From the north end of Delridge, West Seattle’s mega-flag:
West Seattle, Washington
21 Wednesday
Food Services of America building? Didn’t they head south to Arizona to avoid taxes? Who is in that building now?
FSA is gone to AZ. Whiny owner Tom Stewart apparently blew out town as well. Not sure if he has a helicopter landing-pad at his new office and digs. The office building left behind is up for lease. Can you say condo conversion…….?
The wonderful Mr. Stewart (she says sarcastically) has retained his property on Vashon Island – Misty Isles Farms, so he goes back and forth between the two places, I suppose. You mean he didn’t take his flag with him? I’m surprised…
Mr. Stewart only employed people… of course, who needs jobs?
Yes, Shame on him for leaving for a better business climate.
No, shame on him for flying such a tastelessly huge flag and thrusting it so obnoxiously on the rest of us. And for seeming to share all the nastiest bits of the ideology that you might guess goes along with a megalomaniac nationalism.
I think Northland, a shipping company is in part of the building now. They barge stuff up to Alaska in the non icy season.
Eric,
Stewart was, and probably still is, a jerk. I don’t care if he employed people or not. Maybe you don’t remember, or maybe you don’t care, but Stewart pushed and pushed to put a helicopter landing pad in a friggin’ neighborhood so that he could fly back and forth from his Vashon home to his Delridge office building. If that is the kind of ’employer’ you would bow-down to then perhaps an Arizona mailing address is in your future…
sure, maybe the guy personally was a jerk. I doubt you could say the same for the whole bunch of professional employees that worked in that building. Something West Seattle is really lacking is non-service, white collar jobs.
Do you really think that building is going to remain vacant without new office related tentant(s) for long?
Bottom line is, the state tax code is not chasing employers out of this state. And it certainly should not be changed for one privately held company that happens to be based in West Seattle. No matter how much people like Stewart and Frank Blethen of the Times bellow, their tax schemes are wrong and misguided. Hell, Bill Gates Sr., who certainly ain’t no pauper, admits flat-out that the overall benefits of the tax code to the very well-to-do in this state way overshadows any purported tax pain that the Stewarts, Blethens and their ilk moan and whine about.
Hey Sage,
Let’s take the country back! As a bleeding heart liberal (a label I’m proud of) I used to be bothered by the “super-patriots” I’d see riding around with the flags all over their cars and trucks.
Recently I pulled out a flag that belonged to my Grandfather and decided to fly it for some holiday – mostly out of sentimental, family reasons. Now I do it regularly and my neighbors know I’m no conservative. I hope to make people realize we liberals love our country and are tired of seeing our constitutional liberties being trampled on.
It’s not just Blethen and Stewart. one word: Boeing.
Sorry – the Bill Gates Sr. argument doesn’t hold water. His son happens to be the richest man in the world, and his small business is never going to be threatened (in fact, I am sure he made out real nice in the K&L/PG&E merger. He does not speak for the family business community. Far from it – he is an elietist Seattle liberal.
Admit it, Mike, your attitude might be different if it were small companies run by liberals. Your only problem with Steward is that he was a Republican. Your red herring of the helicopter argument (which I could agree with) was outed by the fact that you are bringing Blethen into the argument. Go back to posting at HA, cause that is the same kind of rhetoric they spew there.
That building will fill up with Real Estate or other similar service-based businesses. Count on it.
Eric,
I could care less if Stewart, Blethen for that matter, is a Republican. Got it kemo sabe? I don’t even know what political brand Gates Senior is sporting on his forehead. Hard to imagine him being some kind of Socialist as you hinted at, but what the heck do I know. The fact that Stewart tried REAL hard to install his own version of Cape Canaveral in Delridge only proves what kind of a self-centered nut-job that dude is. The folks in Delridge and the city council at that stage of the game thankfully told him to shove it. Hopefully real far. The fact that Stewart and Blethen were both big into changing the tax code to benefit a few at the expense of many is something that I would have thought,…ahem….one learned in First Grade as something not to do. But then I came from a (gasp!) Republican household with 9 kids and went to First Grade in a three room country school house in rural Oregon where they taught us such things as sharing our good fortune, if and when it came our way. I can’t even begin to imagine where these clowns dressed as Stewart and Blethen went to school. Used to be that the Well-To-Do in this country understood that if it were not for the shoveling of large amounts of both theirs and everyone else’s tax dollars into the coffers of Federal, State and local guvmint’ the whole damn show would collapse. Now days it seems as if the old time Well-To-Do’ers and the nouveau riche of every political stripe don’t understand that the geese that laid their golden eggs didn’t survive on occasional table scraps and that continued feeding in vast amounts is good for everyone. I am done with this discussion Eric, but do Carry On!
Is it really that much of an inconvenience to have someone land a helicopter once a day? If I am not mistaken, there is a huge steel plant about 1 block away that operates 24/7. I don’t agree how he went about it, but with the nimby attitude of the people in that area I can see why he did it.
Sorry, comment time is over.
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