King County wants to sell the old Public Health of Seattle & King County building on Auburn Avenue, and the City of Auburn wants to buy it.
But the county is asking for $950,000, and city officials are angry about that.
“King County is being greedy at the expense of Auburn citizens,” declared Michael Hursh, human services manager for the City of Auburn.
“Greed” is the word bandied about Auburn City Hall.
Driving the indignation is how King County acquired the building, originally the Auburn Post Office, for mere pennies from the federal General Services Administration (GSA) in 1964 after the Postal Service moved into its new building on Third Street Northwest.
And how Auburn citizens agreed to the generous deal.
The arrangement called for King County to pay the GSA $1 a year for 20 years, based on the condition that the county would use the building in that time only for public health purposes.
Twenty years and $20 later, the county owned the building, and the public health restriction sunsetted.
Last winter Public Health vacated the building, relocated to 901 Auburn Way North and the county decided to sell the property.
City officials wanted to buy the 67-year-old brick building, one of two remaining historic public buildings left in the city. Hursh described to the Auburn Reporter plans to turn it into a business incubator.
Nobody was prepared, however, for the asking price.
Mayor Pete Lewis called the county’s offer ‘galling’ for several reasons, given how cheaply it acquired the building and how generous the community was to it.
“We just want the same sort of deal King County got,” said Lewis.
“It was a post office built for the citizens of Auburn in 1937,” Lewis said. “After the new post office was built, King County was looking for a public health facility. An agreement was made with the acceptance of the citizens of Auburn that the county would get the building, and they’d pay a dollar a year for 20 years as a public health building. The county insisted that the restriction be removed after the 20 years, and in the late ’80s, it was. Now we’ve got one of two historic public buildings, and the county is demanding $950,000 to give it back to the people of Auburn. I would be more than willing to give them the same amount they gave us, and I have made that statement to them.”
If the City can’t afford to buy the building and it can’t at that price King County could sell it to any private party.
“The City doesn’t have $950,000, and that means they could sell the building to any private organization that wanted to come in and do what it wanted with the building,” Lewis said. “The building is on the National Historical Registry, but that only means the new owners would have to keep at least the front brick façade in place. But they could make that into a nightclub or a tavern.”
Lewis summed up King County’s response to the City’s complaints: times are tough, we need the bucks, too bad.
Lewis noted that when the building was constructed in 1937, Auburn had its own financial problems. And it certainly had them when the deal was struck in 1964, just as the railroad was pulling out and city unemployment hit double digits.
Despite this, Lewis said, the people of Auburn made a generous gesture to King County. And city officials really don’t appreciate the sort of gesture the county is making to them now.
“The thing that really bothers me most is that this is one of two historic buildings left in Auburn. If this were Bellevue, Redmond, Kirkland, cities that wield great political power, would their response have been the same?” Lewis asked.
“King County is attempting to benefit and to fill some of its budget holes with a fair market value on the backs of Auburn taxpayers, and it’s not right, it’s not fair,” Hursh said.
Calls to Kathy Brown, director of King County’s Real Estate Services’ Permit and Franchise Unit, were not returned for this article. Calls to King County Councilmember Pete Von Reichbauer’s office also were not returned.
