02 Feb How the South Viaduct Portal will affect Pioneer Square

Great City, PSCA, and AIA Seattle sponsored a brownbag discussion of the Viaduct’s South Portal and the potential impacts on Pioneer Square. At least that’s what it was supposed to be about.

The presentation by SDOT/WSDOT was great and informative (view the video of the presentation here). The panel brought up important issues for the neighborhood and asked the questions that really needed to be asked. When it was turned over to the Q&A, however, people were asking generic tunnel questions (like why is it a freeway, and why do we have to pay overages, and on and on). At one point, one of the SDOT/WSDOT representatives commented that they were only presenting the information that they thought people were there to hear about: How the south portal will affect Pioneer Square.

We needed a moderator to make sure that people were working through the issues of the new placement and presenting other possible issues for the neighborhood. To see a video of the questions/issues posed by the panel, as well as the Q&A, click here.

Panel:

Cary Moon, Director and Cofounder of People’s Waterfront Coalition
Bradley Khouri, AIA, Principal and Founder of b9 architects, lecturer at UW
Adam Hasson, Board President of PSCA, and Samis Land Company, Central Waterfront planning working group
Lisa Dixon, Program Director at PSCA, P² rep on south portal working group

Questions, issues, and risks posed by the panel:

Cary:

1. With the new alignment, risk assessment hasn’t been done; it’s closer to the water now and there are still tricky water table issues
2. Will boring, vibrations and ground settlement affect the sea wall?
3. If there’s ground settlement and vibrations, will those affect the foundations of P²‘s historic buildings?
4. “This is probably the worst possible place in the whole city to put a tunnel portal. It’s the historic district, it’s next to the water, we have climate changing, rising sea levels, we have a very tricky water table, and we have the worst possible soil.”
5. As we look at all of the risks involved, “We really have to keep asking: is it really worth it?”
6. It is a project that doesn’t really serve access in and out of downtown Seattle
7. Great diagrams for getting people in and out of the portal, but don’t really know what it’s going to feel like.
8. Expecting 59,000 car trips a day with the new portal — it’s a lot of additional cars trying to drive through the historic district, streets, and waterfront to try and get to the portal. What are you going to do to make these streets handle the additional traffic, especially given the pedestrian nature of the streets?
9. Need to be careful that these great goals are actually things that the project can follow through on
10. If the tunnel cost should go up, all of these things are at risk for getting their budget cut — we have to make sure that it’s going to get done and its budget is protected

Bradley:

1. This tunnel needs to help us have a really great waterfront
2. The success or lack of success of each portal placement has a big impact on the success of the waterfront
3. What impact will it have on the environment of the water’s edge?
4. Great opportunity for Pioneer Square to be connected right to the waterfront once the viaduct is gone
5. Trying to enhance the waterfront environment and make sure that whatever solution with the tunnel contributes to that
6. Information from SDOT, WSDOT needs to be really transparent — people need to know what it’s going to look and feel like
7. How will you manage 50,000+ vehicles AND create a really great place for people to walk?
8. Traffic along waterfront and shoreline is an issue of great concern — is this the place to be doing this? Can we create a portal that is further south and distributes the traffic earlier so that by the time we reach the waterfront, we don’t have all of the car issues to deal with
9. Request that transit stays because the tunnel will not handle all of the traffic needs
10. P² has the highest walkscore. “It’s considered a walkers paradise, and we want it to stay that way.”

Adam:

1. Pioneer Square is a national historic district and we need to treat it with the care that it needs — it is a pedestrian oriented neighborhood — if we increase car and bus trips, how is that going to interact w/ pedestrians
2. If tolling is implemented, what’s the impact on our neighborhood going to be –– how many people are going to divert through P², the earliest opportunity’s going to be first avenue, and people are going to be just jammed on that street.
3. The mitigation during construction — is there funds available, how hard do we have to fight for it — are they open to discussing, providing marketing money, telling people P² is still open, showing people it’s still a good place to visit and do business
4. The goal is to move cars, but where are these cars going — the reality is that lots of people park under the viaduct — if you take away all of that significant amt of parking, where are the tourists and visitors and people in the workforce, where are they going to park?? There needs to be some consideration if you’re bringing cards here, they have to go somewhere

Lisa:

1. Moving the tunnel closer to the waterfront was significant — thrilled to hear that
2. Managing through the construction phase — making sure that office workers can get to their jobs and tourists can get to places they want to see
3. Making sure small businesses don’t go out of business because of the construction over the next 10 – 15 years
4. Displacement of some of the homeless people that live under the ramps — how handled so they’re not just pushed to another area
5. What are the changes to 1st ave going to look like and how are we protecting that area so that it still maintains its historic character?

This was a fantastic group and they posed some serious questions in relation to Pioneer Square. There are so many issues and concerns in regards to a project of this magnitude. One can only hope is that neighborhoods won’t get lost under the beast that is the Viaduct.