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BUSINESS E1 SEATTLE@HOME BUSINESS E1

S A T U R D AY, O C T O B E R 2 1 , 2 0 0 6

TOP STORIES Seattle’s new slogan has some residents asking:

Fight for Iraq
is splintering
Two Shiite militias briefly fought for
Amara, a major southern city, Friday
before government forces regained
control. President Bush said “right
now it’s tough” in Iraq, but he won’t
change strategy. Today, he confers
with top generals. SEE A4
METRONATURAL . . . SAY WA?
WHAT IS IT?
Met-ro-nat-u-ral
(as defined by Seattle’s
Convention and Visitors
Bureau)
adj. 1: Having the
characteristics of a world-class
metropolis within wild,
beautiful natural surroundings.
2: A blending of clear skies
and expansive water with a
fast-paced city life.
n. 1: One who respects the
environment and lives a
balanced lifestyle of urban and
natural experiences. 2. Seattle.
BY ANDREA JAMES
P-I reporter
Metronatural.
Seattle’s new tagline has a
bunch of locals scratching their
heads.
The folks who brought us one
slogan that stuck, “Jet City,” and
another that probably won’t,
“See-@-L: Soak it up,” have a
new creation that they say high-
lights Seattle’s two greatest as-
sets: the city and nature.
Mayor Greg Nickels and Seat-
tle’s Convention and Visitors Bu-
reau decided last year to ditch the
dot-com-era logo with the @ sign
in favor of something intended to
poach visitors from the 2010
Winter Olympics in Vancouver,
B.C.
One year and $200,000 in the
making, the “metronatural” pub-
licity campaign was unveiled Fri-
day at a Space Needle party.
The trademarked word beat
out slogan contenders “Life is dif-
ferent here” and “Inspiration
awaits,” said Ken Grant, a partner
at Exclaim LLC, which invented
the word.
“This is not an easy city to
brand; it’s such a complex city to
put words to,” he said.
Metronatural – usable as a
ELAINE THOMPSON / AP
noun or adjective – is fitting to
describe Seattle’s emergence as a Letters 18-feet tall proclaiming Seattle’s newest tourism slogan,
“Metronatural,” are seen atop the Space Needle on Friday. The
SEE METRONATURAL, A7 slogan was unveiled by the Convention and Visitors Bureau.

New road to
the stadiums
Seattle, port and state officials are
close to agreement on a $75 million
Atlantic Street interchange from
I-90/I-5 to both the stadium district
At an open house,
YOU NEVER KNOW
and the waterfront. They’ll ask the
legislature for money. SEE B1

City Light is
losing power
The time the average Seattle
customer goes without electricity
each year has doubled in five years,
according to City Light. The public
utility says a plan to improve its
reliability will come at a cost to
customers and urban trees. SEE B1
ALSO IN
THE NEWS
NATION/WORLD
Exasperated: China cuts off financial
transfers to North Korea. A2
‘A price to pay’: Leaders of Iran and
Israel trade threats as tensions grow
and millions of Iranians rally for
Muslim claims to Jerusalem. A3
TV dollars: National GOP committees
are not planning to spend on ads for
Mike McGavick, leading to speculation
they’ve conceded that Maria Cantwell
holds too great a lead. A5
SEATTLE
Eastside swing district: Democrats
see a chance to increase their majority
in the state Senate – in what was
once a GOP stronghold. B1
Cardiac arrest: Seattle police cars
will get defibrillators. B3
BUSINESS
Pregnant with profit: Google’s
stock price surged to a nine-month
high and analysts expect even more
good things to come. E1
Browser update: Mozilla’s Firefox
2.0 will be out Tuesday. E2
what’s behind door No. 1
BY AUBREY COHEN
P-I reporter
Open houses, it could be said,
are like a box of chocolates.
Or, as in one Greenwood
house Windermere Real Estate
sales associate Justin Bowers
showed recently, a big chunk of
cheese.
Cheese as in cheesy.
As in the deep shag living-
room carpet with a Velveeta hue
to match the curtains and the
chimney of the circular fireplace
– “chalet-style,” the listing notes.
“This fireplace is just phe-
nomenal,” home-shopper John
McCallum said while checking
the place out with fiancée Anna
Haglöf during an open house ear-
lier this month.
“It’s for fondue,” Bowers said.
Houses aren’t always so . . .
interesting, but open houses of-
ten can turn funny or even a little
odd, depending on whether
you’re the one trying to move the
place.
Last month, Lake & Co. Real
Estate associate Sarah Shira was
showing a polished Columbia
City Craftsman with a manicured
backyard, well-tended flower-
beds, a fountain, even a table set
for tea.
The problem was next door: a
birthday party, complete with an
inflatable castle that towered
over the fence and shrieks of
bouncing, battling children.
MERYL SCHENKER / P-I Sometimes, the sellers them-
Mike DeRepontigny and Kumiko Koyama check out a bedroom with forest wallpaper and a faux white stone fireplace at an open house
at a home in Seattle’s Greenwood district. SEE OPEN HOUSE, A6

ONLINE
Game report: After the UW football
game against California today, get the
Husky notebook, report card and
photo gallery at Seattlepi.com
Huskies basketball among hottest seats in town
Fans paying the price for DAWG LOVERS
INDEX a winning men’s team In addition to paying face value for tickets, buyers of the best
TODAY’S WEATHER
Sun’s out all weekend, but wear UW men's basketball seats must make a Tyee Club donation.
BY DAN RALEY
a sweater. High 63. Low 42. B6 P-I reporter
The UW increased the top donation level from $350 per ticket
last season to $900 this year. A look at per-game ticket prices
Comics C6,7 for the Huskies' 19-game home schedule: BAND
Crosswords C6,7 The University of Washington used to offer
free parking, free popcorn and good seats with 2006-07 TICKET PRICES STUDENTS STUDENTS STUDENTS
Editorial B5 no strings attached to get people to come out to
Horoscope C2 Location Face value Tyee fee Per game HOME VISITORS
watch its men’s basketball team.
Lottery B2 It was a tough sell. Interest in the men’s team Founders club $22.63 None* $88.42
Obituaries B4 bottomed out during the 1990-91 season when it Key 900 $22.63 $900 $70.00
Television C8 averaged a dreary 2,881 fans per game. The
women’s team often outdrew it. Key 450 $22.63 $450 $46.32
★★ Now, four years into the Lorenzo Romar Key 250 $22.63 $250 $35.79
coaching regime and after three consecutive

(FJECD|16000V
Key 150 $22.63 $150 $30.53
NCAA Tournament appearances, Husky men’s
basketball has become one of the hottest sports Public (non-donor) $18.11 None $18.11 MEDIA MEDIA MEDIA
tickets in town. Would-be season ticket holders Students $5.00 None $5.00
must “donate” as much as $900 per seat, de-
* Founders Club 10-year members donated a minimum of $50,000
pending on location, for the privilege of buying toward the $40 million renovation of Hec Edmundson Pavilion before the
the tickets. 2000-01 season. Donors received the rights to buy four season tickets at face
To subscribe to the P-I, Less than a month before the UW’s Nov. 12 value ($430 for 19 games this season = $22.63 per ticket) for 10 years, and they
call 206-464-2121 are not required to pay yearly Tyee fees. Pro-rating a $50,000 contribution over 10 years ($5,000 per season, $1,250 per
seat) equates to a real cost per seat of $1,680 ($430 + $1,250 for the Founders Club donation), or $88.42 per game. SEATTLE P-I
© 2006 SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER SEE HUSKY, A7

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A6 ★★
OPEN HOUSE: ‘Imagine living here, how happy you’d be’
FROM A1
selves create headaches.
Realtor Nancy Bailey of RE/
MAX Metro Realty recalled giv-
ing a long explanation about
open-house protocol to one sell-
er, including the fact that the
homeowner shouldn’t be there,
only to find the woman in the
house when she arrived to show
it.
“She was cleaning the refrig-
erator,” Bailey said.
Another time, the owners of
a Magnolia house had confused
which day Bailey was going to
open their house.
“There were stacks of laun-
dry everywhere,” she said.
And she has confronted more
than laundry.
“My first brokers open
(house) I literally had gone into
the house with (Formula) 409
and was cleaning the cup-
boards,” she said.
Realtor Nelson Wald of Pru-
dential MacPherson’s Real Estate
recalled taking potential buyers
to a house occupied by a large
family that just wouldn’t leave.
They simply didn’t under-
stand the need to be away, Wald
said.
“Every time they opened a
door to a bedroom, there was
someone in there.”
The buyers felt uncomfort-
able and left, he said. A week lat-
er they called back and asked to
see the house with no one there.
They ended up buying it.
Global warming study
predicts ‘wild ride’ for U.S.
BY SETH BORENSTEIN
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON –Weather in
the Pacific Northwest over the
next century will be astrange
double whammy of longer dry
spells punctuated by heavier
rainfall because of global warm-
ing, a new study forecasts.
“It’s going to be a wild ride,
especially for specific regions,”
said study lead author Claudia
Tebaldi, a scientist at the federal-
ly funded academic research
center.
The world – especially “hot
spots” in the western United
States, the Mediterranean re-
gion and Brazil that will get ex-
tremes at their worst – likely will
suffer more extended droughts,
heavy rainfalls and longer heat
waves, she said.
But the prediction of a future
of nasty extreme weather also
includes fewer freezes and a lon-
ger growing season.
In a preview of a major inter-
national multiyear report on cli-
mate change that comes out next
year, a study out of the National
Center for Atmospheric Re-
search details what nine of the
world’s top computer models
predict for the lurching of cli-
mate at its most extreme.
As the world warms, there
will be more rain likely in the
tropical Pacific Ocean, and that
will change the air flow for cer-
tain areas, much like El Niño
weather oscillations now do,
said study co-author Gerald
Meehl, a top computer modeler
at the research center.
Those changes will affect the
American West, Australia and
Brazil, even though it’s on South
America’s eastern coast.
For the Mediterranean, the
issue has more to do with rainfall
in the tropical Atlantic Ocean
changing air currents, he said.
“Extreme events are the
kinds of things that have the big-
gest impacts, not only on hu-
mans, but on mammals and eco-
systems,” Meehl said.
The study, to be published in
the December issue of the peer-
reviewed journal Climatic
Change, “gives us stronger and
more compelling evidence that
these changes in extremes are
more likely.”
The researchers took 10 in-
ternational agreed-upon indices
that measure climate extremes –
five that deal with temperature
and five with precipitation – and
ran computer models for the
world through the year 2099.
What Tebaldi called the scariest
results had to do with heat
waves and warm nights. Every-
thing about heat waves – their
intensity, length and occurrence
– worsens.
“The changes are very signif-
icant there. It’s enough to say
we’re in for a bad future.”
The measurement of warm
nights saw the biggest forecast
changes.
Every part of the globe is pre-
dicted to experience a tremen-
dous increase in the number of
nights during which the low
temperature is extremely high.
Those warm night tempera-
tures that should happen only
once every decade will likely
occur at least every other year
by the time we reach 2099, if
not more frequently, Tebaldi
said.
Warm nights are crucial be-
cause Chicago’s 1995 heat wave
demonstrated that after three
straight hot nights, people start
dying, Meehl said.
• P-A 6
P-A 6
•
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER ❘ SATURDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2006
Windermere agent Dennis
Fletcher said he went to one ad-
vertised open house to find no
seller’s agent. The owners, who
were there, didn’t speak English.
Fletcher got a different sur-
prise at another open house.
“Just as I opened the door
there was a flea bomb that was
set off,” he said.
The Greenwood house didn’t
appear to have fleas, but one
might worry about ticks while
passing through the master bed-
room, where an orange carpet
led almost seamlessly into a leaf-
strewn lane in the life-size forest
photo papered floor-to ceiling to
one wall, opposite the white,
fake-stone fireplace. A neighbor-
ing bedroom was tricked out as a
dressing room, with ample mir-
rorage, white drawers and
shelves trimmed in faux gold,
and plush red carpet running
from the floor up part of one wall
and over a window seat.
“I love it,” Haglöf said.
“Imagine living here, how happy
you’d be.”
Bowers enjoyed watching
people’s reactions to the house so
much that he started videotap-
ing with his phone. Windermere
associate Dave Tribble, who is
listing the house, said it was just
waiting for the right buyer.
“It’s kitschy cool,” he said. “If
it was in Fremont, it would be
gone in a second.”
P-I Aubrey Cohen MERYL SCHENKER / P-I
can be reached at 206-448-8362 “The Red Room” draws Seattle’s Alma Andrade at an open house at a home in Seattle’s Greenwood neighborhood She really liked the
or aubreycohen@seattlepi.com. funky room with the red shag carpet, stucco walls and sink.
However, heat wave deaths librium that’s been going for
are decreasing in the United many centuries,” he said. But he
States because society has noted that a lengthier growing
learned to adapt better, using air season in general is good.
conditioning, noted University “This notion of the greening
of Alabama-Huntsville atmo- of the planet . . . generally is a
spheric sciences professor John positive benefit,” Christy said.
Christy. Christy, who did not partici-
He is one of a minority of cli- pate in the study but acknowl-
mate scientists who downplay edges that global warming is real
the seriousness of global warm- and man-made, said an increase
ing. in nighttime low temperatures
Similarly, the days when the makes much more sense than
temperature drops below freez- the rain-and-drought forecasts
ing will plummet worldwide. of the paper.
That’s not necessarily a good One of the larger changes in
thing, because fewer frost days precipitation predicted is in the
will likely bring dramatic change intensity of rain and snowfall.
in wildlife, especially bug infes- That means, Tebaldi said, “when
tation, Tebaldi said. it rains, it rains more” even if it
“It’s a disruption of the equi- doesn’t rain as often.
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