The founding father: Jim Ellis at 86

There's nothing lavish about the 29th-floor office of Jim Ellis, patriarch of the region, historical figure and voice of reason. It's a modest space with a partial view of Elliott Bay. Ellis is dressed in an equally modest sweater and tie. The only thing lavish about the man is his mind.

Ellis has decided to speak about transportation and transit. At 86, he admits he sometimes looks backward more than toward the future. But what a ride it has been, and what stories he tells about the beginnings of a region, and how Seattle became one of the premier cities of the Pacific Coast. The region we know — with a clean Lake Washington, farmlands preserved, the fat Washington State Convention & Trade Center across Interstate 5 and the billboard-free Mountains to Sound Greenway — all comes from Jim Ellis. For someone who never held elective office, Ellis has had as much influence on the creation of modern Seattle as any person alive today.

"The city was really pressuring me to put the convention building at Seattle Center," he says. "But the school district wanted $14 million for Memorial Stadium and by putting the convention center where it is, we continued to make downtown active and alive."

So does he dismiss one of the livelier discussions of the time, when the convention center was the butt of architectural criticism and neighborhood howls. Yet, it remains there, affixed to downtown Seattle and, in Ellis' memory, a victory of design and location.

He goes back to the 1968 transit vote that was part of another Ellis legacy, Forward Thrust, and one of his bitterest losses.

"We were ahead in the polls, right up to the last three weeks," he said. "Then, some very clever ads came out, and one day General Motors showed up with a large trailer-truck. It had a huge window and inside was a chrome-plated jet engine, and the sign said something like, 'This is the engine of the future. It will make buses faster than trains!'

"No one would ever put a jet engine in a bus, but people didn't know that and we slowly lost the vote for transit. That was in 1968. If the people had voted for it — eventually it would have been 80 percent paid by the federal government — the system would have been finished in 1985, at three times the size of the one before voters this November. And the last payment for it would have been in 2008."

Ellis believes this year's transit-and-roads package should pass. He has seen it all: the bickering, the fighting, the turf, the mental gymnastics of a region emerging from a small town to a roaring city.

"The city has to come around to this," he said. "Seattle is now the best it has ever been; just look at the vitality of downtown. But if Seattle pauses, it will decline and another city will come along to take its place."

And later: "Seattle is so ideally positioned for the future," he said. "The waterfront should be a wonderful attraction. Great cities do not have their streets destroyed by vehicles. I know that the local Sierra Club is against the November vote. I'm ashamed of them, and it will come back to haunt them."

Ellis talks about the way things used to be done. "We went to see Maggie [Sen. Warren Magnuson] and said we needed money for rail through the city. Maggie said there was a senator from New Jersey who was dying for some help on a similar bill. So he went to the senator and said, 'I will co-sponsor this bill with you if we touch it up to include Seattle.' My God, the senator looked like he had just been heaven blessed.

"Here was Maggie in his Washington office. It was like Grand Central Station. Here was a man handing out the nation's worth, single-handedly."

Ellis has a shock of white hair that looks like it hasn't lost a strand since he was 28. His staff reports he shows up for work nearly every day. For all practical purposes, he walks through a city he helped build. Come what may, he has that in his pocket.

James F. Vesely's e-mail address is: jvesely@seattletimes.com for a podcast Q&A with the author, go to Opinion at seattletimes.com