If you’re wondering what it’s like to live in an area being tunneled through for light rail — and you should since it’s going to happen here soon — you don’t have to imagine what it will be like. You can, instead, look around the city at the neighborhoods where the digging is already happening.
Don’t usually post about stuff that ran in the newspaper three weeks ago. Like to focus on stuff that is running today (or tomorrow) or stuff that ran 30 years ago. Three weeks ago? That usually falls off our radar. But this July 17th Seattle PI article on problems with budget issues with the current drilling efforts is worth a note. The lesson is basic. The plan will have delays:
The Beacon Hill tunnel and other work is behind schedule, delayed by problems excavating a station under the hill, difficulties controlling underground water and slower-than-anticipated progress completing the tunnel drilling.
With that lesson in mind, remember the light rail extension through Capitol Hill isn’t scheduled to come online until 2016. And then add the realities of this kind of epic construction. It’s a good thing to keep in your mind with all of Sound Transit’s plans. So, maybe the empty buildings on Broadway really will start coming down in the winter. Or maybe they won’t. But we had all better make sure Sound Transit has smart contingencies in place for the delays. When it comes to this kind of project, there is no such thing as a “short time” or a “minor inconvenience.”
(at the risk of restating the obvious):
We will also (I think, it’s been on again/off again) be part of the First Hill Streetcar line, which will run from the ID to First Hill and then all along Broadway.
I’m _very_ concerned that this will deal a second (and fatal) blow to the businesses on Broadway.
Broadway will be disrupted by 8 years of light rail construction, and will just be getting back to life when (surprise) the streets will be dug up again to install streetcar rails.
I work next to the SLUT line and can report that the rail installation is surprisingly slow!
Solution: CHCC might lobby for both projects to go on at the same time??
this probably sounds fatalistic but it is also probably realistic – aren’t the businesses on broadway dying anyway, and won’t the sheer presence of light rail / streetcar be the deathblow to the area anyway? i strongly support both projects but i think the writing is on the wall for broadway and many of the surrounding areas – the added density and new construction are unfortunately also causing rents to skyrocket to levels that small businesses can’t support. to blame the streetcar/light rail construction for the death of small businesses on broadway seems to be defensively aiming a well-meaning gun at the wrong target…
By CHCC you mean the chamber of commerce, right Andrew? :)
Construction and rents really could tip Broadway on its back for a long time. Could make for a crappy time to live here — missing Broadway’s more, um, active eras. It has ebbed and flowed from blight to bustle to blight, right? Still, I defy anything to kill Broadway. The street’s businesses and culture are a function of place as much as any construction, policy, economic trends, etc.
In the meantime, we could probably manage the upcoming massive impacts better. But how do we know that pushing for both projects at once wouldn’t be even more damaging?
Seems like all the condos going in will bring a ton of new residents… all those people have to shop somewhere, right? I’ve seen a lot of Broadway businesses come and go over the 10 years I’ve been in Seattle, I guess I’d be surprised to see it really die out.
Saying that the streetcar construction will kill Broadway is not taking into account the huge positive impact that having a light rail station will have. Once the stop is open it will make it a lot easier for people to get to Broadway including the many Seattlites who currently avoid Capitol Hill because it is so hard to find parking (like a lot of my friends). I would prefer waiting to build the streetcar until after the station is open, for that reason.
What I should have said above (and referring to today’s NYT: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/14/us/14streetcar.html?ex=121) – is that the streetcar and light rail will both not kill *broadway* but instead change it so fundamentally (condos, higher rents, fancier businesses, etc.) that the existing small businesses will, in most cases, be unable to afford to stay there anyway. The streetcar (unlike light rail) is only 50% transportation and the other 50% is redevelopment subsidy. Expect the changing face of broadway to keep changing – new, tall, high-rent buildings with costly and spacious ground-floor retail. The problem is not going to be lack of customers for those business, but instead lack of small storefront space as more and more “mixed-use” development goes in at the expense of older, less-expensive traditional businesses. Rather than lobby around the light rail / streetcar project, instead it would seem to me to be far more direct and useful to lobby instead that future developments on the corridor include “mixed-income” retail space in addition to mixed-income housing. 30% of any new project’s ground-floor retail should be sized and priced appropriately to attract and retain vital small businesses. In addition, a mix of uses should be encouraged that operate not just during boutique hours (9am-6pm) but late into the evening. Too many gentrified, redeveloped areas like Broadway will become, turn into ghost towns after dark with condo dwellers driving their cars into the basement garages, and turning their backs on the street (cf. a lot of the new developments that have gone up on pine and in the area near 15th, etc)