Town Hall Seattle is one of 25 sites hoping for cash. Photo courtesy of Partners in Preservation.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation has launched a contest in the Puget Sound region called the Partners in Preservation program that will provide $1 million in grants from American Express to local historic sites.

The online program encourages people to vote for their favorite historic places from among 25 sites in the region.

For information about the sites or to vote, go here. Votes can be cast until May 12. People can also post personal stories about the sites and share photos. Open houses will be held May 1 and 2 at the sites.

A press release from the trust said the winner of the public vote is guaranteed grant funds. Funding for the runners-up will be determined by an advisory committee of civic and preservation leaders in collaboration with the American Express Foundation and the trust.

Grant recipients will be announced June 15.

At least someone is having fun in Seattle city government. Just read City Councilmember Richard Conlin’s not so modest proposals for the SR 520 Bridge replacement project.

Here they are:

The replacement of the SR 520 Bridge continues to be a high priority project, as the need for safety improvements and transportation enhancements remains great. However, the options currently under consideration are limited in their creativity, focusing primarily on what planners call the “Goldilocks Set” – a 4-lane alternative that is ‘too small’, an 8-lane alternative that is ‘too big’, and a 6-lane alternative that is ‘just right’. Although other ideas have been suggested in the past, such as a group of drivers calling for a dedicated SUV bridge and a so-called “Chartreuse Green Alternative” that appears to be focused on the color of the bridge, it is only in the last few weeks that some truly visionary ideas have been proposed, such as the following:

•  The “Rabbit Hole” alternative. This would consist of interlocking bored and/or floating tunnels that serve multiple locations on the east and west sides of the lake. On the west side, there would be tunnel entrances at Sand Point, Laurelhurst, Madison Park, and Madrona Park, while on the east there would be entrances at Kirkland, the Point Cities, and Mercer Slough in Bellevue. All of the tunnels would meet in a submerged roundabout in the center of the lake, so that vehicles would be able to get to various destinations. This would decentralize traffic, therefore allowing it to be absorbed by existing roads (e.g., Madison Street, Sand Point Way, etc.), thus eliminating the Portage Bay viaduct and connections through Montlake.

•  The “Train to Anywhere” proposal. This would involve creating a six lane bridge with tracks in all six lanes. At the Seattle side, one set of tracks would run north over the Montlake Bridge, and then split and run on the surface down Sand Point Way and NE Pacific, another would run south along 23rd Avenue with a spur through the Arboretum, while the third line would continue to I-5 and run in tracks embedded in those lanes as well. This alternative assumes that there will be virtually no cars in the future, so there is no need for lanes for them. Any remaining vehicles other than trains (such as horse and carriages) can share the rail lanes (as is done in the Third Avenue tunnel currently). Trains running the in the same lane will notify the horse and carriage operator via GPS, and the operator can move his vehicle to one of the unoccupied lanes. This will require the nimble use of technology as well as genetically modified (GMO) horses that can shift from side to side very quickly.
 
•  The “Greener Than Thou” proposal. This would rebuild the bridge with only a pedestrian/bike path. There is a variation on this proposal, called the “Lemming Alternative”, that would include vehicle lanes, but terminate them at the current ‘Ramps to Nowhere’ in the Arboretum.

•  The “Zero Lake Option”. This was inspired by the bold and visionary actions of our ancestors, who reshaped the landscape in major ways such as the Denny Regrade, the rerouting of the Cedar River into Lake Washington, and the lowering of Lake Washington by 9 feet. Proponents of this option ask the logical question: ‘If we can do 9 feet, why not the whole Lake?” The savings in concrete are enormous, as is the potential for development on the slopes and valley floor that would now be available. There are moderately significant impacts on fish resources.
 
•  The “Dunkirk Strategy”. This alternative was inspired by the heroic World War II experience when yachts and fishing boats were mobilized to evacuate the British Army from France when Hitler overran the continent in 1940. Since there are many yachts and pleasure boats in the Seattle area, most of which are only used a few hours a month, why not mobilize a ‘Dunkirk Fleet’ of hundreds of these small boats to carry people across the water instead of rebuilding the bridge?
 
•  The “Sustainable Surface” alternative. This proposal is designed to counteract the impact of global warming on Lake Washington by submerging a system of pipes under the SR 520 corridor, and then continually pumping liquid nitrogen through them to create a frozen surface. The cooling effect would spread through the Lake and protect fish against excessively warm temperatures. Travel across the Lake could be by dogsled caravans, and there could be year-round winter sports adjacent to the travel corridor. Since the ice bridge could not be raised to allow boats to go through, there would be an icebreaker stationed in the corridor, which would simply break through the bridge at regular intervals, and allow it to refreeze to restore travel across the Lake.

• Perhaps the most radical proposal is the “Cloud Suspension Bridge”. This would synthesize the use of cloud computing with visualization techniques and nanotechnology to construct a bridge suspended by trillions of nanowires connected to individual droplets of rain and microparticles above the bridge. As particles fall or dissolve, new nanowires will be deployed using spider-like spinnerets to seek out newly formed droplets and dust. The bridge will look like it is suspended from thin air. On extremely windy or clear days when this technology may be unstable, drivers will rely on visualization techniques to imagine that the bridge is still working, as they already do in its current condition.Perhaps the most radical proposal is the “Cloud Suspension Bridge”. This would synthesize the use of cloud computing with visualization techniques and nanotechnology to construct a bridge suspended by trillions of nanowires connected to individual droplets of rain and microparticles above the bridge. As particles fall or dissolve, new nanowires will be deployed using spider-like spinnerets to seek out newly formed droplets and dust. The bridge will look like it is suspended from thin air. On extremely windy or clear days when this technology may be unstable, drivers will rely on visualization techniques to imagine that the bridge is still working, as they already do in its current condition.
It is important that all reasonable choices are considered as we move through the key stages of decision making on this critical transportation facility. These and other ideas will now move into the state’s process for selecting a ‘Draft Preliminary Preferred Alternative’ in April. Following public hearings on the draft in May, a ‘Revised Draft Preliminary Preferred Alternative’ will be recommended in June, followed by a public hearing in July. Based on the response from this hearing, in September the State will select a ‘Consensus Draft Preliminary Preferred Alternative’, which will have a public hearing in October. After that there will be a “Revised Consensus Draft Preliminary Preferred Alternative”, which the State will consider in a Decision Agenda at a meeting to be determined at some point in the future. Once this meeting has taken place, there will be an opportunity for further public comment prior to the State selecting a ‘Final Preliminary Preferred Alternative’, which will then move into the next stage of the decision-making procedure.

The damaged seawall needs replacing. Image courtesy of WSDOT.

In a recent post I called attention to the Seattle City Council’s repeal of the so called “Head Tax” as an example of the Sustainability Gap. I feel like I should follow my criticism with at least one practical suggestion to help close the gap: the Council should put the Mayor’s proposal to replace the seawall on the ballot for voters to approve this year.

It is really difficult for some local commentators to let go of the “manual” of politics used to run Seattle for the last 8 years. In her lengthy lecture of Mayor McGinn, Joni Balter of the Seattle Times cites the Mayor’s seawall replacement proposal as an example of the new administrations failure to play by the old rules. But that’s the point. McGinn is rewriting the manual, one chapter at a time.

Balter, who’s paper hyped the repeal of the so called “head tax,” suggests that McGinn is simply hurling ideas and that the seawall proposal is spendy. Balter neglects to say that the seawall has to be replaced anyway, and as a supporter of the waterfront tunnel, Balter clearly isn’t against spendy proposals. 

Passage of the seawall is ultimately about safety. During last year’s campaign the Washington State Department of Transportation held nothing back with their disaster porn video showing what would happen to the seawall if Seattle was struck by an earthquake. Fixing the seawall is an urgent and important safety measure not a spendy idea.

Seattle’s safety on the sound is critical, but fixing the seawall helps in other ways. Last summer while discussions were going on about repealing the “head tax,” Councilmember Time Burgess offered ideas for replacing the head tax. He didn’t make any rash promises but he worked diligently with supporters of the tax to find sources of funding that would keep the revenue and the idea behind the tax, specifically discouraging driving and providing affordable, safe, and convenient alternatives.

There was about $19 million in potential funding on the table to choose from for tax replacement, including increases in parking meter fees, the commercial parking tax, and the creation of a Transportation Benefit District. 

The problem is that many if not all of these dollars are being eyed for improvements to the waterfront related to the tunnel. If the seawall measure is placed on the ballot and passes, all of this additional money is freed up. The city would be able to use transportation dollars for transportation—possibly pedestrian, bike, and transit infrastructure—rather than fixing the seawall. So putting the seawall on the ballot and getting that project finished frees up a lot of other money that should go, in part, toward the purposes assigned for revenues from the “Head Tax.”

And that’s why the Mayor’s proposal to get moving on the seawall using bond financing makes sense. Why on earth would Balter and the business community want to pay for the seawall repair and the “spendy” tunnel project with increases in the commercial parking tax? Wouldn’t that hurt business? Wouldn’t that keep our neighbors from Bellevue—who will never use the tunnel—from shopping downtown?

Far from being a conspiracy to scuttle the tunnel, the Mayor’s seawall measure actually allows the city to maintain existing transportation infrastructure throughout the city, helps replace the lost “Head Tax” revenues, and helps keep the momentum on important bike and pedestrian projects all over the city, not just on the waterfront. If the Council puts the seawall measure on the ballot they will have taken a big step toward putting the city on a path toward sustainability.  

A couple of weeks ago Mayor McGinn called a press conference to highlight the troubled state of the City of Seattle’s budget. I couldn’t help but notice one number that came up in his presentation on slide number 17. Because of falling gas tax revenues the City’s Department of Transportation (SDOT) is facing “a potential gap of between $4 (million) and $6 million in 2010.” That number sounded really familiar.

Then it hit me. The so called “Head Tax” that the Seattle City Council repealed last year totaled about $4.5 million in revenue annually. You read that right, the Seattle City Council gave up a $4.5 million revenue source for transportation infrastructure during the worst economic downturn in at least the last 30 years. And how big is the shortfall in the SDOT budget?

The tax paid for pedestrian and bicycle improvements such as this on Capitol Hill. Photo courtesy of Roger Valdez.

I wrote on Sightline’s Daily Score several weeks ago about what I called the Sustainability Gap, which I define as the distance between what elected officials say about sustainability and what they actually do. The repeal of the so called “Head Tax” is perhaps the most striking example of how the gap works.

The tax cost businesses that earned above $80,000 an average of $92 per year but generated enough funding to pay for significant pedestrian and bicycle improvements like the one on Olive Way on Capitol Hill. The Olive Way crosswalk is a pretty simple and unglamorous project but important to pedestrians, favoring them over people who choose to drive their cars. These are also construction projects that would create real jobs in the construction trades. On the other hand a lot of local businesses now have an extra $92 annually thanks to the Council’s decision. Maybe those businesses can use their windfall to buy a new letter opener.

Meanwhile, the Council announced they were the “get it done gang,” promising to build a waterfront tunnel to the tune of $4.5 billion before overruns. At the same time the gang also included proposal to put the city on track to achieve carbon neutrality by 2020 or some other date in the future. Trying to achieve carbon neutrality while building highways (our biggest source of CO2 emissions) that encourage more driving is, to paraphrase Einstein, like preparing simultaneously for war and peace.

The Council punched a hole in the SDOT budget when they approved a tax give back to business that generates no community benefit but ends neighborhood pedestrian and bike projects while supporting a multibillion dollar, traffic generating tunnel. But they also want to Seattle to be carbon neutral. That’s the Sustainability Gap. But how do you measure something like the Sustainability Gap? How big is it? In Seattle I’d say it’s about $4.5 million give or take a few billion.

Cal Anderson Park

Cal Anderson got the nod because of its lemonade-from-lemons appeal, rising from a former reservoir. It’s one of six such parks in Seattle. The Berger Partnership was landscape architect.

Read the story here, or just skip to the slideshow.

Forget it!

Such was the case in Burien where, earlier this month, residents voted on whether vehicle owners should pay an extra $25 car-tab fee to fund the construction of sidewalks and bike lanes. It was the first time a Washington city has voted on taxing cars to pay for such amenities, according to a Seattle Times article.

In a survey of 1,000 U.S. adults by the National Association of Realtors and Smart Growth America, more than 80 percent of respondents favored building more walkable communities. Based on these results, which were published in the January 2008 issue of Realtor magazine, you’d think that Burien voters would have delivered a slam-dunk win for the suburb’s bicyclists and pedestrians.

But you’d be wrong. A whopping 74 percent of voters rejected the proposition.

Members of the City Council could have OK’d a $20 fee without going to the voters, but asked for $25. “We need to know what our community wants to do,” Mayor Joan McGilton told the Times.

City Hall clearly found out.

Marc Stiles covers transportation for the DJC.

When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. delivered the keynote address in March at the annual BuiltGreen conference here in Seattle, a dinner was held in his honor on the eve of the event. As a supporter of the BuiltGreen program, I was lucky enough to attend the dinner and to get up close with Kennedy, a man who bears a striking resemblance to his father, the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, and who is in person a soft-spoken, passionate environmental advocate with deep experience and a strong moral compass.

I was raised as an Irish Catholic and the Kennedys were iconic in our household. The dinner was a deeply profound moment for me and my twin, Patti Southard, seated on the other side of the table.

Prior to sitting down to dinner, Kennedy spoke fondly about his boyhood memories of exploring the natural beauty of the Puget Sound region with his father, along with friends such as U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas and famed climber and Northwest native Jim Whittaker. These experiences, it would seem, helped to form Kennedy’s passion for the outdoors and the environment. Through his work as the prosecuting attorney for the Hudson Riverkeeper and as president of the Waterkeeper Alliance, Kennedy has transformed his passion into his career.

He has since expanded beyond water issues into a holistic realm of environmental action, including serving on the Board of NRDC; one of the groups I believe is making some of the most significant contributions to protecting endangered species. During his keynote address, he referred to the economy as a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, and made it clear that economic opportunity is tied to strong environmental policy and practices.

With about 16 of us around the dinner table including director of the Washington State Department of Ecology, Jay Manning, along with designers, land use attorneys, developers, communications professionals, and other government and non-profit leaders, we each brought our own lens through which we viewed Kennedy’s work that evening. As the conversation warmed up and we discussed everything from skiing at Whistler to the country’s energy grid, Kennedy shared his thoughts on the growing list of environmental challenges we face today, the connections between them, and the role the environment plays in the economy.

(more…)

SvR won last year's Golden Helmet award

Last year, 22 firms with a total of 368 riders participated, riding 43,075 miles. Mithun rode the most miles: 6,096.

The firm with the highest percentage of riders was SD Architects, with three out of four employees riding to work in May of 2008. SvR Design won the “Golden Helmet,” the competition’s unique award that calculates the overall miles ridden, factoring in the percentage of possible firm riders who rode and the percentage of possible commute trips ridden

The top rider in the challenge was Igor Rozanski of Notkin Mechanical Engineers, who rode 1,018 miles commuting from South Everett to Seattle. Other top riders included Chris Robertson of Shannon & Wilson at 855 miles, and Joe Llona, formerly of TetraTech, at 769 miles.

A/E firms interested in participating in the 2009 contest should contact SvR’s Maika Nicholson or Tony Dollar at (206) 223-0326.

Eds Note: Having a hard time joining this conversation?? AIA’s Facebook page for this event can no longer be found by just  searching for it. See updated instructions below to join in.

Next week, from April 13 to 19, AIA will be holding its annual National Architecture Week conversation– but this year it will be on Facebook.

The Virtual National Architecture Week group Facebook page will be used to release information and resources throughout the week.  AIA wants local chapters and individuals to use the social networking site to post information about firms, awards, videos, or local advocacy and public outreach initiatives.

Facebook members: Log in to FB and search for “The American Institute of Architects” in the search bar on the right. Click on the AIA’s group and then look under “Events” on the AIA Group page. The Virtual National Architecture Week should be the first one listed. Click on it.  (If you’re not a member, go make friends with your firm’s intern architect and they’ll tell you what to do, but they might Twitter or even Flutter about how out of it you are). You can view the resources, add resources and comment.

AIA has this schedule for each day’s specific focus: April 13 – Community Revitalization, April 14 – School Construction,  April 15- Affordable Housing,  April 16 – Sustainability, April 17 – Inclusiveness, April 18 – Historic Preservation and April 19 – The Future of the Profession.