Please Tell Me There's Nothing to Worry About

Last week, I came across a job posting from the Seattle Convention Center. Executive Director of Emergency Management. $170,000–$190,000. Required credentials: NIMS, ICS, FEMA.^[1]

That's not a building security job. Those are federal interoperability credentials — the framework that lets federal agencies coordinate under unified command during emergencies. Convention centers hire CPPs, Certified Protection Professionals, to run security. You hire a NIMS/ICS specialist when you're going to be working with federal agencies.

So I looked into what they were building and found C-STAR.

On Wednesday I published what I found. C-STAR is a new facility being built inside the Seattle Convention Center at 810 Pike Street — a 1,801 square foot Public Safety Hub, designed for 24/7 shift-based operation, built to federal emergency management standards, with an operations room, a gear staging area, a service entrance, and owner-procured access control.

Substantial completion is targeted June 1, 2026 — fourteen days before the first FIFA match in Seattle.

Is it for FIFA?

There's no mention anywhere of Seattle Convention Center being part of the official FIFA security apparatus. On May 5, the Mayor's Office outlined who's involved in a report to the City Council Finance Committee — eight city departments, every dollar accounted for — and the SCC wasn't on the list.^[2]

The June 1 date comes from the construction contract itself,^[3] issued through Washington State's procurement system — not from any public announcement by the SCC.

Who are the intended end users of C-STAR?

The construction scope specifies "coordination with internal Seattle Convention Center and external project stakeholders and end users."^[3:1] The language covers both SCC staff and outside parties. It doesn't say who those outside parties are. So it could be that SCC uses it for in-house emergency management, or it could be that they hand over the keycards to a federal agency. We don't know.

A NIMS/ICS facility is designed to interface with the entire federal emergency management ecosystem — every agency within DHS, DOJ, and FEMA works within those standards. Any of them can coordinate through a facility like this.

The agency making headlines right now is ICE. Earlier this week, USA TODAY published federal purchasing records showing ICE contracting for approximately 330 officers and staff to deploy across more than 40 states.^[4] Seattle is named. The deployment model is co-working style offices — temporary, flexible, low-cost.

Then I looked at the floor plan. An operations room with acoustic isolation. A gear staging area. A service entrance accessible to vehicles. Shift-based staffing infrastructure. I started asking myself: What's a day in the life of this new facility?

So let's see. The space supports five officers at a time. Three shifts — that's fifteen people plus a supervisor. They could clock in, suit up, and roll out through the garage without interacting with anyone else at the center. Come back, clock out, go for a steak dinner. Repeat.

The thing that makes an alarming interpretation credible is the sanctuary gap. Walk past city offices or the dog park — and you'll see a sign:

This property is owned and controlled by the city of Seattle. It shall not be used for civil immigration enforcement staging, operations, or processing.

King County has its own executive order covering county-owned and county-controlled buildings with the same restriction.^[5]

The WSCC PFD is an independent public facilities district under state law. Whether the city or county orders cover it is a legal question nobody has answered yet. And to my knowledge, the PFD board has never adopted a sanctuary policy of its own. There is no sign at 810 Pike. I haven't seen one anywhere else on the SCC campus either.

Then I took a step back to try to calm myself down.

C-STAR isn't the only big thing happening at the SCC right now. The organization is also in the middle of a Campus Master Plan — a long-term vision for the entire 14-acre campus, what gets built, what gets preserved, how the convention center evolves over the next generation. In that context, there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for C-STAR: the SCC is building out an emergency management capability as part of a broader campus vision that hasn't been publicly released yet. A convention center at this scale, hosting international events, should probably have this infrastructure. The NIMS/ICS credentials also make sense if you're building something meant to last.

I want that to be the whole story. It might be.

But it doesn't put my mind at ease.

You can install a traffic camera to stop people from running red lights. It also reads the license plate of everyone who passes through. The stated purpose doesn't bound the actual capability. If you build a facility capable of supporting federal enforcement operations, in a building with no sanctuary policy, with unnamed external users and no public disclosure of what they're authorized to do — you've created that capability whether you intended to or not.

What would put my mind at ease is the sign.

A sign like the one I see at city buildings, the parking garage, the dog park.

The SCC can't post that exact sign — it's not City or County property. But it could post one that says the same thing in its own name.

I don't see those signs yet.

Which means right now, the alternative explanation — that the facility may be used for immigration enforcement — cannot be ruled out.

All it would take is Jennifer LeMaster making a public statement: here's what C-STAR is for. Here's who the external end users are. Here's what they're authorized to do at 810 Pike, and here's the policy that governs it. Maybe that statement is in the works — maybe it's coming alongside the Campus Master Plan announcement, the one that puts C-STAR in its full context and explains the institutional vision.

In the meantime, here, let me help you out: Copy and paste the following into a new document, pick a nice font, print out a bunch of copies, and have the staff tape it up around the campus. You could have this done by end of day if you wanted.

This property is owned and operated by the WSCC Public Facilities District. It shall not be used for civil immigration enforcement staging, operations, or processing.

Post it at the Arch and the Summit.

Post it on the paths to Freeway Park.

Post it at the parking garages.

Post it the entrances to the Hubbell truck ramp and the Boren helix.

And in big bright letters, post it at the service entrance on 9th Avenue that provides access to 810 Pike.

Hurry up, willya?

P.S. I tried contacting you about this piece but my email to newsroom@seattlecc.com bounced. Let me know if I can help with that too.

Ivan Schneider is the founding editor of the Convention City Dispatch. The first piece on C-STAR — "What's Behind the Door at 810 Pike?" — published May 6.