IT’S AN UNCANNY COLLISION of Seattle buzzwords: a “public/private partnership” that has improved through “the public process” to the point where its backers now consider it a “win-win solution.”

Either that or it’s a big private hotel built on public property.

The proposed Inn at the Center at John Street and Second Avenue North would be a 159-room, moderately priced hotel that could house out-of-town visitors to Seattle Center events. The building’s developers and owners, a corporation bearing the utilitarian tag of Inn at the Center LLC, would lease the underlying property from the city of Seattle for 40 years (with the option of two 10-year lease extensions), then the city would take possession of the building.

In return, the hotel owners have built a second level of parking under their building to replace the surface parking lot now on the site and will pay the Seattle Center $204,000 annually. It’s a good deal all around, unless you live behind the thing.

Ask Barbara Brennan. For nine years, she has lived in the Queen’s Court apartments, one of a set of three well-kept apartment buildings adjacent to the proposed hotel. Her tiny neighborhood is a four-block notch of private properties at the southwest corner of the Seattle Center campus. With a big new condominium building being constructed smack up against one side of the Queen’s Court and the new hotel due to tower over the handsome brick structure, Brennan and other residents of the three buildings see yet another blow to their quality of life.

You know the area. You’ve probably cruised its streets in hopes of finding free parking (or accessing a Seattle Center pay lot). Maybe you’ve cut through on the way to a Sonics game or on the way home from Bumbershoot. “We’re not concerned just about this building, we’re concerned about the whole neighborhood,” says Brennan. “After the crowds are gone, it’s a nice quiet little neighborhood. That’s going to change when they build this hotel.”

Jeanne Black-Ferguson, the resident manager at the nearby Fionia Apartments, also wonders if the 24-hour impact of the proposed hotel may prove the tipping point for residents whose tolerance is already tested by the many Center events and festivals. “I have no objections to those things because we know they’re happening,” she says. “We just grit our teeth.” Black-Ferguson and other area residents fear the hotel will rob them of their few cherished daily hours of peace and quiet.

This project has also been accompanied by a fair amount of bureaucratic bumbling. Neighbors were not notified of the first public meeting about the hotel because all Seattle Center projects use the address of its business office, located clear across Center grounds. A second public meeting was scheduled and the same mistake was made a second time. Finally, some neighbors got their notices for a third meeting, but not Black-Ferguson, whose building is located just outside the required 300-foot notification zone around the project. Brennan and other neighbors got 220 residents of the area to sign a petition against the hotel, which the city promptly lost.

AND, YES, THE SITUATION is made more annoying by the knowledge that this private business would be built on public property. Dave Buchan, the Center’s chief project manager, discovered that public/private partnerships are a sore topic two years ago, when he made a presentation on the hotel to the Seattle Design Commission. Four commission members told him in no uncertain terms that the project was a bad idea. “I still have serious concerns that this is an inappropriate use of public land,” Commissioner Gail Dubrow stated. “This project should be pursued on private property.”

Seattle Center Director Virginia Anderson thinks otherwise. She notes that, unlike many city departments, the Center is expected to pull its weight economically. About 80 percent of the Seattle Center’s annual $34 million budget comes from Center revenues. “We’re a hybrid in terms of a governmental organization,” she says. “We’re run as a very entrepreneurial business. We are always earning revenue and balancing that with our public nature.”

Anderson, who acknowledges that the original concept design for the hotel “was not very good,” argues that the hotel building has been vastly improved as it moved its way through the public process. The original stucco gave way to brick, one story was removed, and a large light well was moved to the back of the building (to mitigate the visual impact of the building from the Queen’s Court). Part of this tinkering was accomplished by the Seattle City Council’s Parks Committee, which reviewed the lease between the Seattle Center and the hotel corporation.

“I think we addressed most of [the neighbors’] concerns,” says council member Nick Licata, who notes that deliveries to the hotel will not be allowed after 6pm and that the developer has committed to providing additional landscaping and $150,000 of exterior art.

The project will have to yield to process for a little while longer. The city’s decision to allow the project to be built without an environmental impact statement has been appealed by Brennan and Fr. Gregory Schmitt of Sacred Heart Church, whose parish buildings are located just north of the hotel site.

Schmitt knows what it’s like to live on an island: Sacred Heart’s historic parish hall, convent, and church building are completely surrounded by Seattle Center-owned properties. Still, he says the Center has been a pretty good neighbor until this latest scheme. “Parking and traffic will be horrendous—it’s bad already,” he says. “I think it’s going to be a real deficit to the neighborhood if they build this hotel.”

Brennan says she fears the loss of little things: the quiet hours before the Center’s 11am opening, the ringing of the church bells, the closeness between neighbors—many of whom have lived in the apartment buildings for decades. “We care for each other, we run errands for each other,” she says. “There’s an intimacy here that’s lacking in other neighborhoods because of the physical borders of it. And probably also because of what we have to contend with in the way of traffic and parking.”