But Munoz is clearly having too much fun to be overly concerned with his nonagenarian landlord or the Undre Arms' uncertain future. He hasn't given much thought to where he'll go if the Undre Arms gets razed, and shrugs when asked about noise complaints by his fellow tenants, saying only "I don't know, but Paul has been riding my ass about it."
Veronica Desaram has known Paul McKillop for the 15 years that she's owned the Copy Mart located across the street from the Undre Arms. Asked about him, she affectionately calls him a grumpy old penny-pincher who "wants all the information, but who won't give out any."
Kevin Casey
Filmmaker and tenant Tyson Theroux stands in front of The Undre Arms, which has embraced the Internet, but little else in the way of modernity.
Kevin Casey
The Undre Arms used to be surrounded by blue-collar businesses, most of which have long since withered.
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On the official papers documenting the deed transfer from McKillop to 11th & Madison, the reason cited for the sale is "old age." In our nine-minute interview, McKillop confirms that he went looking for a buyer because after 30 years he was "tired of the business." But he's loath to answer questions about the building's condition, past or present.
What McKillop will speak of, if you're interested in Undre Arms history, is how much King County's property records suck. "They list everything built before the war as being constructed in 1900," he says. By "war," he means World War II. According to his own research, the Undre Arms was built as a 12-unit apartment complex in 1909. It was split into 14 units sometime before VJ Day, he says.
In October 1988, an official from the Seattle Department of Construction and Land Use's Housing and Zoning Enforcement Division cited McKillop for the Undre Arms' poor condition. Inspector Ed Backmon wrote McKillop up for "deteriorating floor members in 1st and 2nd floor east exterior decks" and cracked windows on the first floor. At a hearing that November, the director threw out those violations, but sustained the complaints about lack of adequate lighting and inoperable light fixtures.
McKillop says he purchased the building in 1971 for a sum he's unwilling to reveal. (The King County Records Department's digital database goes back only to 1972, and microfiche records for 1970 and 1971 yield nothing on the property.) Prior to purchasing the Undre Arms, McKillop was renting office space in the Hunt Transfer Building on 12th and Madison, out of which he ran a small insurance company. After the sale went through, he moved his business to the Undre Arms, converting one of the bottom-floor apartments into its new headquarters.
The Undre Arms turned out to be a wise investment for Mc-Killop. In 1998, King County Department of Assessments appraised its value at $450,000, well below its eventual sale price of $1,873,700.
For Marty McDermott, arriving in Seattle after getting thrown out by an ex-wife was a sort of homecoming. His parents raised him in Philadelphia, where a hiccup in coal production forced the family to relocate to Texas, twangy evidence of which you can still hear in McDermott's voice. But McDermott says his father was stationed at Fort Lewis during World War II, creating the possibility that he was conceived during one of his mother's visits to the Pacific Northwest.
He shares this personal history while smoking a corncob pipe in what you could charitably call the Undre Arms' backyard. Next to a makeshift workbench, parked among the growing weeds, is a miniature, egg-shaped mobile-home trailer. That's where McDermott stayed when he first came to the Undre Arms. Every apartment has a back door that opens onto a small section of patio or balcony. So it's unlikely that he got much in the way of privacy.
Now he lives in the basement. Not being much of a "shower freak," McDermott doesn't mind that the place doesn't have amenities like a shower, and any empty receptacle can serve as his toilet. In exchange for free rent, he says he "does all the niggerin' and yard-doggin' to keep the place looking presentable." Translated from hobo-speak, that means he keeps the property free of garbage and does some light landscaping.
It's a sweet setup, he says, especially since, as he tells it, African immigrants have forced "white boys" like himself out the taxi business, and Mexicans have taken all the manual-labor jobs. But he makes do largely through his connections to local Catholic charities and folks like McKillop.
But for as much time as he's spent living there, McDermott is mostly indifferent to the Undre Arms' ultimate fate. If demolished, McDermott says he'll just pick up and move someplace else. And if he ends up on the streets again, that's OK too.
"Gimme less than 15 minutes to pack up," he says, "and I'm the hell out of here."
vcoleman@seattleweekly.com
