Who REALLY Runs Seattle?

Institutions by their very nature place self-perpetuation above all else, and Seattle's institutions have been aided in this by much that everyone knows and loves about the city.
—ROGER SALE, SEATTLE: PAST TO PRESENT, 1976

Next Monday, as on every Monday for the past 65 years, 50 or so people will gather in the Meisnest Room of the Washington Athletic Club at Sixth and Union in downtown Seattle, at the invitation of the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce. They'll eat lunch, listen to a speech by a local eminence, and spend an hour chatting about issues of special interest to those special and interested enough to have made the invite list. Members of this "Monday Club"—bankers, newspaper publishers, former elected officials, real estate developers, television executives, attorneys, venture capitalists, and others with big stakes in how public policy and public perception are shaped—will use this session to brainstorm ways of turning their dreams and schemes into reality. They'll do it Seattle-style—in polite, orderly fashion, nodding or winking to get the attention of the chair, who will moderate the gathering more like a parlor-room salon than a public hearing.

• Who you should get to know...
• Who you already know...
• The Ruckelshaus connection
• The Media and the Establishment
• Toadies, wannabes, and second bananas
• Unequal Opportunty

To understand Seattle's corporate and political establishments—many argue they're one and the same—one must understand the Community Development Round Table: Fifty carefully chosen leaders—most of them already well acquainted through Seattle's tightly drawn business, government, and cultural circles—sit in a room and talk about how to find the money, build the political support, and craft a convincing public message to turn cocktail-napkin sketches into blueprints. The new Mariners and Seahawks stadiums. The NordstromPacific Place retail complex. The Seattle Commons. The Washington State Convention & Trade Center expansion. World Trade Center. Seattle Art Museum. KeyArena. Benaroya Hall. The 2012 Olympics. Name a project—if it has at least an eight-digit budget, chances are it has been or will be discussed by the Monday Club.

"It's virtually not heard of, but it isn't some secret society. It's a way for community leaders to get smart, to think through public policy issues off the record," says Maura O'Neill, a former Puget Sound Energy executive and a Round Table member since 1996. "It's one of the things that makes Seattle special. I think the Round Table is an example of what makes Seattle's business community incredibly unique."

The Round Table is also an example of what makes people outside Seattle's business community incredibly frustrated—especially when they're trying to learn about, critique, and potentially oppose those eight-digit projects. People who likely will never see the inside of the Meisnest Room—neighborhood, environmental, human rights, and social service advocates—throw up their hands at the unusual cohesion of organizations like the Monday Club and Chamber of Commerce. "When they mobilize, forget it," says longtime housing and community activist John Fox of the Seattle Displacement Coalition. "There is such a degree of power and influence in this town: The linkage to money. The connections to corporate and organizational boards. The issues they unify around. The money they can mobilize to support candidates. It just takes some phone calls and it's roadkill for us—nine times out of 10."

It was a phone call from John Nordstrom to then-Mayor Norm Rice that led to the reopening of Pine Street and, ultimately, to the publicly subsidized, $400 million NordstromPacific Place retail complex. And it was a phone call from Jack Benaroya to Rice threatening to withhold support from the mayor's US Senate campaign unless he prevented a hygiene center for the homeless from moving near the site of the new symphony hall to which Benaroya was donating $15 million.

"These phone calls really happen," says first-term City Council member Nick Licata, a 25-year community activist and one of Seattle's most established outsiders. "It's not a novelistic imagery." Once the call is made, Licata says, fully informing citizens about the project and starting an in-depth public debate over its merits is often an exercise in futility. "When some of the big projects done recently have been criticized, it's usually been a last-minute kamikaze effort."

In a city that supposedly cherishes healthy democratic structures, open to anyone and everyone—a city once called "the public participation capital of the world"—critics and dissenters are often dismissed as "naysayers" and "loose cannons," while those at the top of the business and political ladders construct ever-larger projects with ever-larger public subsidies. "It's like an ant trying to stop an elephant herd," Licata said. "We don't have a conspiracy world here. But there is a comfort level among certain people who know each other—a well-connected network of people in the city whose names keep coming up again and again. We have a culture of commonly accepted principles of how the city should go."