A Requiem for Seventy-Seven Bus Stops, part VII: The Route 28 north of NW 97th Street; also, beaches and buses

Dear Diary,

No, I didn't sleep enough.  How about you?

Anyway, though, this is the last big heave of this page.  I want to talk not only about the sad collection of stops closing in the far northwest, but also about beaches, and bus service thereto.

I visited most of these stops on Saturday morning, then went back Monday afternoon, having found that Open Street Map maps three stops I'd ignored.  One of those, however, turned out not to be closing, because it's also a stop on the route D.  I also had doubts that two other stops (which I hadn't ignored) were really closing, but that was because I was applying the wrong standard of evidence to the new schedule; I should've been using preponderance of the evidence, not beyond a reasonable doubt.

See, the map shows a transfer point, no less, at NW 100th Place and 7th Avenue NW.

However, the schedule clarifies:  northbound trips end at that stop, stop #28680, where people can indeed transfer (to the route D).  But southbound trips, having turned at 3rd Ave NW and then at Holman Road NW, can't reach the stops across the street from the transfer point, and so they start instead at NW 97th Street:

This is apparently the way the route has worked ever since the extension north became a commuter-only route, which may be all the way back to when it started, for all I know.  (This extension is on the 1973 transit map but not the 1970 one.  The 28 reached NW 105th Street by the time of the 1965 map, but not further north.)  For some reason, none of my copies of the schedule map the Holman-route turn-around used by the non-commuter runs.  Now that every single run uses that turn-around, though, there's no excuse for not showing it.

As before, the links in the lists of stops go to my Google Drive, to folders there containing at least one photo of each stop listed.

Anyway.  The stops:

3rd Avenue NW

Northbound, three stops:

• Stop #28890, north of NW 143rd Street.
• Stop #28880, north of NW 140th Street.
• Stop #28870, north of NW 137th Street.

Southbound, three stops:

• Stop #27790, south of NW 145th Street.
• Stop #27810, just south of NW 140th Street.  A photo of a bus stop with none of the amenities I'm following:
  
  
  
  
• Stop #27820, just south of NW 137th Street.
   

NW 132nd Street

Northbound, one stop:

• Stop #28850, halfway between 4th Avenue NW and 3rd Avenue NW.
  

Southbound, one stop:

• Stop #27840, just west of 3rd Avenue NW.  This is one of the two closing stops on this route that I missed on Saturday.
  

8th Avenue NW

Northbound, two stops:

• Stop #28830, south of NW 132nd Street.
• Stop #28810, just north of NW 127th Street.
  

Southbound, two stops:

• Stop #27860, further south of NW 132nd Street.
• Stop #27880, south of NW 127th Street.
  

NW 125th Street

Northbound, two stops:

• Stop #28800, just east of 8th Avenue NW.
• Stop #28780, just east of Eldorado Lane NW.  This is the other stop that's actually closing that I missed on Saturday, probably because my attention was on a chat with a resident across the street.  While I was photographing it on Monday evening, the 28 bus actually pulled up and stopped.  I saw plenty of 20 buses while walking that route; few 73 buses Saturday evening, but several yesterday; but that was the only commuter bus I saw.  I wasn't on the 322's route at the right times, either Sunday or yesterday.
  

Southbound, one stop:

• Stop #27890, east of 8th Avenue NW.  At this stop, someone had recently installed a new cement pavement.  (Most, but not all, of the stops north of this one are unpaved, like stop #27810 above.)  Who paid for that apron, the home-owner, Metro, or someone else?  What will become of it now?  Does the home-owner get to use it for a grill, or for outdoor parties?
  

3rd Avenue NW

Northbound, five stops:

• Stop #28760, north of NW 120th Street.  This is the first, in this part, of four stops, both northbound and southbound, that have a rather bizarre appurtenance - I can't bring myself to call it an amenity.  Each of these stops has some fencing, of the same kind at each, clearly related to the stop, not the nearby residences.  I have no idea what it's for; it's hard to imagine crowd control ever being called for at the stops in question.
  
• Stop #28750, north of NW 117th Street.  117th is the northernmost route into Carkeek Park along public streets (as opposed to private back yards).
  
• Stop #28740, north of NW 115th Street.
• Stop #28720, north of NW 110th Street.  110th is the middle route into Carkeek Park along public streets.
  
• Stop #28700, north of NW 105th Street, and across the street from Viewlands Elementary School.  Also has fencing, not arranged in any plausible manner for student crowd control; just two panels, one leaning on the other.  This is the southernmost northbound stop closing.
  

Southbound, six stops:

• Stop #27910, some way south of NW 125th Street.  This is the northernmost of three southbound stops along this route that have benches.  While I was photographing this stop, a gentleman came out of the adjacent house and started discussing the closures with me.  He pointed out that it's fine for people on 3rd Avenue to walk over to Greenwood Avenue N, as the rider alert signs suggest, but that 8th Avenue NW is downhill from 3rd.  Were bus riders there supposed to walk five additional blocks uphill?  He said he'd written a letter.  I tend to think of commuter buses, buses that go only one direction in the morning, and only the opposite direction at night, as second-class bus service for a neighbourhood, but evidently there's a wide gulf between second-class and nothing at all, and people who live along commuter bus only streets are well aware of that gulf.
• Stop #27930, just north of NW 120th Street.
• Stop #27940, south of NW 117th Street.  Again, access (though difficult) to Carkeek Park.
• Stop #27950, just south of the line of NW 115th Street.  Has fencing.
  
• Stop #27970, just north of NW 110th Street.  Has a bench.  Again, difficult access to Carkeek Park.
• Stop #27990, just north of NW 105th Street.  Adjacent to Viewlands school.

NW 103rd Street

Southbound, one stop:

• Stop #28000, some ways west of 3rd Avenue NW.  Has both a bench and fencing:
  
  
  

NW 100th Place

Southbound, two stops:

• Stop #28010, just northeast of 7th Avenue NW.  On Saturday I was stunned and more than a little displeased to find that what I'd thought would be the first working stop is instead slated for closure.  Only when I reached 97th Street did I learn that the 28 is only hourly on weekends anyway.  I ended up walking all the way to NW 85th Street, going to a rummage sale along the way, and still made it just as the 28 did.  This stop is the nearest to the street access (6th Avenue NW) to the Eddie McAbee Entrance to Carkeek Park, which involves a whole lot more dirt trail than the NW 110th and 117th streets entrances mentioned above.  The stop across the street from this, which is not closing, is the remaining shred of an excuse Metro has for claiming that the 28 reaches Carkeek Park.  See not far below.
  
• Stop #28020, west and a little north of the intersection of 8th Avenue NW and NW 100th Street.
  

Beaches and buses

Two days before I started you, dear Diary, and a month after the March 13, 2020 lockdowns, Cliff Mass wrote a blog post arguing that outdoor air was safer than indoor air, and, essentially, that it was classist and ableist to close the parks, as was happening in many parts of the US, including (for large parks) Seattle.  It's probable that that post contributed to my decision to start you.

On July 1, 2020, I wrote in you, dear Diary, about Golden Gardens and Carkeek Parks for the first time.  I cited Cliff Mass's post, and then wrote:

"It's piffle anyway.  Seattle is a progressive city, no more capable of classism or ableism than of racism.  Next thing you know, someone will claim the President behaved badly."

Nota bene, at the time the United States President was the esteemed Donald Trump, not the current incumbent.  Anyway, I went on to suggest that if the powers that be really wanted to put a spike in Prof. Mass's argument, they should put a bus up Seaview Avenue NW.

I then wrote to Prof. Mass, saying I'd disagreed with him, and giving him the URL.  Some time later, I discovered he'd killfiled me:  I could no longer either e-mail him or comment on his blog posts.

Whatever that says about his sense of humour (well, there's a reason I stopped writing you all that satirically, dear Diary), I think this is a good occasion to say it straight:

Yes, there actually should be a bus up Seaview Ave NW, and into Golden Gardens Park, as there was from 1977 through September 2012, although toward the end of that time Metro had so completely lost the plot that the route 46 was, guess what? a commuter bus, Mondays through Fridays only.

And there should be, not just a bus that gets a rider within a mile or two of hiking to Carkeek Park's beach, but one that actually goes up NW Carkeek Park Road.  The beach itself is only reachable by stairs, but they're planning to build a new beach access soon, and dollars to doughnuts that'll have an accessible path too.  But instead Metro is getting rid of the risibly poor substitute they provided, that never got within a mile of Carkeek Park Road.

And there should be a bus that goes not just all the way down NE 65th Street, but then up Lake Shore Drive NE in Magnuson Park, all the way to the beach.  Just as if Magnuson Park existed in the same physical reality as the rest of North Seattle.

The lack of beach access by bus, all across North Seattle, isn't precisely ableist:  as far as I know, disabled people can use Metro's Access vans to reach beaches.  (Except, so far and probably for a few more years, Carkeek Park's beach.)  But it is ageist and it is classist.  And it contributes to parking problems well documented in signage all along Seaview, and about which I wrote in "Escaping Carkeek Park".

I don't get it.  This is the agency that invented Trailhead Direct.  So they can work with parks.  What do they have against beaches?  Is it illegal fires?  Who's more likely to start illegal fires at Golden Gardens - arrogant young people who drove there in cars that can carry wood or coal and kindling, or impoverished old people grateful to get to go there at all by bus?  Is it the near-nudity?  We'll get back to that in the last part of this page, but I'd hope not.

It would be stupid of me to expect my words, your pages, dear Diary, to have any direct impact, but all we can do is keep trying.  In any event, we're almost done.  28 stops on the route 20; 14 stops on the route 73 on 15th Avenue NE; 29 stops on the route 28 - that's 71.  There are six stops left, three of which are only route 322 stops, three of which are also route 73 stops as route 73 is (for a few more days) currently configured.  Soon.  Happy minutes or hours until then.

Institutional Libraries Long Closed to the Public, part I: Institutions for Adults

Dear Diary,

This page is about several classes of libraries that I explicitly put aside in "Library Hours Six Months Later" despite my avowed goal of covering all libraries listed in my sources, and one class on which I spent much effort and some actual writing in that page.

What these libraries have in common is that they are available to people who live in, or spend many of their waking hours in, institutions in which their freedom of movement, their literal "liberty", is often or always restricted.   Because these people, sometimes or always, can't physically go to, for a notable example, public libraries, it's important that they have access to libraries inside the institutions in question.

I separated out academic libraries as a category in "Six Months Later", and handled it differently, because I believed and believe it's essential to academic work to have library access.  The argument this time is different, but more compelling in the context of the issues you're about, dear Diary.  No, it isn't possible for homeless people, any more than most housed ones, to use the restrooms inside these institutions.  But the institutions for adults covered in this part are all well-known as places whose residents often leave them to become homeless.  I have absolutely no evidence, but I believe, nonetheless, that it's obvious that libraries in the institutions should decrease the percentage who actually do become homeless.  Therefore, as with the academic libraries, I'm proceeding not just library by library but more importantly campus by campus.  Or anyway physical location by physical location. The point being that each physical site (except maybe ones very close together) should have its own library.  So this page is really about whether sites have libraries, not what sort of libraries they have.

Both this argument and my history with these libraries dictate my methods.  Because this is my first time dealing with most of these libraries, I don't consider myself free to e-mail or telephone anyone.  (Separately, all the people I'd be e-mailing or telephoning are people governments sometimes authorise to use force on other people, and I'd be nervous about bothering them.)  And not only am I not going to physically visit each site, I'm not allowed to physically visit each site.  So all I can do is take these places' word for it that libraries exist, if they say so.  In the body of this part, I go into how much justification I think I actually have for taking each place's word.  Moreover, since libraries' existence is my main concern, and not their hours, or their conduct or borrowing rules, the rest of this part is terser than this introduction.

Contents of this part:

• Military bases
  • Military bases whose websites say they have libraries
  • Military base whose website doesn't say it has a library
  • Military base without a public website
• Mental hospitals
  • Mental hospital whose website says it has a library
  • Mental hospitals whose websites don't say they have libraries
  • Mental hospitals without public websites
• Prisons
  • Prisons whose websites say they have libraries
  • Prisons whose websites don't say they have libraries
  • Digression:  Visiting prisoners in autumn 2023, according to prisons' websites
  • Prisons without public websites

Dear Diary, some of your readers may object to the idea that military bases are anything like mental hospitals, let alone prisons.  The military, after all, is just another job!  I can sympathise with such objections.  In fact, in "Six Months Later", I listed the military base libraries properly according to my criteria, but dismissed the prison libraries and mental hospital library much more casually as beyond my purview, even though, at that time, my main concern was public restrooms and none of these offer any, so I should've treated them all the same.  The difference was precisely:  It could be argued that the military is simply a job.  Whereas the other two categories required me to look into very bleak "There but for the grace of God go I" situations.  Even now, I'm organising the three parts of the body of this part not by the distance of the closest member as I usually would, but by a more or less moral scale, best to worst.

While the military is indeed significantly different from mental hospitals and prisons by virtue of the fact that the adults in the military chose to be there (which hasn't always been the case in American history), in fact, members of the military who physically move off the base without formally granted permission not only can be forced to return but can be put into prison for leaving.  (As best I understand it, they usually aren't, but they can be.)  Whereas at most jobs, employees are physically free to leave at any time, albeit they may have trouble getting another job after doing so.  In fact, when someone at a private employer isn't physically free to leave, we call it "slavery".  Well, I don't expect slave-owners to permit their slaves to go to libraries.  (I do expect slave-owners to die miserably, but that's another matter.)

But if the military is an ordinary job, and yet soldiers (sailors, airmen, Marines, etc.) can't go to the public library in their free time without explicit permission, then there ought to be libraries on military bases, I'm glad there are, and I'm now going to show how the military, in western Washington, in fact takes better care to provide library service to its volunteer charges than mental hospitals and prisons do to provide them to their conscripted ones.

Previous parts of pages relevant to this part:

• Library Hours Six Months Later, part VI: Other local governmental libraries
• Library Hours Six Months Later, part VII: Other governmental libraries
• Library Hours Six Months Later, part XI: Yet more governmental libraries

Throughout this part, given that the populations in question are heavily male, I'm less politically correct in certain locutions; mainly "his (her)" instead of "his or her", let alone "her or his", which I think both convey a misleading impression of parity.

Military bases

Because I never registered for the draft, I'm ineligible to work for the US government, so for thirty years now, it's been extremely unlikely for me to end up on any military bases.

I consider the existence of the libraries and other forms of library service described in this section extremely probable.  The vast Web presence of the US military is unlikely to be purely a performance for spectators like me.  So I think many members of the military read pages relevant to themselves, and if the military promised libraries that don't exist, there would probably be lots of complaints.  Also, most of the libraries are presented not on strictly military sites but on .com ones meant to give military people warm fuzzy feelings; I don't see how it would benefit morale at all to lie on such pages.

Military bases whose websites say they have libraries

I gave distances to these in part XI of "Six Months Later", according to the distance calculator I used to use. In that part, I also mentioned other libraries not intended for the populations of the bases at large, such as medical libraries, which I'm ignoring this time.

• Naval Base Kitsap.  English Wikipedia says it has 15,601 active duty personnel, without a reference.  It used to be two separate parts, which no longer have their own websites, and are geographically disjunct.
  • Naval Station Bremerton. Its Bremerton Recreation Center offers "Library services".  Naval Hospital Bremerton, some distance from the recreation center, used to make known that it had a library for its patients, but no longer appears to make that known.  (I have no idea whether it still has the library.)
  • Naval Submarine Base Bangor  Its Liberty Center, Bangor offers "Lending Library & Board Games".
• Naval Station Everett. English Wikipedia says it has about 350 sailors and civilians assigned to the station, but also hosts naval commands totalling about 6,000 people, without a reference. Its Resource Center offers "a free paperback exchange program and hardback book checkouts".
• Joint Base Lewis-McChord. English Wikipedia says it has about 210,000 active population, referring to a website titled "The 5 Largest Military Bases in the World". It used to be two separate parts, which no longer have their own websites, and are geographically conjunct.
  • McChord Air Force Base. It includes McChord Library. This library is to close for re-carpeting for January and February.
  • Fort Lewis. It includes Grandstaff Library. Within that library is a smaller one that also has its own website, Book Patch Children's Library. (Remember, dear Diary, I'm writing about institutions for adults, not necessarily libraries for adults.) These libraries are to close for re-carpeting for November and December.
• Naval Air Station Whidbey Island. English Wikipedia says the 2010 census found 1,541 people there. I looked at the wrong location here last time. Its Liberty Northwest Center offers a "Trade-a-Book Program".

Military base whose website doesn't say it has a library

• Naval Magazine Indian Island.  English Wikipedia says the 2000 census found 44 people there, on the island just east of Port Hadlock, all of which the Navy controls.  It's 32.07 miles from my house by the distance calculator I'm currently using (which is also the source of all distances further on in this page). That distance would put it between Naval Station Everett and Joint Base Lewis-McChord if it were in the above list.  Both the magazine's own site and most sites found by searching for it on Google focus heavily on the place's ecological aspects.

Military base without a public website

• Camp Murray.  It's owned by the state of Washington, not the US government, and is used by the Washington Air National Guard and Washington Army National Guard (which can be taken over by the US government) as well as the Washington State Guard (which can't).  I'm also ineligible to join these bodies.  I have no idea whether anyone lives there month-round, let alone year-round; I strongly doubt it's a residential military base of the kind this section is mainly about.  It's 40.58 miles from my house by the current distance calculator, which would put it between McChord and Grandstaff libraries in the above list; it's between Steilacoom and DuPont, which means I've walked past its fences.

My conclusion:  The extent of library service the US military offers to the people it stations in western Washington is pretty carefully calibrated to the number of such people in each place.  Library service is obviously taken seriously.  However, an isolated city of 210,000 should probably have more than two libraries, as the example of Tacoma, with about that population, suggests, and as the upcoming re-carpeting crisis will probably vividly demonstrate.

Mental hospitals

Currently, as I understand it, there are at least four ways a person in Washington can be involuntarily committed, which is what it takes to end up in the kind of mental hospital I mean in this part.   First, the person can be found, without the involvement of criminal law, to be a danger to himself (herself) or others, either via violence of some kind or via incapacity to function.  This is "civil commitment".  Second, the person can be charged with something, but there's serious doubt of his (or her) competence to stand trial.  This leads to "competency evaluation" and other mental health activities that aren't optional.  Third, the person can be found not guilty of a crime by reason of insanity.  Both of these are "forensic commitment".  Fourth, the person can have served out a sentence for a crime, but is still being detained for mental health-related reasons.  Washington's Department of Social and Health Services calls this "special commitment" (but also considers it a form of civil commitment, which strikes me as bizarre).  Anyway, although I've now for about fifty years experienced occasionally severe mental illness (depression), I don't think I've come all that close to qualifying for these places.

The state of Washington is under court pressure to do better by the people who do qualify, so this area of Washington's mental health infrastructure has been growing rapidly, and I'm cheating a bit by dinging a location that hasn't quite opened yet.  I'd have been pretty lost if not for a 28-page PDF ("Washington State Legal System Guide to Forensic Mental Health Services", dated 2016) and the link list on the left sides of pages under DSHS's Behavioral Health Administration.  I still don't believe that this section is anywhere near complete.

Mental hospital whose website says it has a library

• Western State Hospital.  Has a capacity of over 800 beds.  It's the first institution in this part of this page to have a branch of the Washington State Library, and unlike most such institutions, it gives that library its very own Web page, such as the military libraries have.  It serves patients both by "campus mail" and an "on-site library open Monday-Friday".  It's in Lakewood on the way to Steilacoom, 35.98 miles from my house, and yes, dear Diary, I've walked past it too.

Mental hospitals whose websites don't say they have libraries

• Olympic Heritage Behavioral Health.  Has a capacity for 137 beds; the first were filled on October 2, 2023, but they're opening gradually, so it won't reach its full capacity until spring.  That said, this used to be a private mental hospital, Cascade Behavioral Health, so it's not a new thing, and there should already have been a place in it where books could be found, ideally also read or discussed.  Maybe there is, but DSHS doesn't think it's worth mentioning online; but then, maybe there used to be, but DSHS found what it thinks a better use for the space.  The residents are civilly committed people, meant to make more room at Western (and Eastern) State Hospitals for forensically committed people.  Since civil commitment is often started by family members, there would seem to be an incentive for DSHS to throw those family members some bones by describing a few better aspects of life there.  The existing page is focused on reassuring neighbours that the residents won't escape.  The place is in northwest Tukwila, on the Burien border, 13.07 miles from my house.
• Maple Lane.  According to the 2016 book listed above (page 17, numbered 13), this 30-bed cottage northwest of Centralia, 69.54 miles, was being used for competency evaluations.  According to DSHS today, it's about to start being used to house people found not guilty by reason of insanity, specifically to prepare them for release.  For so few people presumably staying only temporarily, anything more than a standing bookshelf or three (or a single shelf in each room) is probably overkill; but then, for all I know, competency evaluations are still going on in some nearby cottage, in which case the population is about to double.

Mental hospitals without public websites

• In Washington, the state allows itself to hold "sexually violent predators" after their sentences end until it's satisfied that they no longer have whatever impulses drove them to their crimes.  The courts appear to doubt that Washington has this authority, so DSHS is trying to thread the needle partly by changing venues - that is, not changing court venues, but rather, not keeping all the hundreds of men being kept on McNeil Island stuck in that one place forever.  For obvious reasons, neither McNeil Island nor whatever other places DSHS has opened have websites Google could find.

I have no idea how well calibrated library service at mental hospitals in western Washington is to the number of people held in them, because I'm not convinced I've found all the mental hospitals.  (And I'm not just referring here to places holding "sexually violent predators".)  But also because I don't trust that the ones I have found would all have mentioned any libraries.  Hold that thought, dear Diary, or you'll completely misunderstand the next section.

Prisons

I have no experience of prison (or jail) either.  I was homeless for eight and a half years, and it's pretty obvious that many elected officials in King County desperately want to re-criminalise homelessness.  Also, the only occasions on which police have treated me as a suspect were both for trespassing.  But one was hand-cuffing, but not arrest, at a building that had been a tax office I'd worked at, and where I had permission to be; and the other was detention, but not arrest, at an office that was still a tax office, and where I thought I had permission to be.  More importantly, both were while I was still housed.

Anyway, you'll remember, dear Diary, that in western Washington, five levels of government have libraries - municipal, tribal, county, state, and federal.  Unlike the military bases, which are mostly or entirely federal, and the mental hospitals, which (as far as I know) are all state, all five levels have prisons here.  An important distinction here:  Crimes in Washington are classified into two main categories, felonies and misdemeanors.  Misdemeanors in general can be punished by up to one year in prison; felonies in general can be punished by more than a year in prison.  In Washington, convicted felons usually go to state prisons, occasionally to federal ones.  Convicted misdemeanants usually go to county or municipal "jail"s.  (I won't profess to know anything about how tribes' laws work, so am not sure where in this framework tribal jails fall.)  Jails also hold people awaiting trial, who may not have been convicted of anything yet.  But because people are thought of as spending relatively shorter times in jails, we as a society tend to allow worse conditions there than in prisons.  The digression below offers a fairly spectacular example of this.

The websites of western Washington prisons are highly imitative.  Obviously this is true of the state prisons, which all belong to the same state agency, but it's also true of the jails.  Here are some rules that many jails' websites explicitly lay down:

Prisoners may not enter their incarceration with books.  They can be given, or if they have money buy, books "directly from their publishers" (which some jails admit usually actually means from Amazon; the point is, the books have to be new, not used).  However, prisoners are limited to only a few books in their cells at a time, the numbers very comparable to typical limits on homeless people's library cards at the libraries that impose such limits, usually 3 to 5.  Also, they may not own or have access to any hard-cover books.  The limits don't count "religious books"; I infer, but don't know, that by this is meant not random inspirational books, but Bibles, or at the more broad-minded prisons maybe also Torahs, Korans...  Those may also be limited to 1 or 2, but don't count against the limit on other books; they do also have to be soft-covered.

The state's (9-page PDF) restrictions on publications are much less onerous than the jails'.  Regular publications kept in an inmate's cell are limited to a space 18" x 12" x 10".  (I pulled the top five mass market paperbacks off a stack in my house and found them 7" x 5" x 5".  So this is clearly a better deal.)  There's a separate, smaller, space allotment for religious items, including but not limited to books.  Also, I was unable to find any exclusion of hardcover books (despite looking in a bunch of places both directly and through site-specific Google searches), and non-profits approved by the state can send used books.  Because prisoners normally arrive at state prisons from local jails, what to bring on arrival isn't as much of a focus.

Prisons are legally required to provide certain inmates - apparently, ones acting as their own lawyers - with legal references.  A few jails still page books from the county law libraries when necessary, but nowadays the vast majority instead offer terminals equipped with legal references.  These terminals are referred to as the jail's "law library", but I didn't take them as evidence of a more general library.  Near as I can tell, state prisons still use books, the larger ones having their own physical law libraries.

Prisons whose websites say they have libraries

Libraries at prisons have more things in common.  Seven of the eleven county or municipal jails whose websites say that they have libraries, also the one federal prison that says so, say it in one specific place.  This is in PDF versions of "inmate manual"s (the title varies, but below, I call them all inmate manuals), books inmates are expected to read and live by, and are penalised for damaging.

The state prisons famously have "branches" of the Washington State Library, and do mention those.  Except the ones that don't have them, which, it turns out, are about half of those in western Washington.  People in minimum security prisons are restricted to getting books by inter-library loan through the Washington State Library's catalogue.  I link to the available-online federal and local inmate manuals below, so here's a link to the state inmate manual, 81-page PDF, library reference on page 47.  It's much more lawyerly- and much less practically-oriented than the jail manuals; for a notable example, it doesn't include any of the state's actual restrictions on books.

Most references to prison or jail libraries don't go into detail about how they work, but two do, and it's radically different from what most of us understand by "library".  The Federal Detention Center SeaTac and the Island County Jail both explain that what they really have are book carts that are wheeled by staff from cell to cell.  Not a place outside the cells where even minimum security inmates can sit and read, let alone discuss, books.  Because prisons appear to me to be so imitative, I find it entirely plausible that this is how it works at every one of these prisons, but because the Washington State Library's Institutional Library Services home page emphasises the word "place" a lot, the Washington State Library branches are where I'd look for exceptions first.

Finally, a few of the libraries mentioned below do come up in random parts of the websites.  This suggests to me that "inmate library" or "jail library" is a common term, and (again because of imitation) probably most or all of the prisons listed further below whose websites don't happen to mention libraries actually do have them anyway, for whatever those carts are worth.

• Federal Detention Center SeaTac, in southern SeaTac south of the airport, 17.55 miles from my house.  Inmate manual, 71-page PDF, see page 42.  This prison holds primarily inmates involved in trials in Seattle, 787 as of evening, October 19.
• Monroe Correctional Complex (state), in southwestern Monroe, 19.52 miles.  Washington State Library branches in the Twin Rivers Unit, with 800 capacity (per English Wikipedia), and the Washington State Reformatory, with 720.  Inter-library loan for the Minimum Security Unit, with 470.  These numbers and two more below add up to more than the prison's stated total capacity of 2400.  At that capacity, MCC would be the third biggest prison in Washington; at the total of its units' Wikipedia sizes, 2590, it would be the biggest.
  
• Snohomish County Jail, in downtown Everett, 21.63 miles.  Comforts future inmates reading that they mayn't bring books by saying "inmates may use the inmate library."  Did not report its average daily population for 2022 to the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs, whose 2022 data (link is directly to a spreadsheet) I'm using below.  (I also used that spreadsheet to identify the municipal and tribal jails, about which I hadn't previously heard.)
• Washington Corrections Center for Women, just west of Gig Harbor, 26.56 miles.  Washington State Library branch.  738 capacity.
• Marysville Municipal Jail, southwest Marysville, 27.03 miles.  Inmate manual, not a PDF, mentions "Jail Library".  Average daily population, 2022, was 22.
• Mission Creek Corrections Center for Women (state), a few miles northwest of unincorporated Belfair, Mason County, 28.13 miles.  Minimum security prison with inter-library loan available from Washington State Library.  321 capacity.
• Pierce County Jail, downtown Tacoma, 29.65 miles.  A 2016 Request For Proposals, 232-page PDF, contains a 2015 organisation chart for the jail in Appendix D, unnumbered page 216, which identifies someone as responsible for the "Inmate Library".  That person isn't findable through Pierce County's website now, but their title, "Program Coordinator", is still in charge of other programs, so maybe also still the inmate library.  Average daily population, 2022, was 748.
• Jefferson County Jail, unincorporated Port Hadlock, 31.51 miles.  Jail policy manual, 584-page PDF; library discussed pp. 547-548.  Average daily population, 2022, was 22.
• Island County Jail, Coupeville, 40.86 miles.  Inmate manual, 31-page PDF; library described p. 13.  Average daily population, 2022, was 42.
• Mason County Jail, downtown Shelton, 48.29 miles.  Inmate manual, 19-page PDF; library mentioned p. 11.  Average daily population, 2022, was 81.
• Washington Corrections Center, northwest of Shelton, 50.01 miles.  Branch of Washington State Library.  Capacity 1,268.
• Clallam County Corrections Facility, downtown Port Angeles, 59.62 miles.  Inmate manual, 49-page PDF; see pp. 21-22.  Average daily population, 2022, was 94.
• Cedar Creek Corrections Center (state), unincorporated Littlerock, Thurston County, 66.77 miles.  Minimum security prison with inter-library loan available from Washington State Library.  Capacity 480.
• Whatcom County Jail, downtown Bellingham, 74.79 miles.  2020 Request For Proposals, 19-page PDF; see p. 11.  Average daily population, 2022, was 302.
• Olympic Corrections Center (state), quite a few miles east of unincorporated Oil City, Jefferson County, 84.24 miles.  Minimum security prison with inter-library loan available from Washington State Library.  Capacity 272.
• Stafford Creek Corrections Center (state), south across Grays Harbor from Hoquiam, 90.85 miles.  Branch of the Washington State Library.  Capacity 1,936.
• Clallam Bay Corrections Center (state), unincorporated Clallam Bay, Clallam County, 97.88 miles.  Branch of the Washington State Library.  Capacity 858.
• Skamania County Jail, Stevenson, 138.43 miles.  Inmate manual, 42-page PDF, see p. 27.  Didn't report its average daily population for 2022.
• Clark County Jail, downtown Vancouver, 142.23 miles.  Inmate manual, 52-page PDF, p. 37 (numbered 28) mentions the library.  Average daily population, 2022, was 440.

Two places you might have thought to see listed there, dear Diary, are no longer operating as prisons:  Olympia Municipal Jail and Larch Corrections Center.

Prisons whose websites don't say they have libraries

• King County Correctional Facility, downtown Seattle, 4.97 miles from my house.  Average daily population, 2022, was 1,491, but that probably includes both this location and another listed further below.
• Kirkland City Jail, near Totem Lake, 6.91 miles.  Average daily population, 2022, was 16.
• Lynnwood Jail (municipal), downtown Lynnwood, 10.34 miles.  Didn't report its average daily population for 2022.
• Issaquah City Jail, downtown Issaquah, 16.89 miles.  Average daily population, 2022, was 46.
• Kitsap County Jail, near the coast of Port Orchard, 17.40 miles.  Average daily population, 2022, was 313.
• South Correctional Entity (the contiguous cities of Burien, Des Moines, SeaTac and Tukwila, plus Auburn and Renton), about a mile north of downtown Des Moines, 19.33 miles.  Didn't report its average daily population for 2022.
• Monroe Correctional Complex (state), in southwestern Monroe, 19.52 miles.   Special Offender Unit, capacity 400, and Intensive Management Unit, capacity over 200.
  
• Maleng Regional Justice Center (King County), downtown Kent, 20.45 miles.  Average daily population for 2022 probably included with the other King County Jail listed above.
• City of Kent Jail, southeast Kent, 21.67 miles.  Average daily population, 2022, was 67.
• Northwest Immigration and Customs Enforcement Processing Center (federal, rented private prison), east of downtown Tacoma, 29.74 miles.  Washington's attorney general says its capacity is 1,575.
• Puyallup City Jail, downtown Puyallup, 33.51 miles.  Average daily population, 2022, was 32.
• Enumclaw City Jail, downtown Enumclaw, 36.12 miles.  Average daily population, 2022, was 14.
• Skagit County Jail, southern Mount Vernon, 49.68 miles.  Average daily population, 2022, was 247.
• Thurston County Corrections Facility, half a mile southeast of the Capitol Mall, 52.44 miles.  Average daily population, 2022, was 244.
• Nisqually Corrections Center (tribal), a mile south of the Nisqually village, 53.12 miles.  Didn't report its average daily population for 2022.
• San Juan County holding facility, Friday Harbor, about 67 miles.  It sends all the inmates it knows will be longer term to the SCORE (South Correctional Entity) jail listed above.  Didn't report its average daily population for 2022.
• Chehalis Tribal Corrections Department, Chehalis village, 71.47 miles.  Didn't report its average daily population for 2022.
• Lewis County Jail, downtown Chehalis (the city, this time), 76.33 miles.  Average daily population, 2022, was 168.
• Grays Harbor County Jail, central Montesano, 76.57 miles.  Didn't report its average daily population for 2022.
• Aberdeen City Jail, central Aberdeen, 84.92 miles.  Didn't report its average daily population for 2022.
• Hoquiam City Jail, central Hoquiam (the G.M. Johnson map of Grays Harbor County lacks the symbols that other G.M. Johnson maps use to indicate things like city halls and libraries), 87.37 miles.  Average daily population, 2022, was 15.
• Forks Correctional Facility (municipal), central Forks (yep, same map), 97.13 miles.  Didn't report its average daily population for 2022.
• Pacific County Jail, South Bend, 98.78 miles.  Didn't report its average daily population for 2022.
• Cowlitz County Jail, Longview near the bridges to Kelso, 109.44 miles.  Average daily population, 2022, was 186.
• Wahkiakum County Jail, Cathlamet, 113.35 miles.  Average daily population, 2022, was 5.
  

Digression:  Visiting prisoners in autumn 2023, according to prisons' websites

Because I was looking at all the prisons' home pages, I saw a lot of visiting rules.  And then I was also looking for prisons' addresses, to work out how far away they are, and saw some visiting-specific pages due to that.  And let me tell you, dear Diary.  The prisons of western Washington have made great strides toward more perfect ways of visiting prisoners than hitherto, thanks to the wonderful gifts of technology.

(I should clarify.  Many prisons distinguish between "family" or "social" visits, which is what I'm talking about here, and "professional" visits, which are ones they're more or less legally required to allow:  with lawyers, doctors, and clergy, the kinds of people many parents want their children to marry.  Some have thrown hoops in the way of professional visits that strike me as inspired by COVID-19, and I think some have made no reference online to in-person professional visits, but anyway, those aren't my topic here.)

You see, dear Diary, during the COVID-19 pandemic into which you were born, it was important to keep people distanced, to reduce our human bodies' vulnerability to the virus.  Well, distance is precisely what in-person visitors to prisons don't want, so in-person visits weren't allowed, and in their wisdom most western Washington prisons implemented video visiting instead.  They didn't get into the streaming video industry themselves, oh no; rather they hired a panoply of amazing private companies that have only people's best interests at heart.

Now that the pandemic is officially over, there are five ways western Washington prisons are offering visits.  First are the fence-sitters, who've chosen video vendors and set up the systems, but have also re-opened their in-person visiting rooms.  As we know from the Bible, such pusillanimous behaviour will get its reward.

• King County (both prisons) - in person and video.
• The state prisons generally (for each one, same link as above).
• Marysville Municipal Jail.

Second, many prisons remain stuck in the past, offering only in-person visits, as if anyone could tolerate not using the latest technology for such an important event as meeting with their nearest and dearest:

• Federal Detention Center SeaTac
• City of Kent Jail
• Northwest Immigration and Customs Enforcement Processing Center
• Jefferson County Jail
• Enumclaw City Jail
• Island County Jail
• San Juan County holding facility (family only)
• Chehalis Tribal Corrections Department
• Aberdeen City Jail
• Forks Correctional Facility
• Wahkiakum County Jail
• Skamania County Jail

I bet people in those places still get married in person, too.

So none of the state or federal prisons have fully embraced the cutting edge of future prison technology, but a solid majority of the local jails have.

Now I have to explain some things about the video visiting business.  The way most of the jails have set it up, video visiting has two modalities.  One is visiting from the comfort of one's own home.  This has a number of genuine advantages.  While it doesn't get rid of the huge sets of rules that surround visits to prisoners (many of which, seems to me, amount to demanding middle-class behaviour of both prisoners and visitors), it does pretty much eliminate the competition for scarce physical space in the visiting room.  So in principle, prisoners could spend much of their time on visits, except that most jails wisely limit them to a certain number of visits per week or month.  It also eliminates the need to travel to the jail (albeit many jails are pretty close to home).

But what about people who actually prefer making a travel event out of their visits?  Or, hypothetically of course, are too poor to pay the costs - $7.50 for 30 minutes, $9 for 20, whatever.  (Of course no real people are that poor.  For example, dear Diary, I, right now, must be imaginary.)  Or lack video-capable Internet access?  Or just want to imagine being in the same building as their loved ones?  In their munificence, many jails have installed video visiting kiosks in their own lobbies; this is the other modality, the alternative to visiting from home.  Some of these kiosks also charge, but most offer free connections.  Of course, they're even scarcer than in-person visit windows, and really have to have limits again, but all these backward emotional needs, for novelty, money, or proximity, show that visitors who express them are behind the times and don't deserve any better.

So I have to make two lists of video-visit-only prisons. One shows prisons that do have working free terminals, and the other, the more heroically avant-garde prisons that don't.  First, those who still harbour doubts in their hearts:

• Kirkland City Jail
• Lynnwood Jail
• Issaquah City Jail
• Kitsap County Jail
• Puyallup City Jail
• Mason County Jail, which boasts that it's been doing this since well before the pandemic, as long ago as July 2018.  Truly a trailblazer!
  
• Skagit County Jail
• Clallam County Jail
• Whatcom County Jail, which claims it would offer in-person visits if not for "facility maintenance" which it says has been going on for just short of 21 months.  I wonder how many more years it'll keep claiming that.
  
• Lewis County Jail
• Pacific County Jail, which continues to claim COVID-19 prevents in-person visiting.
• Cowlitz County Jail
• Clark County Jail

Now, the ones that have fully committed to the new wave in prison technology:

• Snohomish County Jail - Free terminal "temporarily closed until further notice".  That note was put up before September 24, 2022.
• South Correctional Entity - "LOBBY VISITS SUSPENDED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE".  That note was put up before June 4, 2023.
• Thurston County Jail - "The public visitation stations at the Thurston County Corrections Facility have been closed until further notice."  They've been that way since the Internet Archive's first capture of the page, on St Patrick's Day of this year.  To be fair, however, the quoted paragraph continues:  "[Company] has provided 60 minutes of free remote (from home) visitation per inmate, per week."  Which works fine for those who can do that, which is surely everyone contemporary enough to bother with.
• Grays Harbor County Jail doesn't report that its free stations are closed, it doesn't mention any at all; it specifically indicates that payment is part of setting a visit up.  On its home page, it still claims COVID-19 prevents in-person visiting.
• Hoquiam City Jail also doesn't mention any free stations.  However, it's the only prison in western Washington to have chosen the video company it did, despite that company's prominence in many non-prisoners' lives during COVID-19.  Since, unlike Grays Harbor County, it doesn't talk about money, perhaps it's paying the bills itself.

One prison remains, that has done better than any of these.  We know from Buddhism that perfection lies in nullity.  Well, according to the Pierce County Jail, no visiting, be it video or in-person, is allowed.  Because of COVID-19, which is apparently much fiercer these days in Pierce, Grays Harbor and Pacific counties than in the rest of the area, Pierce County Jail has evidently barred all visits since April 17, 2020.  So surely, with all visits to prisoners banned for three and a half years, Pierce County has fully attained nirvana, don't you think, dear Diary?

Prisons without public websites

• Puyallup Tribal Jail, Tacoma near the Emerald Queen Casino, 30.56 miles.  (I got all these prisons' addresses from Google.)  Average daily population, 2022, was 32.
• Northwest Joint Regional Correctional Facility, Fort Lewis near DuPont, 34.26 miles.  This is where soldiers, airmen, sailors, etc. who went absent without leave might be sent.  A dubious site claims its capacity is 219.
• Neah Bay Public Safety Detention Center (Makah Tribe), west around Neah Bay from the museum, 116.52 miles.  Didn't report its average daily population for 2022.

I think it's very probable that inmate libraries are widespread.  The only reason I can think of for the posting of inmate manuals online is deterrent.  They aren't fun to read at all.  So mentioning libraries in them would defeat the rhetorical purpose, unless those libraries actually existed.  And basically, I found libraries in every single inmate manual I found online (even the weird state of Washington one), so I'm very skeptical indeed that the jails that haven't put their manuals online are any different.

I trust, dear Diary, that you're immensely comforted by the fact that we have a lot more military people in western Washington than psychiatrists, and a lot more prisons than mental hospitals.  Doesn't that encourage you to sleep well at night?

Anyway, until people come up with a whole new category of institution that limits physical movement, I think I'm about done.  Saying that, I thought "Hmm, better check", and found the English Wikipedia category "Total institutions".  I considered at the last minute adding monasteries, but too many of the monasteries in Washington seem to encourage visitors, and I'm not convinced any use force to return errant residents.  That said, none of my sources list any monastic libraries, and there turn out to be too many monasteries here for that to be right, so I'll look again when I get to private libraries.  More concretely but more distantly, if I do this again, I certainly hope to have a better grasp of mental hospitals by then.

In the meantime, part II of this page, this year, will focus on institutions for "minors", which are those people aged 17 or fewer years who aren't yet "adults".  It's a lot more work than this part has been, so I won't complete part II, and with it this page, for a while yet, and I'll probably finish something else first.  Happy days and nights until I write in you again, dear Diary!

Buildings of the UW's Seattle Campus, part IID: West, summary and prospects

Dear Diary,

It isn't easy to count the University of Washington's buildings, because one has first to define what one means by a building.  For present purposes, let's pretend that I visited 61 buildings in UW's West Campus and north and south of there, in the area from I-5 to 15th Ave NE and from the water to NE 45th St that I'm calling Brooklyn (well, OK, four are actually north of 45th).  This is more than I expect to list in East or South campuses, and is well over half the number in Central Campus.

Unlike Central Campus, but like the other two, very few of these buildings, most of which are publicly owned, are open to the public.  And fewer still offer public restrooms.  I don't need a whole alphabet for them.  And I don't really need another map for them, although this part includes both building and park maps anyway for completeness's sake.

The present

Here are the buildings that offer publicly reachable restrooms in this area, with the best information available to me about their hours:

• Hours not posted:
  1. University of Washington Medical Center Roosevelt Building 2 - 7 A.M. to 6 P.M. weekdays [1]
  2. University of Washington Police Building - 9 A.M. to 4 P.M. weekdays
• Posted against the public:
  3. Social Work Building (southern half) - 7:30 A.M. to 6 P.M. weekdays
  4. Condon Hall - 7 A.M. to 6 P.M. weekdays, if one can find an unlocked door
     
  5. Fishery Sciences Building - 7 A.M. to 5:30 P.M. weekdays
  6. Fisheries Research and Teaching Building - 7 A.M. to 5:30 P.M. weekdays
  7. Marine Studies Building - 8 A.M. to 5 P.M. weekdays
  8. John M. Wallace Hall - 8 A.M. to 5 P.M. weekdays
• Public restrooms with clear hours:
  9. University Book Store - 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. Mondays through Saturdays, noon to 4 P.M. Sundays
  10. Schmitz Hall - 8 A.M. to 5 P.M. weekdays
  11. Drama Scene Shop - 9 A.M. to 6 P.M. weekdays
  12. Gould Hall - 8 A.M. to 6 P.M. weekdays
      

[1] - I clicked through 24 Web pages of clinics at UWMC - Roosevelt. The Exercise Training Center is open until 6 P.M., and the Spine Center and the Dermatologic Surgery Center open at 7 A.M.  The last-named is in Building 1, which doesn't have public restrooms, but the other two are in Building 2, which does.

Did you notice something, dear Diary?  Weekend hours are only at the Book Store.  And there are no evening hours, nothing after 6 P.M.

I wasn't familiar with most of these buildings before the lockdown, and not all of their previous hours are documented online (for example, the UW's pages for classroom buildings, such as Condon Hall, have never included hours).  But let's see how many are documented.  I already referred to the Book Store's mildly longer hours, three parts back.  The Exercise Training Center in UWMC-Roosevelt building 2 is recorded to have been open until 7:30 P.M. Mondays through Thursdays as recently as December 2019.  The UW Police Building's hours aren't much changed from January 2020.  The Built Environments Library in Gould Hall used to be open until 8 P.M. Mondays through Thursdays, and 1 to 5 P.M. weekends, as I noted in the academic libraries page.  A 1999 UW Daily article ("updated" in 2015) gives the same hours for Schmitz Hall as it's keeping now.

Let's also look at the nature of the obstacles.  At the Social Work Building and John M. Wallace Hall, signs on durable materials announce the public's unwelcome, although in each case signs on paper suggest otherwise.  At the other buildings, the barring signs are themselves on paper.  None of these buildings have the kind of painted-on-glass "Public Keep Out" notices common at the West Campus dorms.

So my best guess is that West Campus and its northern environs have never really been a good place for a homeless person to try to spend a rainy day, but have probably gotten somewhat worse since the pandemic.

I also don't know how long UW has been lecturing the residents of West Campus that they should fear their non-UW neighbours.   All those painted-on "Keep Out" notices suggest this pattern is longstanding.  At least one person other than me who disagrees with the message has been on West Campus recently, though:

The future

The day I photographed those posters (but didn't see, haven't seen, at all the one that seems to have fallen from the top), I also (well, that evening) photographed another poster, on 15th Ave somewhere south of Campus Parkway:

"Be a World of Good".  Comparable ambition to the previous slogan, "Be Boundless"; but decidedly more interested in generosity.

I was born to a geneticist and raised by her and my father, who, I've already told you, dear Diary, was an epidemiologist.  I grew up two blocks from a university library, and used to stay there past my bedtime.  The years I was homeless here are hardly the only years I've spent largely in university libraries.  I'm not trying to grind an anti-intellectual axe here.  It's just that I consider myself capable, given the atmosphere in which I grew up and have lived, of distinguishing a university's good deeds from its less good (let alone its evil) ones.

While looking for a name for what I eventually called the Fishery Sciences Courtyard, I came across a reference to it in the previously mentioned environmental impact statement for the UW's current Seattle Campus Master Plan (327-page PDF).  This eventually led me to a whole page of planning documents.  And one thing that's really up front in those documents is that the UW expects to build a lot in the next decade or so, and fully half of that building is planned for the West Campus.

Part of what that's about is that the UW is planning, although not in a rush, to get rid of most of its surface parking lots.  (The current occupation of lot W35 by the Haring Center's school can be seen as a trial run for this.)  Much of the Seattle campus is given to such lots, so that gives it lots of room to build.  I expect many of the buildings will include underground parking, but also, it turns out UW is subject to a cap on certain categories of parking.  See, the Master Plan is actually an agreement between the university and the City of Seattle, and one component of that agreement for some time now has been this cap.  And this time, the cap is being lowered, from 12,000 to 9,000 spaces.

So that's some of it, but there are much bigger surface parking lots in Central and East campuses than anywhere in West Campus.  The main thing is that the university has asked for, and been given, much higher height limits on much of West Campus than it had hitherto obeyed.  I mentioned that many of the buildings of West Campus weren't originally built for or by the university; they're also rather short, as are many of the buildings further north, outside the Master Plan's boundary.  So the UW can solve two problems at one stroke by tearing those inherited buildings down; it can get purpose-built university buildings, and it can get them taller.

Of the buildings I've discussed, Schmitz Hall, the Transportation Services Building, Condon Hall, Henderson Hall, the Child Center West Campus, the Southwest Maintenance Building, the Brooklyn Trail Building, the Ethnic Cultural Center Theatre, the Community Design Center, the Drama Scene Shop, the unnamed buildings at 3935 and 3939 University Way, the Purchasing and Accounting Building, the UW Lock Shop, the Northlake Building, Stevens Court, John M. Wallace Hall, the Fishery Teaching and Research Building, the Marine Studies Building, the Portage Bay Garage, the Child Center Portage Bay, the Ocean Research Building, and the Washington Sea Grant Program buildings are all candidates for demolition.  24 of the 61.

Also, the following parks I've described to you, dear Diary, will be affected by this plan.  H (805 NE Northlake Place), O07 (another landscaped area near the University Bridge head), R (Transportation Services Building Courtyard), T (Condon Hall Courtyard), and V (Child Center West Campus playgrounds) are all candidates to be built over.  N (Burke-Gilman Trail under the University Bridge), Q (Gould Park), Y (Fishery Science Building Courtyard), and Z (Burke-Gilman Trail near Brooklyn Ave) are all to be expanded, but are likely to change significantly in the process.  This is why I don't know, in particular, whether Tikvah's Garden will survive, to whatever extent it survives now.  It's to become part of what the Master Plan sees as the first really good West Campus park, the West Campus Green.  (Sakuma Viewpoint is perennially tugged between West and South campuses, so doesn't count.  Of course, the block the West Campus Green is to be on, the Fishery Science block, is also perennially tugged between those, but maybe a little less so.)

The UW also agreed to a cap on construction.  That's what the 50% refers to.  It gets to do net 6,000,000 new gross square feet of construction, and has agreed that 3,000,000 of those should be in West Campus.  The Master Plan itself insists that much of what a university does not only is inscrutable, but shouldn't be scrutinised at all.  So it doesn't say much about in what order this very tall order should be executed.  However, a different document, the 2018 West Campus Guidelines (95-page PDF), provides some hints.  On its page 73 is a map, distinguishing two ten-year tiers for the work (five buildings in the first tier), and also giving what sure looks like an exact order for the buildings to be built.  The Master Plan is of course correct that the university isn't committed to any particular order, but I suspect that left to its own devices, page 73 shows what it thinks might work best.

The building marked 1 on that map is the one to go in the southern half of the block between 40th St, University Way, the Burke-Gilman Trail, and Brooklyn Ave.  At this time that half-block is occupied by the Purchasing and Accounting Building (all of whose departments are still working from home), parking lot W12, and the UW Lock Shop, which is preparing to move:

I think it's a reasonably good bet that that building, labelled W27 (but a building, not a parking lot) on the map, really will be first.

And that triggers something else.  On page 240 of the Master Plan, we find what looks very like contract language:

Over the life of this CMP, the approximately
4-acre area designated as the “West Campus
Green” shall be reserved for open space,
except that minor structures supporting
the open space function are allowed.
Structures and improvements required for
utility infrastructure are also allowed. A
design and implementation plan for West
Campus Green and West Campus section
of the continuous waterfront trail shall be
completed by the earlier of: the time 1.5
million square feet of net new development
in West Campus sector is completed; or the
time the University submits its first permit
application for development of Site W27, W29,
W33, W34, or W35. A concept plan for all
three sections of the continuous waterfront
trail—West, South, and East—shall also be
completed by that time. The concept plan
for the continuous waterfront trail shall be
reviewed by SDCI for compliance with the
City’s Shoreline Management Master Program
and the University’s Shoreline Public Access
Plan. The continuous waterfront trail design
and implementation plan for the South and
East campus sectors shall include convenient
pickup and drop off facilities and signage
throughout the length of the trail that reflects
local Native American history. Construction
of the West Campus Green and the West
Campus section of the continuous waterfront
trail shall occur by the earlier of: completion
of 3.0 million gross square feet of net new
development in the West Campus sector; at
the completion of adjacent development sites
W29, W33, and W34; or the exhaustion of the
6 million gross square feet growth allowance.
In addition, as the University completes
development of Site W29, it shall complete
the “Plaza,” and as the University completes
development of Site W27, it shall complete the
“Belvedere,” both identified on page 98.

So basically, if the UW does start its West Campus remodelling at W27, it will deliberately be triggering various deadlines related to public open space.  (However, the first building in the numbered sequence to trigger the West Campus Green actually being built, which entails demolishing three not so very old, purpose-built buildings, is #5, W33.  So they aren't planning to force themselves to make that happen very soon.  Buildings 2-4 are between 40th St, University, the BGT, and 11th Ave.)

The Master Plan also promises that a whole lot of the new buildings will have "active edges".  Turns out an active edge can be almost anything - a classroom, for example.  But not an office.  So this isn't an outright promise that the university will have ground floor retail open to the public, say, let alone public restrooms, in the new buildings; but that's certainly the impression the more marketing-ish of the pages of the Master Plan try to convey.

Which brings me back to "Be a World of Good".  Which is the better deed?  To offer a bunch of parks, of which the West Campus Green is strongly hinted to get the park restrooms Fritz Hedges Waterway Park across the street didn't get [1], and then lock all the other doors?  Or to live up to the claims for "innovation" and "diversity" the Master Plan is full of, and reverse the recent trend of enforcing separation between town and gown with card readers?  I don't think the university, given the direction it's currently going, is even trying to live up to the spirit the Master Plan calls for, and sooner or later it's going to have to decide whether indulging fear is really the best it can do.

[1] Now we have a better reason than sloth or penury for the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation's refusal to build restrooms at Fritz Hedges.  Future restrooms that someone else will pay for are always better than present ones that people can actually use.

The past

I plan, dear Diary, to publicise this part a little bit.  So I thought it would be helpful if I concluded it with references to the previous parts, both on the buildings of and near West Campus, and on the parks of Brooklyn.

"Buildings of the UW's Seattle Campus":

• Part I, Preface
• Part IIA, North of West Campus (actually, north of 41st St)
  
• Part IIB, Northern West Campus (41st St to the Burke-Gilman Trail)
  
• Part IIC, Southern West Campus (south of the Burke-Gilman Trail)
  

The final map:

 

"Six Hikes in Brooklyn":

• Part I, Northwest (parks A-C)
  
• Part II, West (parks D-G)
  
• Part III, Southwest (parks H-M)
  
• Part IV, Centre (parks N-P)
  
• Part V, East (parks Q-V)
  
• Part VI, Southeast (parks W-Z)
  

The final map:

Also relevant:  "Academic Library Hours One Year Later, part I:  Public universities".

Dear Diary, in the next week I really should finish with the academic libraries, as well as start a really long Korean drama and look for work.  So you probably won't hear much from me until I finish at least one part of the academic libraries remaining.  Happy days and nights until then.