Dori: Showbox saga continues, city still attempting to steal private property

The attempt by the city of Seattle to steal private property in the form of The Showbox continues.

We’ve told you rather extensively that while The Showbox music venue downtown has had a lot of great acts come through its doors, the owner sold the property to a Vancouver, B.C. developer. That developer wants to put a 44-story apartment building on the site.

Now, there are people who say we should rig up the Pike Place Historical District boundary so it juts out across First Avenue to just encircle The Showbox.

That would be the City of Seattle stealing private property.

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At Monday’s city council meeting, Councilmember Lisa Herbold said that she wants to extend the protection of The Showbox through this redrawing for six more months.

When I first covered this story, I talked to a lot of people involved with commercial real estate downtown. My guess at the time was that the owner of The Showbox sold it for somewhere between $30 million and $60 million. And indeed, according to the court filings, it looks like it was somewhere between $40 million and $50 million, so my estimate was correct.

They’re going to have condos worth about $600 million in this building, so the property taxes would throw off $6 million a year. King County will reject a quarter-billion dollars in property taxes over 30 years if the Seattle City Council is successful in stealing a person’s private property.

I’ve said all along, if some of the people in the music industry who have expressed so much love for this venue want to get together and buy the property, operating it at an inevitably gigantic loss, that would be a solution. They could set up a trust and run it as a charity.

It’s pretty ugly when the government tries to steal private property. Nothing is more important to a society than private property rights, and the city of Seattle wants to completely bilk this developer out of their private property.

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