Jan. 19 was just an ordinary Puget Sound Saturday; the rainy drive to a specialty bookstore in Seattle's Georgetown neighborhood, a latte fetched from right next door, and the strains of eclectic music in the air. Then, from across the road, an interruption that's becoming familiar: another demolition, spewing bricks and concrete into the street. The shock only lasts for seconds, because it's been elaborately previewed on a developer's Web site, in public meetings, and with extensive PR that hammered home familiar themes of renewal and preservation.
Which is surreal considering that the building being torn apart is an official Seattle landmark: the Rainier Cold Storage and Ice/Seattle Brewing and Malting Company. In 1893, as a merger of three earlier Seattle breweries, it would bring Rainier Beer to prominence and evolve into the sixth-largest brewing facility in the world. Now, mechanical claws are devouring the brewery's Stock House section — whose towering façade completes the south end of the 855-foot-long building. Developer Sabey Corp. — a growing presence in the Georgetown area — bought the landmark in October 2006. On its Web site, the company says that after the purchase they learned that the Stock House portion of the complex had a seriously compromised structural integrity. Several aspects of its history as a cold storage and "ice house" facility had led, they say, to degradation that required immediate demolition.
The idea that a developer would make such a purchase without first investigating its full structural state would seem unlikely. But according to the blog written mostly by Sabey Senior Vice President of Investments Jim Harmon (who was on site Saturday in a state of elation that contrasted strongly with that of most onlookers), "we certainly didn't buy the property with this in mind."
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