«
»

Okay, Okay! Build your tunnel

So I’ve been thinking. What would I be willing to take in exchange for supporting the deep bore tunnel? What would it take for me to capitulate and get on board the deep bore bandwagon? Okay, here it is. It’s pretty simple and straightforward: a sensible land use policy. I think it might just be worth the $4.5 billion, the rancor and the power grab by the Seattle City Council if we could get our act together on land use in Seattle. We know compact communities are better for the environment, use less energy, and promote walking, biking, and transit use. So warm up the boring machine but here’s what I want first.

Let’s start with Beacon Hill. About 15 years ago I moved to Beacon Hill and got involved in the neighborhood planning process. It was fun. I learned a lot and the various committees and organizations on the Hill worked hard to develop a vision for Beacon Hill. There was a small, dedicated, and relentless group focused on getting Beacon Hill a station on the new light rail line that would be passing deep under the neighborhood. There was no plan for a Beacon Hill station, or at least there wasn’t any money. But the group persevered, and, amazingly, landed a plan for a station and a commitment for a station shell. They pushed some more. Finally, there was a commitment to build a station—one of the deepest in the world at the time—to serve the neighborhood.

At the time the neighborhood was also planning where to put the library and how to take advantage of the lid going in at the reservoir in Jefferson Park. All of these things were challenging (sometimes controversial) and took a lot of energy from neighbors. But the station seemed to be an unqualified and big win. We’d finally get that core to the neighborhood conceived of in the planning process. The neighborhood could finally grow up with mixed use buildings and retail. We’d exchange the squat and decaying buildings for transit oriented development. Again, not without controversy, but why not take advantage of the rail line to create a compact downtown for Beacon Hill centered on transit.

Well, what does downtown Beacon Hill look like today?

All photos are by Roger Valdez.


I moved to Capitol Hill some time ago. But a recent trip to Beacon Hill made me wonder “what happened.” Then I thought about the City Council falling all over themselves to dig the tunnel on the water front. Why that big project and not Beacon Hill?  Fifteen years after I moved there, Beacon Hill does not have thriving transit oriented development. Instead the station looks like the stump of a felled tree. And that’s about how it feels.

So dig your tunnel City Council. But I’d like to see the rezones on my desk for transit oriented development on Beacon Hill by the end the day. That shouldn’t be to hard, just dust off the plans we worked so hard on. We’d also have a chance to consider things like district energy, affordability, and LEED requirements as part if the legislation. And rezones are free! Write up that resolution for Monday, pass it with a unanimous vote (sure they’ll be a few whiners in the audience but that shouldn’t slow you down. You’re the “get it done gang,” after all).  How exciting! Maybe one day we’ll be able to stand up and say we’re like Redmond. Here’s what they built near their park and ride.



And what the heck, once the rezones are signed, sealed and delivered, I’ll bet we can talk Mayor McGinn into taking a trip out of town so Richard Conlin can do the honors and sign them into law. I’ll even loan him a pen.

Tags:

This entry was posted by Roger Valdez on Friday, October 8th, 2010 at 12:10 pm and is filed under Architecture, Government, Neighborhoods, Planning, Politics, Seattle lifestyle, transportation, Zoning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

  • Matt Hays

    I agree Roger that TODs are important, and I agree that Beacon Hill (and the MLK stations) aren’t getting enough TODs yet.

    The economy is a main culprit. In terms of Sound Transit properties (the ones with the same type of fencing), with developable property values down dramatically, Sound Transit is presumably waiting for a better time to sell (or ground lease?) their sites. With privately-owned sites, developers are starting to get anxious to build apartments (with vacancies plummeting), but are being held back by financing difficulties.

    And definitely, the 99 corridor will need good planning. Pedestrian design will be crucial along Alaskan Way, up the hill to Elliott/Western, and in the current Aurora alignment that will become a surface street. Seattle has a bad habit of designing intersections that expect pedestrians to walk unnecessarily out of our way, or don’t let us cross in some logical places at all. We can’t let Alaskan be another Denny Way.

  • Matt the Engineer

    We should have required minimum zoning heights before giving neighborhood stations. Convincing them to do so after the fact will be tough.

    Regarding what it would take for my support: I say allow the state to have either the surface or the tunnel, but not both. If the tunnel goes forward, convert the waterfront to narrow streets with T’s and Y’s, and require narrow but deep storefronts and prescribe the allowed uses to keep foot traffic all throughout the day. We can do this because we own the land (we can either lease it for 100 years or just write in conditions for sale). What will kill this is if the state tries to ram through another fat highway on the waterfront in addition to the tunnel (which they are).

  • Bruce Gray

    We’re a little late to this conversation but wanted to leave a quick reply. The parcels you’re talking about around the Beacon Hill site are privately owned. In this case, Sound Transit leased the land we needed during construction (staging, site access, etc.) and have since turned anything not needed for the station back over to the owners.

    We worked closely with the City and neighborhood to make Lander Street just north of the station a multi-use street that’s easily closed to vehicles on the weekends for special events. Think “woonerf.”

    Otherwise, we look forward to the economy and credit markets recovering to the point where the parcel owners can redevelop the land adjacent to the station headhouse for good TOD use.

    Bruce Gray
    Sound Transit

  • David on Beacon

    Having lived here through the construction of the BH station, and participating in the neighborhoood planning meetings before the station and over the last two years, I’d have to say Mr Gray is not characterizing ST’s work on BH honestly. Neighbors had the woonerf idea for Lander. ST didn’t help. Neighbors asked SDOT and were re-buffed. After getting a DON grant to get some design work done and build community support, SDOT came to the idea, and in the end ST built Lander St right back to original spec (as they found it before closing it for 5 years of construction), and SDOT came up with a design that paved right over what ST built to create the Lander Festival Street. Neighbors put together a 5 date music series for the summer.

    Take a look at Beacon Ave at the Station. ST has done the bare minimum to put it back together and done NOTHING to improve or encourage pedestrian access to their station. It boggles the mind. Again, neighbors, working with SDOT are coming up with pedestrian improvements that ST didn’t bother to think about.

    Further, at this weekend’s DPD led Neighborhood Plan Urban Design Framework workshop, ST’s real estate representative stated that his expectation is that nothing would be built on our station block until all the parcels could be combined, as well as a street vacation negotiated with the city for the alley. Wow. That’s almost the opposite of what Mr Gray stated. Is ST providing leadership, or shirking it?

    Anyone out there care to comment on the viability of a 7000 sqft development on the same block as the station? At 40 ft, 65 ft, does it pencil? What about 5000 sqft that’s shaped like a triangle? Too bad for neighbors on BH that ST leased the properties and didn’t do anything in 5 years to work with the landowners to develop viable building plans that would help ST, the landowners and the neighborhood.

  • Roger

    All really good comments.

    @Matt, it still boggles my mind that we’re still talking about building a tunnel (with a toll) AND a surface boulevard (free). I agree (see my post at Sightline: http://daily.sightline.org/daily_score/archive/2010/09/22/on-the-south-waterfront) If they build it then the waterfront should be developed into a new neighborhood, not a park.

    @Bruce and David, you both touch on something that has always bothered me about Sound Transit. What is Sound Transit’s role in creating Transit Oriented Development?

    On the one hand, I hear ST saying that it doesn’t have much of a role at all. The property is private, the market is dead, and maybe something will happen in the future–or maybe it won’t. Meanwhile, ST will build rail lines and drive buses. That’s it.

    My sense is (and I think this is what David is saying) that some folks expect more. Maybe a lot more. And maybe too much. But I can assure you that the City of Seattle is fundamentally incapable of the kind of action that is needed to make TOD happen the way it should. They have lots of relevant powers (condemnation, zoning, etc) but they are loathe to use it; the City Council’s approach to land use is to act as a reactive review board to proposals that incrementally address peripheral problems. Any boldness that might emerge is quickly attenuated by their quick response to “concern trolls” guarding the single family neighborhood status-quo.

    I think it’s time that ST use some of it’s existing muscle and find some new ones. Create a TOD focused section dedicated to good development in station areas. I know everyone is broke and there is no demand for housing. But ST can be the 800 pound monster in the room to push the difficult decisions that need to be made to create better outcomes on Beacon Hill and elsewhere. Your board doesn’t face election by the residents of Beacon Hill, or Bellevue, or Shoreline. Let the local politicians throw rocks at you along with the NIMBYs (they’re going to anyway) and then get ‘er done.

    Then if there is ever a recovery, station areas will be ready for the growth and demand for housing and transit.

  • Dan Eernissee

    ST does not have a mandate to develop around stations nor does the City of Seattle, and it is unfair to expect them to do so. So who does? Private developers? The fact is that some of the best buildings to capitalize on light rail investment (think multi-story, concrete & steel) don’t pencil for private developers immediately. They may pencil in 5, 10, or 20 years, but if they don’t pencil in the first 5 years, they won’t happen — not in this financing environment!

    I believe what everyone is calling for above is some kind of magnanimous public entity that does development. If one were set up, it would have to have accountability, have a clear vision of what it’s about (i.e. “capitalizing on the ST investment”), be somewhat separate from politics (to speed up the process as well as give politicians safe distance), able to purchase private land, able to use government credit to borrow (such as it is), and able to reinvest profits from transactions.

    I’m still researching these on my own, but I believe that these “development authorities” are prevalent on the east coast. The equivalent in Seattle typically is a development authority set up for a specific property (i.e. Pike Place Market), but what we are talking about here is a larger idea that could invest opportunistically on behalf of the public.

  • Pingback: Sound Transit Board Retreat: Who Will Lead on Parking and TOD? - Seattle Transit Blog