Dear Members,
We hope you are doing all right in these strange and stressful times. The long-term prospects of the Seattle Go Center are bright, as Bill Chiles reported in the recent Building Development Update. We will have an excellent space in the new 23 story building planned for our corner. However, in the short term, we have a cash crunch. Our property taxes have gone up 66% from last year, because our property is so valuable, which means we need to pay $13,417 more than last year.
Due to COVID-19 precautions, the Go Center has been closed to visitors for almost a year now. This has been a huge hit to our programming, but the budget has been only moderately damaged, since so much of our past activities have been free or inexpensive. Luckily, our downstairs tenant, Caring Pet Clinic, is still open and paying us rent. We also benefited greatly from the membership drive last June. (Yearly memberships are still being extended while we wait out COVID-19.) But now, with the jump in property taxes and the creep in utility bills, we need help again if you can provide it.
I realize that not everybody is in a position to make a donation, but if you can, please consider helping us through this gap by donating to the Seattle Go Center. There is a Paypal Link at the bottom of our donation page. You can use it with credit cards; you do not need a Paypal account.
https://www.seattlego.org/donate/
Sincerely,
Brian Allen
Operations Manager
Seattle Go Center
700 NE 45th St
Seattle, WA 98105
206 545-1424 (Go Center)
206 632-1122 (home office)
Dear Members:
SIX MONTH UPDATE. The building development deal is progressing quite well, especially in the times of COVID and slowed down city processes for big construction projects, and we are starting to look for an architect firm to help us design the new premises in the new building. However, keep in mind construction wouldn't start before MAR 2022, so the timeline is still long.
We are working on articles of incorporation and bylaws for a new 501c4 non-profit corp, Iwamoto Go Outreach Foundation (IGO Foundation, IGOF) to manage the endowment the Nihon Ki-in gives us to promote Iwamoto Sensei's mission in North America and in particular in the Seattle area. While we will replace our rental income with an endowment, we need to continually raise funds each year as we do now.
We formed a new premises buildout design committee that is currently interviewing and choosing an architect firm. We will update the membership specifically on those design discussions to get feedback as part of the process of iterating to a final design over the next year or two.
Financially we are doing well with loans and donations for this project that we are taking to cover cash flow until the deal closes. However, due to the building project impacting income from our tenant, a large jump in property taxes, and still having operational costs for SGC even while we are closed for COVID19, finances are increasingly difficult for us in the short term.
SAME BACKGROUND. We've discussed previously that the Board of the Seattle Go Center has been considering options for maintaining a thriving Seattle Go Center. Due to new high-density zoning, increased property values, higher property taxes and other costs, our board started researching scenarios and looking for an opportunity to develop the Go Center property in 2017. Our property is owned by the Nihon Ki-in in Japan, who give us free rent. The ideal outcome would be to sell the property to a developer who would give us a "free" lease for 99 years and invest the sale proceeds as an endowment to operate the Seattle Go Center.
We found and presented such a deal to the Nihon Ki-in in Tokyo in DEC 2019, and they signed a Purchase and Sales Agreement (PSA). It is much better than obtained by other go centers that Iwamoto Sensei created in his mission to spread peace and cultural awareness through Go. The Nihon Ki-in is very happy with our efforts and they agreed to all our requests on how to handle the sale and proceeds.
SAME FUTURE STATEMENT. Given construction permitting processes in Seattle at this time, construction likely would not start until early 2022. At that time, we would use sale proceeds to rent a space for a couple of years during construction, and then we would move back to the current location on the second floor in a new space we design.
Our buyer is very professional and pleasant to work with, and they have been very reasonable in dealing with us.
If you have any questions, feel free to send them to billchiles-gocenter@hotmail.com .
Cheers,
Bill Chiles
Tonight is Go Center Night, starting at 6:30 pm PST, with the same link as before:
Join Zoom Meeting
We will keep using this link every week.
If you haven’t played Go on-line, this is an easy and friendly way to get oriented. Things get rolling at about 6:30 p.m., but it’s OK to drop in later. When you click the link, you will be sent to the waiting room. Bill or I will let you in. There is no passcode.
Folks can also watch games just through the Go Servers, without participating in the Zoom meeting – find us in the Seattle Go Center rooms of the Go Servers on Tuesday nights.
We use OGS https://online-go.com/
And KGS https://www.gokgs.com/
There is more happening on Friday and Saturday. Our events calendar has the details and links:
https://www.seattlego.org/events/
Best,
Brian
Brian Allen
Operations Manager
Seattle Go Center
206 545-1424 (Go Center)
206 632-1122 (home office)
Hey, everyone. If you would like to play in the MAR tournament, please reply to me with your name, the rank you would like to play at, and if you are under 18 yrs old. In FEB we had 7 boards, and in round two, four people have won both their games. I'm loosely thinking of the winners as those winning all three games 🙂.
I'll pair the first round 07 MAR. I encourage folks to play during the Saturday Discord hangout around 3pm or Tue nights on the zoom hangout as an easy way to find a common time.
We cannot submit a report to the AGA for ranking as we usually do with the monthly ratings because the AGA does not support ranking based on online games. Therefore, if your AGA membership has lapsed, it is ok. On the upside, you can have a thoughtful game (no online pressure to play super fast) that may be good for reviewing or learning from.
The default time controls for a game are 45 min main with 5x30s byouyomi. You may ask your opponent to play with a different time control, but your opponent can stick with the default. This is our usual monthly ratings tournament time control.
The tournament is a handicapped tournament. If there are outlying ranked participants, and I cannot pair you due to no one being within 9 stones that you have not played previously in the tournament, then I will notify you that I cannot pair you. If it happens that we have an odd number of people, then I will ask someone to bye for a round, and if there are no volunteers, I will pick someone as best I can. If there is an odd number of people who sign up, then the last person to send email that they want to participate will have to wait for next time.
You can use the SGC Discord chat room to chit chat while playing or discuss your games, or chat boxes in OGS and KGS, or however you agree with your opponent.
If you are under 18 yrs old, we need you to CC your parent when you sign up, and the parent needs to agree to a consent form. As are the rules for SGC, children need to be supervised by parents or someone the parents asked to be responsible to watch out for the kids.
PLEASE consider participating. We hope this can be fun and get you playing more Go. It might be that we can recruit a strong player on a Tue evening to pick a tournament game and review it.
Cheers,
Bill
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I will re-send weekly for a couple of weeks. If you're pondering, please apply ....
The Seattle Go Center is looking for a part time Program Manager, who can work up to 50 hours a month. Our current program manager needs more time for family. If you are interested in the position, we will send you a description of the role, pay, job requirements, and optional candidate attributes. Sadly, SGC is shuttered now due to COVID, so this role is remote and limited until SGC and Seattle return to some normalcy of open community centers, street fairs, and ethnic festivals. Some job duties, such as organizing and supervising outreach events, are on hold. Some duties are necessarily virtually attended (such as Tue night play and board meetings) The Program Manager will have use of a desk and computer in the Go Center office, but almost all the work can be done remotely while we are under COVID restrictions. You can coordinate with the Operations Manager to have solo access to SGC if you want to visit the office during COVID restrictions. If you have any questions or want to discuss the role, please contact operations@seattlego.org or me.
We will take applications at least until 01 MAR to give folks a chance to consider the role, and the personnel committee will begin interviewing as soon as we can schedule candidates on zoom. The personnel committee would like to choose someone to recommend at the next board meeting, 15 MAR.
Thanks,
Bill
Dear Members,
Tonight is Go Center Night, starting at 6:30 pm PST, with the same link as before:
Join Zoom Meeting
We will keep using this link every week.
Last week, we had 14 visitors, including two strong players who played teaching games. They also played each other in a fast game. Things get rolling at about 6:30 p.m., but it’s OK to drop in later. When you click the link, you will be sent to the waiting room. Mike or I will let you in. There is no passcode.
Folks can also watch games just through the Go Servers, without participating in the Zoom meeting – find us in the Seattle Go Center rooms of the Go Servers on Tuesday nights.
We use OGS https://online-go.com/
And KGS https://www.gokgs.com/
There is more happening on Friday and Saturday. Our events calendar has the details and links:
https://www.seattlego.org/events/
Best,
Brian
Brian Allen
Operations Manager
Seattle Go Center
206 545-1424 (Go Center)
206 632-1122 (home office)
The Seattle Go Center is looking for a part time Program Manager, who can work up to 50 hours a month. Our current program manager needs more time for family. If you are interested in the position, we will send you a description of the role, pay, job requirements, and optional candidate attributes. Sadly, SGC is shuttered now due to COVID, so this role is remote and limited until SGC and Seattle return to some normalcy of open community centers, street fairs, and ethnic festivals. Some job duties, such as organizing and supervising outreach events, are on hold. Some duties are necessarily virtually attended (such as Tue night play and board meetings) The Program Manager will have use of a desk and computer in the Go Center office, but almost all the work can be done remotely while we are under COVID restrictions. You can coordinate with the Operations Manager to have solo access to SGC if you want to visit the office during COVID restrictions. If you have any questions or want to discuss the role, please contact operations@seattlego.org or me.
We will take applications at least until 01 MAR to give folks a chance to consider the role, and the personnel committee will begin interviewing as soon as we can schedule candidates on zoom. The personnel committee would like to choose someone to recommend at the next board meeting, 15 MAR.
Thanks,
Bill
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Dear Members,
Tuesday is Go Center Night, starting at 6:30 pm PST, with the same link as before:
Join Zoom Meeting
We will keep using this link every week.
Things get rolling at about 6:30 p.m., but it’s OK to drop in later. When you click the link, you will be sent to the waiting room. Mike or I will let you in. There is no passcode.
Folks can also watch games just through the Go Servers, without participating in the Zoom meeting – find us in the Seattle Go Center rooms of the Go Servers on Tuesday nights.
We use OGS https://online-go.com/
And KGS https://www.gokgs.com/
There is more happening on Friday and Saturday. Our events calendar has the details and links:
https://www.seattlego.org/events/
Best,
Brian
Brian Allen
Operations Manager
Seattle Go Center
206 545-1424 (Go Center)
206 632-1122 (home office)