Final Analysis: The Year in Business

Please disregard the Chinese calendar. Turns out that 2015 was the year of the crane. At least in Seattle.

Looks as if 2016 will be, too. And on and on until boom goes bust.

You know it will. Go bust, that is. It always does.

But for now, the business of Seattle is developing the future look of Seattle. In Ballard, that means five- and six-story apartment buildings designed in the Bow-Wow-Haus style by alumni from the Northwest School of the Architecturally Challenged. On Capitol Hill, it means feigning historic preservation by saving the facade of a sweet old building and gluing it to the front of a new hipster-plex. And, in downtown Seattle, it means trying to keep from being subsumed in a high-rising flood of Amazonian proportions.

This glut of development offers the clearest example that lenders are eager to part with lots of cash to help Seattle fulfill its mission of cramming thousands more people into the geographical equivalent of a walk-in closet, then taking away their car keys and parking spaces and telling them to devise a new way to get to work.

Some of those lenders are from other countries, notably China. These well-heeled foreign nationals pony up big bucks under the federal EB-5 program to gain access to a green card. Its all above board, dont you know. Except when it isnt. The Securities and Exchange Commission says local developer Lobsang Dargey, a former Tibetan monk, diverted tens of millions of dollars of EB-5 money to other personal projects, including building a house in Bellevue and gambling some of it away in casinos.

Meanwhile, one of Dargeys EB-5 projects, the 41-story Potala Tower in Belltown, is an enormous hole in the ground that will likely gape for a long time, not unlike the Seahawks secondary after a fourth-quarter collapse.

Seattle, of course, knows from holes in the ground. I suggested last year that the tunnel not being dug by Bertha would be a good place to park the Jeff Bezos Collection of Amazon Drones, but the Potala Pit is only two blocks from Amazons new downtown campus. Its almost as if it was meant to be. Thank you, Mr. Dargey!

More business-related questions to ponder as the Year of the Crane comes to a close:

As Tableau Software quietly becomes the dominant economic force in Fremont, what are its ultimate goals? Better seats for the Solstice Parade? Easier access to Fremont Brewing? Neighborhood discounts at Brooks Running?

Going forward, what should we make of the fact that Apples new iPad Pro is a fairly obvious copy of Microsofts Surface Pro, and that Windows 10 appears to be Microsofts best operating system since cave drawings? Is the new Microsoft of Satya Nadella and Brad Smith really a force for Apple to reckon with? Or will they also decamp Redmond for the NBA?

Will Seattle embrace its own broadband internet system and loosen the grip of Comcast, CenturyLink and others who would happily bundle our communication needs into one neat package deal that we cant extricate ourselves from until the Mariners win the World Series?

When Weyerhaeuser moves its corporate headquarters to Pioneer Square, will the CEO plant a tree in the lobby for old times sake?

When Boeing starts making a profit on its 787 Dreamliner, will airlines stop charging us for legroom?

If Alaska Airlines and Delta Air Lines ever meet for a peace lunch, will that lunch taste like pretzels or peanuts?

The answers may become more obvious in 2016, although its hard to see anything clearly with all those cranes in the way.

JOHN LEVESQUE is the managing editor of Seattle Business magazine. This column also appears in the December issue of Seattle magazine.