Port should support bid to save apartments

The Lora Lake Apartments should be saved — and with the help of one more of the five Port of Seattle commissioners, they will be.

Commissioners Bob Edwards and Alec Fisken — not coincidentally, perhaps, the two facing re-election — have called for the units to be saved. At the Port commission meeting Aug. 9, one more commissioner — John Creighton, Pat Davis or Lloyd Hara — needs to support them. The Lora Lake Apartments are in Burien near the north end of Sea-Tac Airport's new runway but not under it. No one would build a new apartment complex so close to a runway, but that is not the question. The Lora Lake has been there for 20 years. Its buildings are sound-insulated and screened with trees, and with indoor and outdoor swimming pools.

It is good housing, and in good condition. In another place, no one would think of knocking it down.

The Port bought it years ago on account of the runway project. The King County Housing Authority rented out the units, mostly at market rates. The tenants have been moved out, but the county, mindful of the shortage of affordable units, would like to move people back in. King County Executive Ron Sims now has slapped $18 million on the table for the county to buy the property.

Burien officials want the apartments torn down — because, they say, the complex is too close to the runway. Of course, publicly owned housing is often unpopular, whether close to a runway or not.

Sims argues that all public agencies need to do their part for homelessness.

"The Port should understand this," he says. "It asked all of us to support it on the third runway. It cannot simply ask and not give."

Providing affordable housing is not a core mission of the Port. But commissioners represent the public, and sometimes have to think in the broader public interest. This is one of those times.