streetscape

The first of a series of Google Street View investigations into navigating a variety of cities in the Puget Sound region and beyond. Don't be alarmed by fuzzy signs and faces--it takes a little getting used to. Other photos are credited where possible.

Renton: You are four edges without a center.

Aaah, Renton. You are so hard to read.

But dammit, Renton. You're a survivor.

Are you the Detroit of Puget Sound and all that implies, good and bad? Economic powerhouse turned empty shell of ruined industry?

You get so much wrong and yet somehow you get a lot of things right.

Boeing started here. Paccar. Foundries, coal, logging. All the big industries. Even Jimi Hendrix was born (and buried) here. Clint Eastwood lifeguarded at Kennydale Beach for three summers.

Clint Eastwood

But I never ever have gotten around to unlocking the mystery of how I get into your inner sanctum, your walkable downtown with clearly-marked intersections on a predictable grid, your center as seen below. Your fate would appear to be the fate of 20th century downtowns in small towns everywhere--downtown is consigned to being a museum, retaining your residents' memories of the "good old days".

The elusive downtown Renton

Ok Renton. I know you've got a soul. But how do I get there?

Common Ground Coffee and Cupcakes photo by rb

photo by rb

Calico Cheesecake Co and Cafe Lure photo by rb

photo by rb

Why can't I ever find that snazzy cafe/retro mid-century antiques store in the rehabbed service station?

Jet City Expresso: "Coffee So Good it Can Wake the Dead"

Why can't I ever find that great bbq place or the seventeen different pubs I've been meaning to get to?

A Terrible Beauty Irish pub

Your beautiful art deco museum in the rehabbed Fire Station #1 built in 1944 and the LAST building created by the WPA?

Why can't I find your Farmer's Market?

Cedar River photo Wikimedia

Renton Public Library above the Cedar River photo Wikipedia

Where is the river? And that cool library that straddles it? Subject of a successful citizen fight to save "the soul" of Renton? Built here because there was no land left, born of Boeing workers' ingenuity?

Sketch by Gabriel Campanario, Seattle Times

You've always been an enigma to me. I get in. Somehow. 1-405's exits are many and varied but where you wind up when you get off is always a riddle. Sometimes I'm south of where I want to be. Sometimes I'm north. I'm usually east, gazing from my car on Interstate 405. What I'm talking about here is the difficulty of finding your downtown. To enter the center.

Here's the problem:

You can drive through it, but you can't drive to it. I call it impervious impermeability:

If permeability is a trait necessary to good urbanism then you're lacking it. You have good places but a visitor can't connect them. Can't get there from here. This fact, in spite of or perhaps because of:

1. Four state highways and three interstate highways all intersect in Renton's downtown, "bringing more than 364,000 vehicles a day to the city to work, shop and play." (According to the City's Chamber of Commerce)--note they're not meant to live there. Even your motto is "Ahead of the Curve" which refers to the I-405 "S Curves defining your eastern edge.

Renton, your roads define you.

2. So many one-way streets in a small area downtown, designed for ease of getting through downtown, not to downtown. With GPS equipped cars, does it even matter anymore, though?

3. SeaTac Airport is closer to Renton (at six miles away) than it is to Seattle (13 miles away) or Tacoma (23 miles away). And to truly lock down access to the air in the greater metropolitan area of Seattle Tacoma, Renton Municipal Airport and the Boeing Factory form the northern edge of its downtown.

Your airport and industries define you.

4. And finally, Big Boxes define you. You have at least ten major single story Big Box retail outlets within a short distance of downtown.

So not only are you impermeable but you're impervious in the form of masses amount of concrete--parking lots, airport and factories and lots and lots of roads. 25 principal arterials 25 minor arterials.

These four basic facts, however, haven't prevented Renton from sustaining a major salmon spawning river running through the municipal airport at lake's edge and under its library, under the freeway and out the other side of your downtown AND the remnants of a major, though no-longer-operable railroad, both river and railroad slice and dice your small single family downtown neighborhoods and strip malls into a confusing yet tantalizingly surprising tangram of triangular lots.

The residential neighborhoods making up your downtown are filled with these low-density little houses, worker housing from the heyday of Boeing in the 50s. Little houses, along with Big Boxes, define you.

I am going to start with trying to figure out where your center is. It's important, because I have memories of being there. I'm circling you via your edges and when I reach your center I hope I'll recognize it.

Where do we start?

Google's center of Renton:

The center of Renton, according to Google, is this intersection just to the south of Airport Way on Rainier Way, and the first orange circle at the top of the map above. This makes sense because Rainier Way is the original road from Renton to Seattle. But looking at it in street view it appears to be a Thai restaurant. Rainier is an edge, but its not downtown. It gets you to the valley south of town and winds up being a highway.

Renton's center, according to Google maps

Where does Google think the center is? In the photo above cars don't yet dominate the way they do further south. There's a Watson Security company as seen from the driveway to a Thai restaurant, flanked by lovely Chinese lion sculptures. Because this is Google maps, some people's faces and some signs are fuzzed out for privacy. Apparently dog faces don't apply.

This is Rainier Avenue South, the traditional arterial that ran from the farmlands south of Renton (West Valley Highway 167) up to Seattle. Here Google's positioned its letter "A" for Renton outside the Royal Orchid Thai restaurant. Adjacent is a carwash. A car/restaurant pairing we'll see often as we make our way down Rainier Avenue.

Because this was not identified as part of the improvements to Rainier Avenue, mature trees, fewer lanes of traffic and no big box retail or large billboards are the hallmarks of this end of Rainier.

The Center of Renton, according to Google: Mature trees with a variety of building sizes and parking configurations

The Google center of Renton in context with the rest: airport, river, freeway. Notice how Rainier Avenue begins to broaden at the bottom. Seattle is to the north.

And, befitting a highway, there are few safe crosswalks and there are lots of curbcuts (driveways)..

Google center of Renton

Google center of Renton: pairing of food with car wash

It's obviously not a downtown. For whatever reason, Google identified it as the center and it is an important historic edge of Renton. Here we're staying in the relatively small building footprint, with parking in front and one giant curbcut. Lots are not typically landscaped at this end of Rainier. The manicured shrubs outside Payday Loans indicate a more recent tenant. Mature trees and lawn, like those seen around single family homes in nearby neighborhoods, predominate.

Let's see what happens to Rainier Avenue as it makes its way past Renton. I realize now its not going to take us to downtown Renton, but it still holds lots of clues as to why it is so hard to enter the real Renton.

Renton "entrances" from the west (in red) at Rainier Avenue and from the east (in blue) at Airport Way are actually edges of town designed to get you through it, not to it. Circled areas indicate key intersections on Rainier Way

Here is a sneak preview of what happens to Rainier Avenue at its southern edge, just above the clover leaf in the aerial above.

Welcome to Renton

How did we get to this (above, note the Welcome to Renton sign embedded in the lawn) from this (below?) Above, at the south end of Rainier, you have nothing but fast food restaurants paired with auto-related retail and long city blocks filled with surface parking.

Smaller lot sizes, "main street" trees and a variety of businesses in the north part of Rainier Way

Renton Veterinary and Payday Loans

You can see why overgrown street trees and small storefronts might not be the ideal combination in all cases:

One of many pairings of fast food with auto-oriented business

In the next block, fast food, casinos and auto-oriented retail being to dominate. The big problem with Rainier Way (apart from it not leading to downtown Renton) is the fact that at this point the impervious surfaces dominate and it's no longer pedestrian friendly. Though countless steps are taken to improve the walking experience, it fails miserably. With a few exceptions. Where the old highway is left alone the land uses provide a pedestrian-friendly scale:

Firestone Tires and a casino in former restaurant

Modified traditional landscaping

Scruffier, older more "lived-in" landscaping

Our first hint of where downtown is is actually the least promising--an overhead railway. But railways made Renton the town it is today, as in so many other cities across the US. Now this unused railway is costing a lot in road widening projects. It is the way downtown, but there's nothing to reinforce this, beyond the faded curve of a "path of desire" behind the pedestrian, below.

Rainier Way from under the railway bridge

Big box retail in the form of Fred Meyer and WalMart make their presences known. As you can see in the aerial below, Rainier is wider. Substantially. It's apparent here that Rainier Way is being transformed into a major modern highway and is intersecting with another city street becoming a major modern highway: S 3rd/Sunset Blvd is becoming State Rte 900

The signs are oriented toward cars, not pedestrians:

The City of Renton has identified "a number of improvements that will ease entrance into Renton and make Renton's streets attractive and vibrant." Rainier Avenue itself has been described by the Chamber of Commerce as "an important commercial corridor in need of more visual appeal, in the form of special business and transit lanes, enhanced streetscape and landscaping." Enhancements costing $43,000,000.00 began seven years ago and included improvements benefitting transit and automobile mobility as well as safety for vehicular traffic and pedestrians. It also included the replacement of railroad bridges to allow for road widening. That gets expensive. What streetscape enhancements look like, seven years on:

"Circus-style/funhouse" architecture meets urban design guidelines: bringing building to the sidewalk, eye-catching features and colors, pseudo home-cooking features with gingerbread colors and faux awnings--with mandated smaller road signs the building and its symbols have to do the talking, especially to fast-moving car. Is it art, or architecture? Is it advertising or adver-signing? Former Arby's, Rainier Avenue. A strip of landscape, despite its generous tree canopy. Hard to tell the sidewalk from the highway.Some buildings are brought to the roadside -- The latest in 80s urban design, but does it work for a building this large, and for auto parts?

Pedestrian refuges are fewer, blocks are longer and crosswalks unsafe. The curbcuts are more numerous, and wider.

And then there's a marked increase in the incidence of puffballs. With no pedestrians there is no longer the need to provide the sense of safety that mature trees provide. What's required is simply well-manicured shrubs that don't obscure the retail signage or driveways. Easy to maintain, and each property owner does what's best for their customer in a car, not the pedestrian walking by.

Rainier Avenue, QDoba, Starbucks and Puffballs

Mexican restaurant and lollipop trees, a hybrid form of puffball crossed with street trees

Idealized, modern landscaping: cared for, but no more inviting to the pedestrian. Punctuates the driveway, making it easier to see without getting in the way of signage...

and wi-i-i-de curb cuts

Traditional landscaping on the left meets the puffball modernism on the right

Landscape is subtly shifting from being urban, marking a linear pattern along the roadway, in the traditional Main Street boulevard style sheltering pedestrians, to corporate puffballs provided by individual land-owners. Is it possible that parking lots for big box stores like Fred Meyer, McLendon's and WalMart's provide a place of refuge and now take the place of public parks? This is something you almost get right, Renton: treating big boxes as independent entities with safe walking paths, generous landscaping and opportunities to be outdoors--eating, sitting, etc. like a park.

Four big boxes of Renton's southern and western corner: Clockwise from top left: Fred Meyer, McLendon's, Sam's Club and WalMart. Interspersed in this area are numerous car dealerships.

Rainier Avenue, McLendon's Hardware

The WalMart "passegiata"

Drawing a crowd, even in the rain photo by rb

The Seattle institution in an Airstream in a parking lot: Top Pot Do-Nuts photo by rb

Pear's Deli and Shoppe, originally from Pike Place Market, now located in McLendon's photo by rb

To recap:

Lazy Mitigation: Prescribed landscaping, sign codes and architectural solutions which are there for the benefit of car traffic.

Mitigation done right:

McLendon Hardware. Moved to Rainier to the larger K/Mart site. This was the right thing to do, Renton. It started out as US Junk in 1910 and is beloved by locals. It retains the traditional Rainier landscaping and makes for a pleasant place to wait for the bus in to Seattle. Offers a true sense of refuge and a cleverly disguised Top Pot Donuts in an Airstream trailer. Another local institution which quickly draws a crowd, even in the rain. Compare with the other side of the street which is going for the full-strip mall treatment, by way of urban design standards.

Rainier Avenue, McLendon's Hardware and bus stop

Rainier Ave and 7th: McLendon's on left, WalMart on right

Here at Rainier and S 7th impervious surfaces rule.

WalMart parking lot from the air

And at Grady Way, before Rainier officially becomes Highway 167 the overhead lines further diminish the pedestrian.

A brand new I-Hop still in its Tyvek wrapper and the first sign of industrial strength voltage lines

And don't look down side streets for a clue as to where downtown is:

Just off Rainier on 7th the big boxes and car lots become single family homes--with shifts in scale this dramatic, and a view that hints at Renton's bucolic surroundings, we're not getting any clues that downtown is just beyond.

Why are the houses so tiny? Where is the density one associates with downtown?The problem with Renton is a problem of scale. No urban design guidelines or streetscape improvements can touch the nuances of sensitivity to size of elements in the surroundings in relation to the human form. Size matters. In addition, our touchstones, the freeway and auto-dominant retail are missing. What happened to the freeway? Where are the landmarks? Where are the signs? There is no transition and there is nothing indicating this is the way downtown.

What happens when Rainier Way meets the freeway at Grady Way?

All Renton can do at this point is build more parking lots, more big boxes and try to fashion a pedestrian scale shopping village from a lot of leftovers, creating a "pocket" for new development: starting with Sam's Club, Roxy Theatres, Uwajimaya Asian grocery and other commercial entities. To top it off, they converted an office building into City Hall, traditionally in the center of town and seen in the oval on the far right inside the "pocket". So is this the center after all?