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Concerned about costs, logistics as public process heats up, Convention Center expansion makes big change

Smack in the middle of the ongoing flow of public process, the Convention Center team has made a big change

Smack in the middle of the ongoing flow of public process, the Convention Center team has made a big change

There was big news over the weekend for the $1.4 billion project to expand the Washington State Convention Center. But likely of more importance to Capitol Hill residents, businesses, and organizations interested in leveraging the massive project to create a better connection between Pike/Pine and downtown are two upcoming milestones for public comment as a community push for more lidding of I-5 moves forward.

  1. Street vacations: Comments on the WSCC‘s street vacation petition (available online in PDF form), due March 18 to: [email protected]
  2. Environmental Impact: Comments on the WSCC‘s draft environmental impact statement (EIS) (available on the WSCC website), due April 11 to: [email protected]

The group Friends of Lidding I-5 sent a bulletin on the milestones to its update subscribers early Monday.

Street vacations = public benefits
Regarding the vacations — in which the city would deed ownership of what is currently public right of way to ease the expansion’s construction and development or related projects — the Friends group said it is calling for a short list of public benefits in exchange for the vacations. “In light of the large scale of the project and the unusually high number of requested street vacations, PPUNC is drafting a letter requesting public benefits that go above and beyond the currently proposed improvements around the site,” the group writes.

Here are the asks:

  • Have the WSCC complete Plymouth Pillars Park by lidding I-5 adjacent to the dog run; this will be the first, modest step in adding valuable open space to an existing network.

  • Have the WSCC fund a comprehensive feasibility, urban design, costing, and programming study of a freeway lid between Pike Street and Olive Way to include affordable housing, neighborhood businesses, and open space components. Such a study would cost in the order of $0.5 to $1 million

  • Direct the applicant to create the kind of civic grandeur and empowering public realm its central location, program, cost, and impacts dictate; design Olive Way as a complete street with active uses on both sides, and design the Boren Avenue and Pine Street sides to work with future lids

Because of its size and scope that will incorporate two additional developments across the street from the planned new Convention Center Hall, one track of public benefits discussion for the project will be handled in what is called the Planned Community Development process that gives developers a more streamlined set of public reviews. The Convention Center planners have told city officials they prefer a plan for part of one of the developments to include affordable housing and the mix of three new buildings planned for the project — the apartment tower, a new office development, and the new convention center expansion — to incorporate street and pedestrian amenities to satisfy their public benefits requirements.

CHS wrote about the various public benefits discussions surrounding the Convention Center expansion projects earlier this year as the project began its tour with the Seattle Design Commission, one of the myriad review processes that will — slowly — shape it. Meanwhile, the next round of design reviews is tentatively scheduled for May.

The Friends of Lidding I-5, in the meantime, are tentatively planning a Saturday, April 30 “community workshop” to discuss lidding options and the public benefits process. We’ll let you know when details are finalized.

Environmental comments
Another huge public process for the expansion is also marching forward as the huge (126.6 MB!) Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the huge project has been released and is taking public comment.

The ranging documents are used to guide planning for large projects like the expansion and cover everything from the natural to the human environmental impacts of the proposed construction.

We’ve embedded the full addition DEIS below. One way to parse the massive amount of information is to search the document for a key term you are interested in — “Convention Place Station” for example — to find out what expected impacts have been documented for the topic and any planned changes or mitigations. “It is expected that buses will continue to use Convention Place Station and operate in the tunnel until at least September 2018,” the first page of the document informs, by the way.

Let us know what you find — we might come back for another look at the DEIS before its planned public meeting on March 29, 5:30 PM, at Room 206 in the Convention Center.

WSCC Addition Draft EIS

Big change
Meanwhile Friday afternoon, the Convention Center Addition project team announced it was dropping the general contractor and construction management company that had been lined up to build the planned 1.2 million-square-foot pavilion along Pine where the King County Metro Convention Place Station is located today. Skanska-Hunt, a joint venture selected last year to head the construction project, was booted in a surprising move that Matt Griffin of the Pine Street Group, the lead developer on the project, said was about strengthening the project’s coordination of logistics, construction schedules and methods, and, importantly, costs. “It’s all very important to Capitol Hill,” Griffin said. “But what we build is more important than who builds it.”

“It’s important to us that we create a great pedestrian link between downtown and Capitol Hill.”

In an announcement on the decision, the expansion team said the plan was to “extend the schematic design process and then restart the contractor selection process to find the best fit and value for WSCC’s investment.”

According to the announcement, the “overall schedule will not be materially affected by this change.” The addition project “will roughly double the space of the existing facility and is expected to generate about $240 million per year in visitor spending, create 2,300 new direct and 1,600 indirect jobs in hospitality, hotels, restaurants, retail and related businesses, as well as up to 6,000 family-wage jobs during construction,” its planners say.

Construction is slated to begin in 2017 with the new Convention Center building scheduled to open in 2020.

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9 Comments
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Chris Spencer
Chris Spencer
8 years ago

Please recognize that “ask” is not a noun. It’s one thing to repurpose an existing word when you find a hole in the language, but this is just poor writing. The word you’re looking for is “request”.

Reality Broker
Reality Broker
8 years ago
Reply to  Chris Spencer

I think you have the best words! You *know* words.

(but seriously, thank you for the article.)

Me fail English?
Me fail English?
8 years ago
Reply to  Chris Spencer
btwn
btwn
8 years ago

: it’s also a noun, in the dictionary and in popular usage. From oxforddictionaries.com:

Definition of ask in English:
noun

1A request, especially for a donation:
“it was an awkward ask for more funding”

Reality Broker
Reality Broker
8 years ago
Reply to  btwn

I think you have the best words! You *know* words.

(but seriously, thank you for the article.)

Dave
Dave
8 years ago

“what we build is more important than who builds it.”

This is correct, but unfortunately, this publicly financed $2 billion project has not been very open about what is driving the building’s program. Short term operational imperatives are being prioritized over long-term public infrastructure investments. A notable example is proposing 800 parking stalls at grade, and bringing enormous amounts of truck loading to surface streets while demolishing a transit station. This may make sense for convention center operations in the short run, but over the long run it is an enormous missed opportunity for the city and the county.

Previous projects from the WSCC should also serve as a warning to the types of urban spaces that the convention center creates. Despite the claims from the design team, there’s nothing innovative in this proposal’s program. Parking, loading, and enormous empty rooms squashed into an urban site do not create the convention center of the future. These are the components of every convention center ever built, most of which are horrible neighbors and create enormous urban dead zones (see existing WSCC).

I hope this shake-up brings more than just a change in contractor and a re-examination of the overall project and the priorities of King County and the City of Seattle.

Prost Seattle
Prost Seattle
8 years ago

My understanding is the parking will not be at grade i.e. a surface parking lot. And whereas losing a transit station isn’t optimal, the transit station is closing whether the WSCC is built or not. As Link expands, the buses will be removed from the transit station.

The WSCC has asked for, and seemingly received, ‘dibs’ for this land. What isn’t clear to me is whether there was ever a public discussion as to what should happen with this land-housing, park space, school property. It’s just been assumed that this will become the site of the expanded convention center, and that seems odd to me.

p-patch
p-patch
8 years ago
Reply to  Prost Seattle

I think it’s much safer to say that as Link expands, buses may be removed (or reduced) from the transit station. Currently, there are nearly 4x as many bus passengers using the tunnel as there are Link users. Given the rate at which new lines are being activated, we’re decades away from seeing Link volumes completely displace bus service.