Kenmore residents are squaring off Tuesday night at city hall with a developer who wants to turn part of a state park into a hotel and spa.
The State Parks Department has a mandate to get rid of the seminary building at St. Edward State Park because it is falling apart.
The building was once used by the Archdiocese of Seattle.
The developer who wants to take ownership of it took KIRO 7 inside to show us his plans -- plans some neighbors say would not be best for the public.
Residents are meeting at Kenmore City Hall, where concerned neighbors will appeal to the state parks commission.
The former seminary at St. Edward State Park opening in 1931 and set amid one of the largest undeveloped wooded areas along Lake Washington. The five-story structure was built by the Archdiocese of Seattle on 316-acre property purchased in the 1920s by Bishop Edward John O’Dea, namesake of the Seattle high school.
It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2007.
In 2005, Portland-based McMenamins, which has a chain of hotels, restaurants and brew pubs, submitted a letter of intent to turn the St. Edward seminary building into a hotel with a restaurant and a conference center.
Some neighbors adamantly opposed that effort, and McMenamins opened in Bothell’s Anderson School last year after that property went through years of restoration. St. Edward Seminary, a roughly 90,000 square foot building, has deteriorated further since the neighbors’ opposition after McMenamins effort that started in 2005.
Neighbors at the time instead wanted a consortium of tenants to use the building. There was primary interest from the King County Library and the Seattle Veterans Museum, but tenants that could fit the space – and the repair costs – were never found. Little of the park’s $1.6 million biennial budget went to restoration, a park ranger told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in 2006.
The restrooms are plagued by flaking paint, cracked mirrors and water-damaged terrazzo floors, but have stalls made from marble identical to that in the state Capitol. Most of the doors are handcrafted mahogany.
The seminary also has a room where the Von Trapp family -- made famous in "The Sound of Music" -- stayed in the early 1950s. Thousands of boys stayed in the dorms until the seminary closed in 1977 because of declining enrollment.
The building still has industrial-size equipment in the kitchen, but that hasn’t been used because the building hasn't been kept up to fire codes.
Information from a 2006 Seattle Post Intelligencer article by Casey McNerthney, now part of the KIRO 7 staff, is included in this report.