(Sound Transit rendering of Delridge station site)
By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor
Erin Rubin, who owns Mode Music Studios (WSB sponsor) and its nonprofit sibling Mode Music & Performing Arts, is used to making music.
This month, she’s also spent a fair amount of time giving testimony.
As we’ve reported previously, Rubin’s business and nonprofit are in a building that’s in the path of Sound Transit‘s Delridge station. But she’s had two challenges getting in the way of moving Mode somewhere out of that path, so that she and her staff can continue teaching hundreds of local kids:
For one, the building – where she’s been a tenant for a decade – was left out of Sound Transit’s early-acquisition plans, meaning relocation help couldn’t be offered to the tenants, unlike some buildings nearby. ST is looking at changing that; Rubin spoke to the ST Board’s System Expansion Committee last week as it considered an “early acquisition” resolution to buy the building that holds Mode and The Skylark, as well as the building down the block that holds Ounces. (Read the resolution here.)
But even if that happens, another hurdle is the amount of relocation help that can be offered. The Legislature is considering a bill raising the limit, HB 1733. Rubin testified to a Legislature committee last week and shared her statement with us afterward:
We currently serve over 400 students providing private music lessons. In addition, we work with Seattle Public Schools and partnering organizations to provide pay-what-you-can music arts education enrichment and music lesson scholarships to eliminate financial barriers in our local community.
We are waiting to be displaced by the light rail for the West Seattle Link Extension and have been told up until now that our cap for rebuild and rent increase will be $50,000. With the estimates we’ve received so far, we’re looking at somewhere between 350 and $400,000 to re-create the space that we currently are occupying on Delridge in West Seattle.
It’s extremely important for us that a cap increase to $200,000 be voted through not only for us but for other small businesses in other link extensions and neighborhoods in Washington State that will be facing displacement for public transit. It is our reality that this number won’t meet all of our financial needs but gets us closer to what we require to build a space that can house our services.
The heart of our neighborhood communities lies in small business. It’s where our kids congregate after school. It’s where we buy birthday presents and dine on the weekends. In support of local art and education, we have a responsibility to make sure our businesses are able to financially see this next step through for our buildouts and rent increases so we don’t have to close our doors and that businesses down the line are also compensated for their moves in favor of public transit.
On Monday (February 24) at 10:30 am, HB 1733 will have a public hearing in the State House Transportation Committee. Rubin plans to go to Olympia to testify again in support of the bill. Later in the week, the “early acquisition” proposal goes to the full ST Board for its 1:30 pm Thursday (February 27) meeting; here’s the agenda, which also explains how to comment, either in person or remotely. The proposed purchase requires a two-thirds “supermajority” approval vote to pass. Rubin will be there; she says it’s vital to “keep showing up” – not just for her own business and its neighbors, but also to help ensure a precedent for the others in West Seattle that will need to move.
Meantime, the show must go on; until the timetable and relocation compensation are settled, Rubin can’t seek a new space in earnest, so she and the many local artists she employs as teachers at her two Modes are carrying on in the current studios, not just with lessons, classes, and school programs, but also planning for summer camps.
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