Seattle's piece of the Miami art fair pie is about to get bigger.

As Tyler Green reported on Modern Art Notes last week, Seattle's Dirk Park and Jaq Chartier, the team behind Aqua Art Miami, are about to sign a 3-to-5-year lease on a warehouse space in Wynwood, not far from the Rubell and Margulies collections and amid a suite of galleries. Park and Chartier are also holding onto the Aqua Hotel, which means they'll offer 43 spaces in the hotel and another 40 in the warehouse in December, when the Basel/Miami Art Fair reopens.

This story broke last week?

A reasonable person might wonder why I'm only getting around to mentioning it now, not only trailing Green but trailing him by six days. It's one thing to be body-checked on Seattle art news by another Seattle critic. It's far worse to be run over by a guy typing in his pajamas in his Washington, D.C., apartment, and then, failing to get up to play catch up.

Ok, ok. I don't know if he's typing in his pajamas or a dinner jacket. And yes, Modern Art Notes is the most important visual art blog in the country. But I could walk to see Chartier and Park, and Green would have to fly across the country. Doesn't make sense that I'd know more about my own town than he does?

Except, alas, I haven't been paying attention. Instead, I've been holed up in the hotel of endless Seattle Art Museum stories. The P-I is running a special section on Friday for SAM's reopening downtown on Saturday. I wrote everything in it, except Lawrence Cheek's piece on architecture and Leslie Kelly's on food.

The Stranger's Jen Graves, not quite as busy with SAM, responded to Green on the Slog the same day with a headline, "Damn you, Tyler Green!" (Exclamation point hers.) That must have mystified anyone outside the small circle of Seattle critics, as she didn't explain why Green's piece on Seattle in Miami upset her. (Because she's been buked and scorned, scooped, beat, kicked to the curb, tossed off the critics' bus, made a fool of.)

In any event, she was more nimble than I. In her fast turnaround, she repeated the substance of Green's story and added speculation. Since Aqua is renting the warehouse year round, will Aqua expand beyond a December phenomenon?

Pick up the phone, Jen. It's a local call. Park and Chartier say no. Because of the vast amount of art fair inflation, it costs about the same to rent the warehouse year round (which allows Aqua to build better, more museum-like spaces) as it does to rent for two prime-time weeks. That means the warehouse might stand empty most of the year or they might be able to rent it out for events.

Park and Chartier haven't yet signed the lease on the Wynwood property. If Green hadn't called them, they'd be notifying me and Graves at the beginning of next week with the news, Park said, if the deal doesn't tank at the last minute.

Assuming it doesn't, Aqua's space potential has doubled. Does that mean more Seattle galleries will make the Aqua cut? Chartier said she'd like that, if additional Seattle galleries can convince her they'd make a good showing, focusing on their strongest artists instead of stuffing their spaces with a little of this and a little of that.

If galleries want to apply, time's up, but Chartier and Park are willing to consider stragglers. Here's what Aqua looked like its first year and its second.