating. GrayKey skipped many of the city's questions, answered others with perfunctory, one-word answers, and followed up on many of the skipped questions with the same all-purpose sentence: "this solution is used for Police case forensic purposes only. "
Proponents of GrayKey's technology (and GrayKey itself) say that the police will limit its use to child sexual abuse cases—the kind of crimes that tend to silence concerns about privacy because of their sheer awfulness. Who could possibly object to breaking into the phones of child molesters? Or terrorists? Or murderers? As council member Bruce Harrell, who said he does not consider GrayKey a surveillance technology, put it Tuesday, "No one has a right to privacy when they are visiting child pornography sites."
The problem is that in the absence of review under the surveillance ordinance, even if police claim they will only use GrayKey to investigate the worst kinds of crimes, there will be no way of knowing how they are actually using it. (Narayan says police departments frequently claim that they will only use surveillance technology to hunt down child molesters, or terrorists, to create political pressure to approve the technology or risk looking soft on crime.) The council can state its preference that the technology be limited to certain types of especially heinous crimes, but if the phone-cracking technology isn't subject to the ordinance which allows the city council to place legally binding limits on the use of surveillance tools, the decision facing the city is essentially binary: Approve (and purchase) the technology and hope for the best, or don't.
This is why privacy advocates consider it so important to look at surveillance technology thoroughly, and to give the public real opportunities to weigh in on granting the city sweeping authority to review people's movements and access their data. Harrell said Tuesday that he didn't want to "jump every time the ACLU says [a technology] raises issues," and that he was confident that additional review by the executive would resolve any questions the council might have. But, as council member Lisa Herbold pointed out, there's no requirement that the mayor's office present the results of any future internal privacy assessment to the council—they can run it through a privacy impact assessment, reach the same conclusions they've already reached, and post it on the website with all the others without any additional input from the council or the public. The only way to ensure that concerns are daylighted before the city buys this, or any other, technology that could invade people's privacy is to determine that GrayKey is surveillance, and put it through the process. At the end of Tuesday's meeting, the council's governance, equity, and technology committee had made no decision on whether to subject GrayKey to additional scrutiny or wait to see what the mayor's office does next. The city currently plans to purchase the phone-cracking technology sometime in the third quarter of next year.
Filed under: ACLU, Burien, density, development, Futurewise, GrayKey, mandatory housing affordability, Mary's Place, privacy, surveillance, zoning
Affordability, Density, Development, housing, land use, Sightline, Urbanism	 October 31, 2018 October 30, 2018
Getting Smarter About Public Land: Lessons from Across the Northwest
The full version of this story is available at Sightline.
As cities across Cascadia look to technological solutions, such as modular construction, to help address the region-wide shortage of affordable housing, one of the biggest factors currently driving up costs is also one of the most resistant to intervention: Land prices, which can add tens of thousands of dollars to the cost of producing a single subsidized apartment.
Cities don't have a lot of tools for lowering land costs, but they do own a lot of land—Seattle, for example, is sitting on more than 180 excess or underutilized parcels, many of which are well-suited for homebuilding.
To maximize taxpayer value, most cities usually auction off their excess land to the highest bidder, just like any private landowner would do. But in cities with hot real estate markets, affordable housing developers typically don't have the financial resources to compete for land with market-rate developers. So publicly-owned land ends up in private hands, forever forfeiting its potential to help overcome one of the biggest barriers to the construction of subsidized homes: acquisition of land to build on. The backers of Seattle's Rainier Valley Food Innovation Hub, for example, have been repeatedly outbid by private developers.
But what if local governments viewed surplus land not as a revenue generator but an opportunity to reduce displacement and stabilize communities? Several Northwest cities have begun asking that very question. The result is a growing string of affordable housing projects stretching through Cascadia—from the largest one-time investment in housing on city-owned land in Canada's history, to an affordable housing and preschool development on the site of a former fire station in Seattle.
How much publicly owned land is there?
Enterprise Community Partners' interactive mapping tool shows publicly owned properties.
Until recently, if you wanted to know what public land was available in the Seattle area, there was no central database—no way to easily find out, say, if a certain fenced-off plot of land that looked ripe for development was owned by the city or Sound Transit or King County, whether it had the right zoning, and whether it was up for sale. In 2015, newly elected King County Assessor John Arthur Wilson decided to do something about that; he directed his office to create a map of every piece of publicly owned land inside county limits.
The nonprofit Enterprise Community Partners expanded on Wilson's effort, recently launching the beta version of an interactive tool that allows any interested party to use filters to narrow down a list of about 10,000 developable public properties according to specific characteristics, such as zoning, square footage, and eligibility for tax credits.
"In high-cost cities, it's really becoming impossible for nonprofits to develop on privately owned land," James Madden, the Seattle-based senior program director for Enterprise, says. "The average land price, as a percentage of the total cost of development in Seattle, is about 10 to 15 percent, and if land continues to get more expensive, [nonprofits] will be priced out completely. Once you're paying more than $30,000 a door [for land], it gets very hard for a public agency to justify spending beyond that level on acquisition." Market-rate developers can charge higher rents to compensate for high land costs—an option not available to affordable housing providers.
Changing the rules that have prevented public land from supporting affordable housing
Wilson, the assessor, says the mapping tools might have been merely informational—a database of public land for sale at prices out of reach for most nonprofit housing builders—if the state hadn't taken the next step, by giving local governments the authority to sell their land below market value or give it away for free. "We raised this issue with [state House speaker Frank Chopp] last year," Wilson says. "After we pulled together the list of publicly owned land, we said, 'Here's the problem: A lot of this land is owned by agencies that have to sell it for fair market value," putting even public land out of reach for many nonprofit agencies. In response, Chopp supported, and the legislature passed, a bill allowing state and local agencies to transfer land to affordable housing developers at little or no cost.
Local leaders quickly took notice. Seattle city council freshman Teresa Mosqueda, who campaigned on the need to build more dense, affordable housing, proposed and passed two pieces of legislation this year designed to encourage the city to give away its surplus property for free. The first, which passed in July, made it possible for Seattle's electric utility, Seattle City Light, to dispose of its excess land at little or no cost—a major departure from its previous policy, which required the utility to sell property at fair market value.
The second, which the council passed unanimously earlier this month, requires the city to consider whether surplus land can be used for affordable housing and, if so, to make it available for that purpose. The legislation also allows the city to hold onto land while a nonprofit housing partner secures financing; directs the city's Office of Housing to partner with "culturally relevant and historically rooted" nonprofits in areas where residents are at high risk of economic displacement; and mandates that 80 percent of the funds from any outright sale of city property go into one of the city's affordable housing funds.
Read the whole piece at Sightline.
Filed under: affordable housing, development, public land, sightline, Teresa Mosqueda


We finally got around to going out this last weekend. With only 3 Carmike theaters left in the state of Utah, we chose to go to the one in West Jordan and therefore go to the Goodwood BBQ in Draper. When we left the house, we went to my friend, Lorilee, house. We exchanged Christmas gifts and to give her a birthday gift (a month late)...and to help her with her Christmas presents from other family members. I got her hooked up on some of the same websites I use a lot on her new laptop, it is wonderful to have her on email now and will be great as she learns more and more about the internet and the great blessings that can be found by doing things like genealogy! Steve also helped her learn a tiny bit about her mp3 player and loaded a cd to get her started. She got some great toys to play with! After leaving Lorilee's, we checked our PO Box and took a gift to my mom's friend, Judy in West Valley.
Ok, so now on to our date....we decided to go out to Draper and eat at Goodwood BBQ next. This was our first visit to Goodwood BBQ and we enjoyed the food and the service. You see, the gift certificates I had were technically expired...but there is a little known thing about GCs not supposed to have expiration dates because the company has received the money for them. The manager was very accomodating! Steve had the bacon cheddar burger and I had the smoked turkey sandwich. We laughed at there not being salt at any of the tables, even though it was not needed. We thought the food was delicious, including the BBQ sauce, both of us preffered the sassy over the spicy BBQ sauce.
After leaving there, he had me drive to the Christmas Utah house in Murray. If you have not seen this, you have until this Saturday to check it out in person! It is really cool. For more info: http://www.christmasutah.com/ If you happen to watch some of the videos, they are from past years, but are similar to what they had this year.
Ok, next, we headed back to West Jordan to see Tale of Despereaux. We had seen a couple of reviews from friends about this movie and they said they would NOT recommend it, so, of course, this is the movie Steve chose to see! As I was driving us there, we got off I-15 at 9000s. As you head west towards West Jordan, you go up this hill where the speed limit drops from 50mph to 40mph. I specifically looked at the sign and lowered my speed, this is about 900w. By the time we got to Redwood Road (1700w), a cop was behind us and pulled me over as we turned south on Redwood. He said that at 1400w he clocked me going 51, 52, 53. I told him that I had just slowed down to the 40mph speed limit. In any case, he wrote me a ticket and because you know the cops are just so very nice and do us such favors, he wrote the ticket as me going 45 in a 40. I asked him if he knew about how much this was going to be, he said that it is usually about $90 for every 10 over the speed limit....so I'm guessing $90 will be coming due to the courts in a matter of weeks. I don't agree with him that I was speeding, but I don't have the energy to fight it, so I'm hoping that I can just pay it and not waste my time by making yet another court appearance this year!
So, this adventure in dating had it all, for our boring lives, that is...and turned out way more expensive than any date using free movie passes and gift certificates should have been....but, yes, we did have fun...and I hope to start going out more often!!! Oh and I know I can't blame my cousin-in-law for this night, but a scapegoat would be nice!
I am laughing my head off that you thought you had a free date with gift certificates, and yet it cost you $90 in a speeding ticket! That's a great story, Rebecca. Dating is dangerous!
I'm with Melinda- the irony is almost sad!! But makes for great memories!! And just like Sister Hinckley used to say "You can either laugh or cry, I prefer to laugh, crying gives me a headache"


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Aboitiz Group renews partnership for Cebu A-Park's reforestation of Buhisan Watershed Forest Reserve
January 9, 2023 0Comments 0Reactions
With a country as rich in natural splendor and beauty as the Philippines, it is only natural that Filipinos work hard as the stewards of this environmental gift. The Aboitiz Group, through its #OneAboitizSustainability program, is committed to mobilizing their resources and expertise to address the environmental challenges of the day.
On Monday, December 12, the Aboitiz Group renewed their partnership with the Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP) for the Cebu A-Park's reformation of the 150-hectare Buhisan Watershed Forest Reserve with the Central Cebu Protected Landscape.
GIVING TREES. The Aboitiz Group at the turnover ceremony for the third year of the Cebu A-Park Project with the Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP). In image (from left): Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) Provincial Environment and Natural Resources Sandra Lapinid, Visayan Electric President and COO Engr. Raul Lucero, Aboitiz Equity Ventures (AEV) First Vice President and Chief Reputation and Sustainability Officer Ginggay Hotiveros, and PBSP Head of Finance Dennis Vitug.
Cebu A-Park is focused on rehabilitating and enriching the forest cover of the Buhisan Watershed Forest Reserve. This initiative is the product of the integrated CSR efforts of the Aboitiz Foundation, which is the corporate social responsibility arm of the Group, and the different Aboitiz business units operating in Cebu including Visayan Electric, working alongside PBSP. The project supports the Department of Environment and Natural Resources' (DENR) Enhanced National Greening Program.
"This project is yet another crucial step towards ensuring continuity in making a positive impact on our national development. It represents the essence of the Aboitiz Group's purpose and brand promise: to drive change for a better world by advancing business and communities," said Aboitiz Equity Ventures First Vice President and Chief Reputation and Sustainability Officer Ginggay Hontiveros.
The partnership renewal signing was held at the office of the Visayan Electric in Cebu. In attendance with Hontiveros were Visayan Electric President and Chief Operating Officer Engr. Raul Lucero, Visayan Electric Reputation Manager Quennie Bronce, Aboitiz Foundation Program Manager and Visayas ICSR Co-Chairperson Jowelle Ann Cruz, PBSP Head of Finance Dennis Vitug, PBSP Corporate Citizenship and CSR Manager Khairon Niza Magundacan and DENR Provincial Environment and Natural Resources Sandra Lapinid.
Sustainability is a major part of our Great Transformation to become the Philippines' first techglomerate, and we will continue to do our part to uplift and bring focus on environmentally and socially impactful initiatives for all our stakeholders
–Ginggay Hontiveros, Aboitiz Equity Ventures First Vice President and Chief Reputation and Sustainability Officer
"Our Group's contribution is part of our commitment to co-create safe, empowered, and sustainable communities. Sustainability is a major part of our Great Transformation to become the Philippines' first techglomerate, and we will continue to do our part to uplift and bring focus on environmentally and socially impactful initiatives for all our stakeholders," continued Hontiveros.
"Let us take even more deliberate steps together to help contribute to the 2030 Agenda for the Sustainable Development Goals, and stay focused on aligning our initiatives to this agenda. We look forward to forging partnerships with more sustainability partners in our continuing journey towards ensuring a sustainable future for generations to come," she added.
GREEN THUMBS. A Visayan Electric team member participates with nearly 600 other Aboitiz team members at the company-wide tree planting at Buhisan Watershed Forest Reserve in 2019.
In 2019, the first year of the partnership, nearly 600 Aboitiz team members volunteered at the Aboitiz Group company-wide tree planting. Additionally, 100 families from the community were mobilized in the plantation establishment and maintenance activities. Across the year, over 50,000 seedlings of native and fruit-bearing trees were planted across 30 hectares. There were also structural developments that laid the foundation for long-term protection, including the establishment of a bamboo riparian zone and footpaths.
The ongoing partnership between the Aboitiz Group and PBSP under the Cebu A-Park program will see the continued planting and maintenance of the protected forest to address the threats of the impending water crisis in Metro Cebu. The planned five-year program will not only focus on rehabilitation but will also enable the families in the community to have access to a sustainable livelihood. Alongside the positive environmental impact of the green space, visitors can also expect the establishment of a butterfly sanctuary, the repair of the central nursery that was damaged during Typhoon Odette, and the installation of further footpaths and trails to better enjoy the natural splendor.
Read more: AboitizPower inks three-year partnership with Schneider Electric
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TSP 1-WEEK DEADLINE ALERT: Hagens Berman, National Trial Attorneys, Encourages TuSimple Holdings (TSP) Investors with Significant Losses to Contact Firm's Attorneys Before Jan. 9th Deadline in Securities Class Action – Corporate Social Responsibility News Today
CSR News January 2, 2023 0Comments 0Reactions

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When Synergis Software Vice President Todd Cummings introduced Adept 2017 at the company's first user conference, Adept Experience, last month, he said the mission for the development team was "to deliver more power to users in an easier and more accessible way." He and fellow presenter Chris Fabri then showed how the transition to web services technology did more than provide a faster "under the hood" experience, but also transformed how users get their work done.
Much of the work to create the user experience in Adept 2017 was about simplifying the way people worked within the program. The web-based clients were recreated from the ground up, with an eye to simplify every aspect of using Adept. The desktop client was simplified and makes users more productive in their every day tasks.
The Desktop Client has an all-new user interface, replacing the original toolbars and menus with a new Ribbon and Tab interface. This approach reduces the number of clicks required to perform tasks. In testing most common tasks were increased by a factor of four, and some by much more.
Adept 2017 also eliminates the need for multiple windows, trimming the user interface down to a single active application window for Favorites, FileGuide, Inbox, Library Browser, Search Results, and Work Area environment.
The two Adept web clients—Adept Explorer and Adept Reviewer—have been completely rewritten from scratch. Both share a brand new user interface. The web home page provides fast access to Search, Saved Searches, and Favorites. A Quick Search field is also anchored to the home page so it's easy for users to find data in a single operation. Users of all experience levels will find the web client a fast way to stay connected to projects. The new web client UI is designed to work seamlessly across devices, including PC's, tablets and smartphones.
The Adept Reviewer client adds workflow capabilities; editing data cards, and file Upload. Files outside Adept can now be uploaded into a folder, which can be designated as either an Adept Work Area or a PublishWave watched folder. These new features make Adept a complete—and more secure—replacement for FTP sites or download services. Documents uploaded and downloaded will always be version-correct; all operations are recorded in the Adept Audit Trail.
The overall effect, based on modernization of the user experience, is to simplify access to information and to take performance to a new level. Check out the list of all the new features here. Between the under-the-hood changes and the modernized user interface, Adept 2017 delivers a modern, responsive approach to engineering document management for all levels of users.
Want to learn more about how the new features of Adept or see how it can benefit your organization? Contact us.


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In Brief: Re-Invention Tour, Ron Weisner, The Virgin Tour and more…
Madonna & Cher – Couples Therapy #Unapologetic
Roy Cohen: They should teach Madonna at Harvard Business School
With nearly a quarter of new businesses being started by entrepreneurs age 55 or older, retirement is no longer the only next move for baby boomers. But reinventing yourself can be difficult, so an inspiration is important.
How about Madonna?
Career coach Roy Cohen spoke with HuffPost Live's Ricky Camilleri about the best re-inventor, so to speak. When Camilleri jokingly suggested Madonna, Cohen agreed.
You know what, you're absolutely right. I think they should teach Madonna at Harvard Business School, not IBM. We need to figure out who's doing it right and stays on the cutting edge and that should be our role model.
Ed Sheeran impersonated Calvin Harris to sneak into Madonna's house
English singer/songwriter Ed Sheeran once impersonated Rita Ora's boyfriend, DJ Calvin Harris, in order to sneak into a party at Madonna's house.
Speaking in the latest series of 'Nando's Grills', he told rapper JME:
It was the Oscars after-party and I was with my cousin and Rita Ora and her sister and they were like, 'We're going to Madonna's party, do you want to come?' and I was like, 'Well we're not on the list', and Rita was like, 'Look, no one knows what Calvin Harris looks like over here [in America] so if you just say you're him, you'll be able to get in'
So we ended up going there and as we walked in, the first person we saw was Paul McCartney and me and my cousin were like, 'Yeah we're going to go up and say hi' and as we were talking, we get tapped on the shoulder and pushed out the way and then Prince walks in and just starts having a conversation. It was mental.
Denise Jolly pays tribute to Madonna
Writer, performer and artist educator, Denise Jolly makes an incredible statement about beauty while paying tribute to Madonna.
Check out the full story on The Huffington Post…
Tori Amos Covers "Frozen"
In the past, Tori Amos covered Madonna's "Like a Prayer" and "Live to Tell". Yesterday, she performed "Frozen" during one of her concerts in Amsterdam.
(Thanks Steven)
Celebrate the Re-Invention Tour
It's time to celebrate! 10 years ago, Madonna launched her Re-Invention Tour, performing a total of 56 shows in the United States and Europe. If you attended one (or more!) of them, the Re-Invent Yourself message behind the show is one you'll probably keep with you forever, just like us…
Is there a better way to join the party than to share that message with the rest of the world? Visit the official Madonna store today for two devoted and online exclusive t-shirt designs!
Madonna No. 4 on List of Top 25 Live Artists Since 1990
According to a new report from Billboard, there are five acts that have made over a billion dollars off touring since 1990. Check it out…
01. The Rolling Stones
Gross: $1,565,792,382
Attendance: 19,677,569
Shows: 538
02. U2
03. Bruce Springsteen
04. Madonna
Attendance: 9,694,079
05. Bon Jovi
Head on over to Billboard.com for the full list of top 25 live artists since 1990.
Ron Weisner: Madonna would do anything to succeed
In his new book "Listen Out Loud: A Life in Music – Managing McCartney, Madonna and Michael Jackson," music industry manager Ron Weisner reveals he did not get along with Madonna, whom he knew during the frantic early years of her career — up from the clubs, an MTV sensation, and suddenly on the cusp of international fame.
He wrote…
Madonna would do anything to succeed.
Anything she had to.
It seemed at times she was working on getting meaner.
Want to book Madonna for a night?
According to Price Econonomics, you'd have to pay over $1 million if you want to book Madonna for a night.
An anonymous source passed along a list of the rates suggested by the artists' agents per show, pre-expense. They also point out that these are asking prices from a third-party booking agency that specializes in college shows; as such, the numbers are likely inflated. Actual prices negotiated by many of these performers are contingent on a variety of factors.
Madonna by Lynn Goldsmith
Check out this rare picture of Madonna during The Virgin Tour by Lynn Goldsmith from her book Rock and Roll Stories…
Source: TheRedRadio
Madonna performs at the Eurovision Song Contest [18 May 2019 – Pictures & Videos]


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Home Kawasaki Ninja
Kawasaki Ninja Range: Everything you need to know
The Kawasaki Ninja name has been synonymous with sports motorcycles for over 30 years. Launched in 1984, the GPZ900R announced the Japanese manufacturer as a serious sportsbike contender, by being the first water-cooled, fully-faired, 150+mph Japanese bike ever produced.
Latest news: 2020 Kawasaki Ninja 1000SX revealed
No bike had proved to be more exciting or cutting-edge and it was an instant sales success – inspiring a generation of head-banging, sportsbike-crazed Brits who enjoyed nothing more than a high-octane thrash of a weekend. It also claimed the 1984 Production class win at the Isle of Man TT, ridden by Geoff Johnson.
In fact, the 900R was so good that it outlived its replacement; the GPZ1000R, and the ZX10 that followed after that, remaining in production for certain markets until 1996.
Exploring the history of the ZX-6R
Taking a look back at Kawasaki's ZX-7R
The life of the ZX-10R superbike
A new breed of Ninjas: The Ninja 650
Superchargers arrive with the Ninja H2
Despite paving the way for a long line of Ninjas - ranging from 125 to 1400cc - the GPZ900R was never actually known by this name in the UK. In fact, the first Ninja model to reach British shores was the 1994 Kawasaki ZX-9R, which was created to combat the dominance of the Honda CBR900RR FireBlade in the newly-formed superbike class.
The Ninja title was used in the USA and Kawasaki's own domestic market in Japan, after Kawasaki USA's then Director of Marketing, Mike Vaughan, convinced the Japanese to use it over the name 'Panther'.
This near-35-year-history has spawned a number of cult sporting machines, as well as a new line of sporty commuters known simply as Ninjas, aimed at inspiring a new generation of riders on either an A1 or A2 licence. It's also seen the rise of the supercharged H2 series, which blew the doors off the hyperbike scene at its launch in 2015.
Kawasaki's middleweight ZX-6R has featured in the Japanese firm's line up since 1995 and in that time has undergone a series of improvements to the styling, performance and handling – with the latest revisions for 2019 aimed squarely at reclaiming the supersport crown from the Yamaha R6 - its only real remaining rival.
Available in various 599cc and 636cc model versions, this track-focused Ninja was originally created to do battle with the Honda CBR600, with the Yamaha R6 and Suzuki GSX-R600 only appearing in the late 1990s.
Despite being one of the pioneers of the modern day supersport class, by the time the first 636cc ZX-6R arrived in 2002, the bike was starting to feel slightly long in the tooth – outgunned by the R6 on track and out performed by the Honda and the Suzuki on the road.
All that would change in 2003 with the arrival of the B1H model, the most advanced road-going 600 ever mass-produced, boasting radial brakes, USD forks and fully digital clocks alongside fuel-injection and a lap timer all wrapped up in a tiny, tight chassis and plastics.
Although a weapon on track, the B1H felt harsh and uncompromising on the road and so for 2005 Kawasaki made it a little softer but a new slippery fairing design still meant a claimed top speed of around 170mph.
In 2007, Kawasaki dropped the all-rounder appeal and went in pursuit of track mastery. In MCN's supersport group test of that year, the ZX-6R produced a measured 109.61bhp at the back wheel – making it the most powerful bike of the crop. Combined with superb brakes and suspension, the bike was a racer in road trim and stamped the firm's authority on the class once again.
In 2009, the 599cc ZX-6R gained a small boost in power, jumping to 115bhp at the back wheel. This made it the most powerful supersport machine MCN had ever tested. As well as more poke, it also enjoyed better handling, with new MotoGP-inspired big piston forks from Showa and full adjustment front and rear. A slipper clutch also came as standard, as well as radial calipers and wavy discs.
Kawasaki upped the engine capacity of the ZX-6R in 2013 to 636cc, by which time the Kwacka had become one of the last of the supersport breed; after the demise of the Suzuki GSX-R600, Honda CBR600RR and Triumph Daytona 675.
Much like in 2005, the 2013 model was designed to be more useable on the road by offering a more usable spread of power and torque that's easier to exploit. Traction control and optional ABS are also featured here. More suspension travel from the rear and a softer ride in road settings also make it more comfortable over the UK's pothole-laden roads.
The latest update to the Kawasaki ZX-6R came in 2019 with changes to the styling and gearbox freshening up the model. As with earlier versions, the 2019 iteration is fantastic on a trackday but too cramped, revvy and uncompromising for the road.
Launched in 1996 at the peak of sportsbike-mania, the ZX-7R has gone on to achieve cult status since its demise in 2003. With a chunky 748cc inline-four engine and bulbous, nineties bodywork, the 7R was a great road bike and sold well – despite being no match for the likes of the Suzuki GSX-R750 on track.
Weighing in at 203kg, the Ninja ZX-7R was a bit of a weighty beast. However, this additional timber meant it was stable at high speed, meaning it worked well on the road. It sat between the Suzuki and the Honda FireBlade in the superbike range of its day; carved up by the former on the track but less comfortable than slightly stodgy late '90s 'Blades for touring.
For those of a more track-orientated disposition, Kawasaki also launched the ZX-7RR in 1996 – a limited edition race homologation version with a stiffer frame, flatside carbs, close ratio gearbox and single seat.
Engine: 748cc, inline four
Max power: 123bhp
Torque: 58ft-lb
Seat height: 790mm
MPG: 42
The Kawasaki ZX-10R was introduced in 2004 and what an arrival it was. Producing 181bhp and 85ftlb of torque, it was a complete weapon in experienced hands but was a bit of a handful on the road. That said, with such a flexible engine, it is possible to potter around on the ZX-10R - but that's not what this bike is about.
Kawasaki were the last of the big four Japanese manufacturers to invest in the litre sportsbike market and although it couldn't quite match the Suzuki GSX-R1000 K3 for low-down grunt, it was an instant contender for top dog.
The ZX-10R got a complete redesign for 2006, to make it slightly more user friendly, complete with new slippery lines that divided opinion, however it was far from sluggish. Producing 173bhp (or 181bhp with ram air) and weighing 175kg, you struggle to feed the big Kawasaki gears as it winds through to a top speed of 182mph. Third gear power wheelies are a cinch, too.
In 2008, the ZX-10R gained the title of the fastest production 1000cc motorcycle currently on sale and wasn't for the faint-hearted. Although heavier than the previous version, the '08 bike produced a whopping 185.4bhp - projecting it to 186mph.
Keeping you out of the scenery were radial brakes, complete with petal discs and fully adjustable suspension front and rear. An Ohlins steering damper also came as standard to combat any aggressive wobbles. The 2008 bike was also the first version to have the Kawasaki Ignition Management system, which was designed to reduce wheel spin under extreme circumstances.
After the introduction of the BMW S1000RR in 2009, manufacturers were forced to update their superbike offerings or face being left behind by the new kid on the block. Kawasaki was no exception to this and in 2011, the firm revealed an even more powerful version.
Producing 197.3bhp from its 998cc inline-four engine, the bike had a better power-to-weight-ratio than its rivals but managed to feel less intimidating than earlier models. The end result was a bike whose handling harks back to early 90s ZX and ZX-R 750cc WSB bikes where front end stability and feel was top notch and the bike was able to be hauled around effortlessly.
It also accelerated hard all the way from low revs to the redline, and that was good news for road users who would do most of their riding well below the limiter.
Following on from the 2011 bike have been two more iterations in 2016 and 2018, which help move the bike on one step further - with slightly more power, better suspension and a greater focus on the top-end rush.
In a pursuit for World Superbike greatness (they've won five of the last six titles) Kawasaki have also released a homologation special limited-run ZX-10RR, which for 2019 features finger-follower valve actuation (replacing tappet-style valves) and titanium con-rods which save 102g per rod. This allows the engine to rev 600rpm higher, producing 4bhp more power and 2ftlb more torque than the outgoing 2018 RR. It will be limited to just 500 units.
In more recent times, Kawasaki have opted to make the Ninja title a more prominent part of some of their bikes' names. Arriving in 2017, the Ninja 650 is a prime example of this. Replacing the outgoing ER-6f, the 650 aims to be more of an all-rounder than the other Ninjas on the list.
Doing away with the traditional in-line four set-up of the brand's famous ZX-Rs, the bike uses a versatile 67bhp parallel twin lump, aimed at new riders and commuters on a budget. The familiar, 649cc unit had already proved hugely successful and popular in the ER-6f and ER-6n and now came with the added bonus of improved fuel economy.
At its launch in 2017, the base bike was priced at just £6349. Only £300 more than its naked sibling - the Z650. However, it still wasn't a match for Yamaha's ultra-value naked MT-07 and once would be owners had added better colours and accessory packs, the price could easily bump up to nearly £7500.
Engine: 649cc four-stroke, liquid-cooled parallel twin
Max power: 67bhp
Torque: 48.5ftlb
Top speed: 125
In 2019 a new Kawasaki Ninja 650 was revealed for the 2020 model year.
When the superbike world is oversaturated with naturally aspirated missiles nudging 200bhp, how do you move the game on further? Simple, wrap a 998cc inline-four motor inside a space-age half fairing, bolt on a whistling supercharger, give it 210bhp and slap a £22,000 price tag on it.
The Kawasaki Ninja H2 re-defined superbike acceleration, sounded incredible and exuded quality from every orifice. Put simply, it is one of the most exciting sports motorcycles ever produced. Sure, the ZX-10R would be the better bet for punching in hot lap times, but nothing could match the H2 for presence.
Keeping the H2 on the straight and narrow are a plethora of control systems, helping to keep the power under control. The key features are as follows:
KTRC (Kawasaki TRaction Control) The new KTRC system's multi-level modes give riders a greater number of settings to choose from. Mode 1 is for the track, Mode 2 for the street, and Mode 3 for wet conditions. A Rain Mode is also available separately, which limits power by more than 50%.
KLCM (Kawasaki Launch Control Mode) There's no need to fear the supercharger for fast getaways, as the H2's launch control will prevent wheelspin and minimise wheelies off the line. Riders can choose from three modes, each offering a progressively greater level of intrusion. Simply hold the throttle wide open, and let the clutch out. KLCM can be used concurrently with KTRC.
KEBC (Kawasaki Engine Brake Control) The KEBC system allows riders to select the amount of engine braking they prefer. By selecting 'LIGHT' in the KEBC settings, for example, the engine braking effect is reduced, providing less interference when riding on the circuit.
If a 22-grand missile isn't exclusive and scary enough for you, Kawasaki also produce the track-only Ninja H2R, which features an unlimited-power version of the supercharged inline four motor developing a claimed 326bhp. It also boasts twin air intakes, a carbon air tube to the supercharger, carbon fairings, aerodynamic wings, a different exhaust system, and myriad of other detail changes. It cost a whopping £41,000 when new and prices have only gone up since.
The birth of the H2 has spawned an entire family of bonkers supercharged Kawasaki, which now extends into their touring line-up with the Ninja H2 SX. With superbike acceleration complementing a sports touring riding position, it will suck entire continents through its supercharger inlet, before spitting them out in a torrent of ballistic speed and luxury.
The H2 was updated in 2017 and then again in 2019 with Kawasaki claiming even more power from the engine. The update also included better brakes, grippier tyres and self-healing paint.
More from MCN
Read about the Ducati Panigale family here
Read about the Aprilia RSV4 family here
Read about the Honda Fireblade family here
ReviewsBike reviews
For saleBikes for sale (1762)
KAWASAKI D-TRACKER 125 (2010-on)
"Supermoto version of a rubbish bike, the D-Tracker 125 is based on the titchy KLX125…"
MCN Rating: 2 out of 5 2 owners' ratings:4.5 out of 5
KAWASAKI ER-6F (2012-on)
"The ER-6f is a brilliant commuter and a great first big bike. What's not to like?"
MCN Rating: 4 out of 5 10 owners' ratings:4.3 out of 5
KAWASAKI ER-6F (2005-2008)
"A cunningly-disguised riot of fun, the Kawasaki ER-6f is cute, capable and competent"
"A rare package of fun, practicality and affordability"
MCN Rating: 4 out of 5 10 owners' ratings:4 out of 5
KAWASAKI EL125 ELIMINATOR (1998-on)
"A top little bike to hone your skills on"
KAWASAKI GPZ1100 (1995-1998)
"An overweight dinosaur but on the road it's actually a great machine. Just don't go chasing the latest GSX-Rs"
KAWASAKI GPZ500 (1987-2004)
"Long in the tooth but a prime candidate for a first big bike"
KAWASAKI GTR1000 (1986-1999)
"80s touring dinosaur has its good points"
KAWASAKI GTR1400 (2010-on)
"Soft power, a novice friendly chassis and low running costs are completely at odds with the hardcore enduro styling"
"Flagship sports tourer based on the powerhouse ZZ-R1400 – and it's been worth the wait"
KAWASAKI KH125 (1975-1998)
"Still a fun way to get to work"
KAWASAKI KLE500 (1991-2007)
"Kawasaki's idea of a parallel twin commuter-cum-trailie"
KAWASAKI ER-5 (1996-2007)
"A straightforward, parallel-twin, middleweight commuter"
KAWASAKI KLR250 (1984-2001)
"A fun, economical, long-lasting and undemanding dual purpose machine"
"Comfortable, grunty, quiet and reliable"
KAWASAKI KLX250 (2009-on)
KAWASAKI J125 (2016-on)
More than enough power for town riding
MCN Rating: 4 out of 5 1 owner rating:4 out of 5
KAWASAKI KMX125 (1986-2002)
"Tough, cheap to run and cheap to fix and very capable"
MCN Rating: 4 out of 5 2 owners' ratings:4 out of 5
KAWASAKI KR1S (1990-1992)
"The quickest mass-produced, 250 two-stroke ever"
KAWASAKI NINJA 125 (2019-on)
Kawasaki's first sports 125 for 25 years
MCN Rating: 4 out of 5
KAWASAKI VN900 CLASSIC (2014/64)
KAWASAKI W800 (2016/16)
KAWASAKI Z800 (2016/66)
KAWASAKI ZZR1400 (2012/12)
KAWASAKI GTR1400 (2009/09)
KAWASAKI GPX600 (1988/F)
KAWASAKI ZX-6R (2016/16)
KAWASAKI Z125 (19)
KAWASAKI NINJA 125 (2020/19)
KAWASAKI VERSYS 650 (2013/62)
KAWASAKI ER-6F (2016/66)
KAWASAKI VERSYS 1000 (2015/64)
All related bikes for sale


I just managed to book my bike space via phone on the East Coast Mainline before booking the actual tickets. Glad I did as there was no bike space on the train I was planning on getting.
If you are worried, take a few bungee cords and foam pipe insulation (from plumbing merchants) so you can protect any bits you like and bungee it up tight.
I regularly take my carbon frame on the train with no real worries.
"On the out bound journey we were stuck in the station for 20 mins due to the train manager being absent, then when the train set off we were stuck behind a stopping train, to reading further delaying the service eventually ariving in Bristol half an hour late. Further to this none of the seats were marked as reserved, so I had to ask a rather aggressive man to move from our seats.
On the return journey our train was cancelled, and I spoke to a member of staff at the station to check that it was OK to get the next train as our had been cancelled, he said it was fine. When I got to the train I asked a member of staff on the train where the bike storage was, he said it was where the two trains joined, so I looked and could not find it, so I put my bike in the wheel chair space as it was the most logical place to put it (obvs would have moved it if necessary). Then I was told that it wasn't allowed there and that it needed to go in the bike storage at the end of the train, which again I could not find, so I put the bike back in the wheel chair space, then I was told again by the same member of staff it was actually in coach C, then when I got there one of the doors was jammed and the aperture wasn't wide enough to fit my bike in, so I was then told to go to the bike storage at the other end, by this time the train is due to set off in 2 mins. I got got the other storage which was full, and by this point it was too late to move the bike any where else, I was then told that I couldn't leave my bike there and the train wouldn't wouldn't leave the station, so I asked where I should put it and the solution I was told was to get off the train, and get the next service, which I refused, so I had to stand for the entire journey (nearly 2 hours) in the vestibule area, and move the bike every time someone wanted to use the toilet.
Also to claim compensation for the delayed journeys you have to have a photograph of your ticket, but when you exit the barrier the ticket is retained."
It be fine, I'd recommend the sleeper thought, a little cheaper than Virgin/LNER.
I don't mean to be glib, but this sounds like your first Great Western Rodeo.
2nd, but my friend was as much to blame for that also... But that's a story for another day.
Is it possible to take a normal bike on the victoria line around 7am on a Saturday?
does anyone know how strongly this peak-time no-bikes rules is enforced?
Where are you travelling to? Wouldn't anticipate a problem at 4.45. Just make sure you get to the train in plenty of time to put the bike in one of the actual bike areas and be prepared to get smarmy looks from passengers if it's actually busy.
You'll probably get one of the long distance trains so there'll be proper bike racks.
Dark sunglasses and an evening standard should solve that!
If it's a Friday it may be busy at 1645, otherwise probably not.