building that then got bigger down in the
Denny Regrade. I remember going home—
we were living up on Capitol Hill and had a
view over downtown Seattle—I remember
pointing so proudly out the window to my
wife and saying, “See that building with
the crane down there? I just added three
more stories to that building by transferring
the development rights off the parking lot
across the alley.” She said, “You did what?
You just blocked our view.” I said, “Oh, yeah,
we’ll move.”
Q: And did you?
A: Yes, we moved. It was an apartment, so
we would have moved anyway. That was the
beginning of a family that ended up with
three daughters, and I’ve got three beautiful
grandchildren.
Q: You literally helped shape the local
landscape. What are some of the projects
you’re most proud of?
A: We are still building things. I started
working on that first building in the Denny
Regrade in ’ 78, ’ 79. Since then there have
been hundreds of projects. I like to tell
people I’m building things for us and for
our kids and for our grandkids. Things
that I’ve helped build include what’s now
the Columbia Center [which] started out
as a 10-story building, and we worked,
got the zoning code … it ended up as a
76-story building. I’ve done projects like
the new Four Seasons Hotel and [Private]
Residences of Seattle. We looked for years
for the right place for them; we got the Four
Seasons on First Avenue just at the time
First Avenue was becoming Seattle’s major
pedestrian thoroughfare. That also included
a transfer of development rights. I’ve been
doing transfers of development rights since
the late ’70s, including one of the biggest
ones in Washington state: the whole new
development of Black Diamond. We’re
in the process with our client YarrowBay
of processing two master-planned
communities in the city of Black Diamond,
down there between Renton and Enumclaw
on the way to Mount Rainier, and that will
ultimately have close to 6,000 new homes.
Projects like the Columbia Tower and the
master-planned communities in Black
Diamond, some people call them legacy
projects. They’re ones that … will serve our
communities for the next hundred or 200
years. How fun it is to be part of that, to be
able to make that happen.
Q: Suncadia in Eastern Washington was
another big feather in your cap.
A: It was, and is, the first and only master-
planned resort in Washington, and that
property was originally owned by Plum
Creek Timber Company, a very, very
good client of ours. Suncadia was 6,000
acres of timberland. It was primarily pine
plantations in Eastern Washington over
there by Roslyn, Cle Elum. The Growth
Management Act was adopted on April
1 of 1990, and it pretty much said we’re
going to stop building in the rural areas;
