Seattle’s infrastructure needs billions in repairs. The library is just the start

On the ninth floor of the downtown Seattle Central Library, there’s a window that was shattered from the inside. Staff put a board over it and hid it with a trash can, and even though the largest library levy in Seattle history is on the August ballot, they likely will still not replace the window even if it passes.

In fact, nearly all of the library’s 10,000 windows need to be replaced. To do so, each will need to be custom fit by the one company in Italy that produced them in the first place and will cost an average of $30,000 — about $300 million for the building.

Such is the price of landmark-worthy architecture. But the library is just a dramatic example of the monumental bill Seattle owes in infrastructure maintenance.

Choose a building — be it a fire station, a police station, the animal shelter — and it’s likely in need of massive improvements that are not funded.

Rough estimates from the city’s facilities department show about $6 billion in deferred maintenance and new construction — including $100 million for the animal shelter, $210 million for new Fire Department headquarters, $225 million for a new North Precinct police station, $330 million for new maintenance yards and more.

Seattle City Light needs to spend $3 billion on underground cable replacement and grid upgrades, not to mention possible new substations and $4 billion in upgrades to its Skagit River dams.

At the same time, the city is looking at budget shortfalls totaling hundreds of millions of dollars in the coming years. In 2019, replacing a single fire station in North Seattle, long suspected of making its firefighters sick, was a drain on the city’s budget. Now, the gap between the funds available for repairs and replacements and the amount it would cost to complete them is so vast that it’s hard to picture.

The story of the library is a good start, though.

Designed by world-recognized architects Rem Koolhaas and Joshua Prince-Ramus, the 11-story Central Library is debated as a piece of art, with both glowing and skeptical reviews since its opening in 2004, the result of the successful “Libraries for All” funding measure approved by voters in 1998.

It represented a radical new addition to Seattle’s downtown, defined in large part by the library’s nearly 10,000 custom-cut windows and zigzagging center of gravity — “a blazing chandelier to swing your dreams upon,” as The New York Times put it at the time.

Nearly from the beginning, its challenges were apparent.

Caring for a piece of art is complex, said facilities manager Dennis Reddinger.

“I will say this is a unique and beautiful building; just, it’s very difficult to maintain,” he said.

For instance, the building originally did not have a bathroom at the Fifth Avenue entrance — on the design philosophy that the search for one would bring people fully inside rather than allowing them to treat the library as a pit stop. Staff quickly decided that should change.

But the building’s cantilevered shape meant switch-backing new piping in to connect to the upstairs bathrooms.

Also, the light bulbs in the main room are so high that staff need to bring in a specialized lift to replace them. But the original floor, which is raised to hold the building’s heat and air conditioning, couldn’t support the weight, so they had to reengineer from the ground up.

The pipes running hot water through the building are springing leaks and the plumbing system, which grinds up sewage, is often clogged with clothing or other items flushed down the toilet.

Some of the building’s air-handling units were essentially built into the structure. They’re aging as well, but they won’t fit through any doorways so replacing them will mean tearing down a wall.  

And then there is the shattered ninth-floor window. It’s nearly even with the floor, faces east and hangs out over Fifth Avenue below. Replacing it can only be done from the outside, so the process would mean closing the street at least twice — first to measure and then to swap in the new glass — which would be shipped in from Italy. The process would take months and cost upward of $50,000.

Walk the building long enough and you’ll see fog lines appearing on some of the other windows, evidence of broken storm seals and a loss of insulative power.

For as celebrated as the building has been, the city’s budget documents over the last 20 years only address the cost of construction, rarely the cost of long-term maintenance.

The library levy that voters will decide on next month will nibble at the building’s overall needs — keeping the elevators and escalators in working order, for example. But it would still leave unanswered the question of long-term upkeep, not to mention the needs at the system’s other 26 branches.

The levy proposal is largely, “What are we going to be able to do on a critical basis?” said Tom Fay, chief librarian.

The library system has seen general fund cuts to its budget dating back to 2012. What’s kept it afloat has been voters’ willingness to tax themselves.

Mayor Katie Wilson initially proposed a $410 million library revenue measure, which would have provided about $40 million in new flexible maintenance dollars, nearly all of which would have been eaten up by elevators and escalators throughout the library system.

The rest of the proposal was dedicated to programming, hours and collections.

The City Council added nearly $60 million to the package, including $10 million earmarked specifically for the Central Library. But it still falls short of the $160 million that library staff members estimate the system needs in the short term — which does not include window replacement.

“Each floor is one square block,” Fay said. “It’s not going to be cheap when you touch just even one floor.”

That’s the risk with new buildings, Fay said. Like a homeowner who only calculates the cost of a mortgage, it’s too easy to see sparkling new facilities as permanent.

“It was a massive building for a library system that didn’t have anything like it, right?” he said. “And so what happens? Sometimes those buildings, you don’t know what you don’t know.”

In sending Wilson’s proposed levy to the ballot, the council debated the city’s needs versus the city’s ability to keep growing its property tax proposals. The city is approaching a state-imposed limit on how much it can tax residents’ property, the result of years of increasingly large measures and stagnating property values.

Councilmember Maritza Rivera, who sponsored Wilson’s proposal on the council and emphasized her support for the libraries, opposed growing its size in part for that reason.

“Any increases to this package will diminish our capacity to address other needs through upcoming levies,” she said earlier this year.

Fay, the chief librarian, said a bond could be an option. Bonds must go toward capital costs and have the advantage of not counting toward the state limit on property taxes. But they also need 60% of voters to agree.

Whatever happens, the current model only allows for modest upgrades, said Rob Gannon, the director of administrative services.

“We would run out of our resources very quickly,” he said, “and still have 26 other locations that we have to maintain.”