November 19, 2024

Urban Visions could benefit from new south-of-CID station

Rendering by NBBJ [enlarge]

This 2019 rendering shows the roughly 1.2 million-square-foot S Campus development plan long approved for two blocks south of South Dearborn Street.

If you stare long enough at the various Sound Transit maps for the line from West Seattle to Ballard — with their preferred alternatives, other alternatives and environmental-impact-statement-directed alternatives — you could easily lose your bearings. The possible stations, costs, construction schedules and blue-versus-magenta routes all blur together into an indecipherable mass that's part of the $55 billion Sound Transit 3 expansion plan that we voters approved back in 2016.

And yet, some clarity has come from a Sound Transit board meeting last Thursday. It was then considering only the northward Ballard side of the line, with Chinatown/International District being the midpoint. (The south extension has separate Duwamish bridge and funding issues of its own.)

At issue for the past several years has been where to locate CID Station to both minimize adverse construction effects on that traditionally disadvantaged area, and still make transfers walkable to King Street Station, Union Station, the existing 1 Line and coming 2 Line to the Eastside. The most disruptive proposal, tearing up Fifth Avenue South for a shallow cut-and-cover tunnel, now seems to be dead. A Fourth Avenue South tunnel would be prohibitively costly and frustrating to drivers.

Map via Sound Transit [enlarge]

Sound Transit’s optimistic timeline is to begin construction in 2027 for the full link to Ballard, with nine stations along nearly eight miles of track.

Instead, the board's system expansion committee endorsed a south-of-the CID strategy, dubbed the Dearborn Street Preferred Alternative, which was supported last year by Greg Smith, whose Urban Visions conveniently owns about 7 acres above that possible station and tunnel entry. About 1.2 million square feet, mostly offices, has been approved for those two blocks south of South Dearborn Street. Smith calls that the S Campus.

In essence, says Sound Transit, in order to save the CID, we must skip the CID. Thus, the north of two exits from the proposed CID Station would go on a triangle at 511 S. Dearborn St., north of the Inscape Building and south of the Uwajimaya parking lot. That's home to a Shell station that is polluted, per the state Department of Ecology, and would have to be acquired by condemnation — then remediated by the removal of affected soil. (Urban Visions isn't the landowner there.)

Riders would then have to walk about two blocks north to make various connections to the Sounder, Amtrak and local bus lines. Sound Transit estimates about six to eight minutes by foot. And major pedestrian improvements would be made, in conjunction with the city, for that unfriendly pavement. Road diets are contemplated for both Dearborn and Seattle Boulevard South.

The next stop to the north would be Midtown-James Street, with a tunnel running beneath Fourth. Those two exits would be north to James and south to Terrace Street (where the latter meets Yesler Way).

The latter station is conjoined with King County's separate Civic Campus Initiative, which envisions more housing and improved/renovated county offices near that station — plus a move of the jail/courthouse complex down south to SoDo, at Stadium Station.

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But, back to the S Campus, what's in it for Smith and Urban Visions? First, after a possible seven years of construction, by which time the office market might recover, the NBBJ-designed campus at 1000 Sixth Ave. S. would have a brand-new light rail station beneath its feet — greatly enhancing the value of the project. Also during the interim, Urban Visions could rejigger its plans to include more apartments and less office space, depending on the market.

Sound Transit's optimistic timeline is to begin construction in 2027 for the full link to Ballard, with nine stations along nearly eight miles of track. (Again, we're ignoring West Seattle here.) Service might then start in 2039.

The goal is to finish the environmental impact statement process by 2026, to be followed by some seven years of construction. Three years of groundwork would precede the construction of a tunnel entrance in alignment with Sixth Avenue South. Tunnel boring machines would then delve below grade, later making a soft bend beneath Fourth. The tunnel would descend about 85 feet beneath CID Station, and deeper below Midtown/James Station. (The latter would also have two underground pedestrian connections, north and south, to the Third Avenue tunnel.)

Smith said in his February 2023 letter to Sound Transit that his master development agreement with the city was good until 2033, and that the property was leased — to nonprofits, mainly — through mid-2027.

The existing Stadium Station is also a short walk south from the proposed campus and CID Station.