King County unveils a striking plan for a big green space at Seattle Center
It has many merits, but what is the county doing dabbling in the city's backyard? Turns out that Executive Ron Sims might control money that decides the fate of a post-Sonics KeyArena. It might be a good idea to listen to the man and his bold plan.
The folks at King County Parks have come up with a new proposal for Seattle Center, creating a large open green space where KeyArena now stands. The proposal, which is being pushed by King County Executive Ron Sims, is touted as a way to plan for life after the Sonics (at least at the Key), as a way to handle stormwater runoff better, to solve some Metro Transit problems, and to give Seattle a major downtown park. And did I mention all the art?
It's an exciting and comprehensive proposal for "turning gray space into green space." But first, you might reasonably ask, what is the county doing telling the City of Seattle how to design Seattle Center? Particularly when the city is deep into a process, called the Century 21 Committee, to create more open space at the Center? Is Ron Sims trying to muscle his way into a sacred Seattle space? Doesn't this man have enough on his plate, now that he's taken on the whole Proposition 1 roads-and-transit plan?
Sims explains his unveiling of the Seattle Center plan (you're reading it here first) as "a hint" to the city. By that he means that the county has a surprising number of cards to play for the Center. As the boss of the Municipality of Metropolitan Seattle (Metro for short), King County is charged with treating stormwater, and so it legitimately wants to take a lot of the runoff water from the Center and stop dumping it, laced with pollutants, into Puget Sound. Hence the idea for capturing 100 percent of the stormwater generated by 74-acre Seattle Center and treating it through a series of attractive raingardens, pools, and vegetated swales as it makes its way down several streets to Elliott Bay and Lake Union. Metro also runs our bus system, and Sims and his staff have in mind a transit hub on Mercer Street (perhaps replacing the poorly designed Mercer Garage across from McCaw Hall) that would turn Mercer into a major bus route, intercept buses coming in from the north, and link up with a Lake Union-to-Sculpture Park trolley and maybe the Monorail.
Then there is KeyArena. It is likely, whatever the eventual outcome of the Sonics negotiations, that a significant portion of stadium-related money, such as hotel-motel and car-rental taxes, will be coming to the Center and any new arena. Should the Sonics leave the Center, mitigation money to the Center is likely to come from those sports taxes. Here's the catch. Those funds, while authorized at the state level, flow through King County, not the city, since they are collected countywide. So Sims would have to propose how they should be used to the King County Council, and that council would have to agree. Get the picture? In short, Sims can step on the oxygen hose to any solution to KeyArena, post-Sonics. The city has not been talking to Sims at all about its new plans for the Center, including a likely 2008 levy campaign. Going public with his scheme is meant to prompt a few phone calls, to see if, just maybe, Sims has any suggestions ...
Suggestions he has, for Sims has taken a pretty active dislike to the neglected Center. He favors much more open space, jogging trails, a big open amphitheatre for concerts, sculpture, and lots of activation of the open spaces by putting artists, retail, and residents nearby. (Disclosure moment: I've been involved with some other citizens in pushing for a more park-like Seattle Center, replacing Memorial Stadium, the Fun Forest, and Center House with open space.) Sims has shifted the focus of other park advocates by looking at the western edge and tackling the big question of the Center, what to do about Key Arena. He fears that if the Sonics move to a larger new arena somewhere in the region, KeyArena will face a lingering death, as has been the case in many other cities. Sims thinks the plans he's seen so far for carving up the Key and making do with second-best space would turn into "another government statement." Better to get out ahead of that by simply tearing it down, capturing some new open space north and south of the Key, and ending up with a beautiful park in that space rather than a relic.
The usual objection to more open space in an urban setting is that it would just sit there, lightly used and vaguely unsafe during the non-summer months. Sims therefore proposes to put the park right up against the lively urban village of Lower Queen Anne, adding more retail, restaurants, and other activity generators along the park's western edge. He adds lots of public art, walking paths, a pervious running trail (like Green Lake's), and numerous rainy-weather attractions. His planners put a large water feature near the center of the new space, where the stormwater is held and released before following landscaped "canals" across the Center and down several streets to the Sound and Lake Union.
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Comments:
Posted Thu, Oct 11, 1:05 p.m. inappropriate
Interesting Concept: This is an interesting concept. Part of the allure is that it does not require a solution to the Memorial Stadium issue. None of the other proposals I have seen honestly address Memorial Stadium, they unrealistically assume that the problem can somehow can be finessed and the stadium will just go away. Won't happen.
Posted Thu, Oct 11, 1:44 p.m. inappropriate
Memorial Satdium "problem": Isn't the problem that the School District owns that piece of property? I think that most people forget how big of a player the school district is going to be in the vision for Seattle Center. I'd still like to see the Sounders playing there, maybe in the MLS.
Seattle schools should have an athletic field that is at least decent. Professional franchise at Memorial Stadium would be a big boost.
Posted Thu, Oct 11, 2:53 p.m. inappropriate
RE: Memorial Satdium "problem": Yes, the School District does own the Stadium. The problem for those who would develop the site with something else is not the School District, which could probably be bought-off, but the public. A sizeable portion of the public become incensed at the thought of destruction or moving the attached War Memorial and an even larger portion of the public have fond memories of high school football games there when they were young. I would not be surprised if more Seattelites would support Historic Preservation designation for the stadium than any of the 37 or so properties recently nominated by City staffers. It is really the third rail for any local politician, touch it and get burned. I am not one of those enamored with the Stadium, I just think it is a very difficult issue to deal with. And it goes without saying that the School District will almost certainly never have the money to properly maintain the Stadium.
Posted Thu, Oct 11, 3:31 p.m. inappropriate
RE: Memorial Sadium "opportunity": King County's interest in the Seattle Center is a major positive. Meshing plans to create something truly great is much more likely to happen when participants are willing and able to contribute. Both Memorial Stadium and Key Arena have comprised the "other" Seattle stadium location. The primary destination used to be the Kingdome, now it's a 10X better combination of Safeco and Qwest fields.
The challenge, as I see it, is to marry the green open space park vision for Seattle Center with an upgraded stadium vision for KeyArena and Memorial Stadium (and incidentally the Sonics and the Sounders and high school football). The key to both initiatives imho is underground parking ala the UW's red square. And the key to underground parking is funding and financing and finding partners to pay for it. Certainly, KC might be able to find any number of reasons to help fund underground parking including transit and light rail and trolly cars, etc.
The Seattle School district challenge is to monetize their "investment" in Memorial Stadium, while continuing to provide a venue for high school sports. In other words, they don't really need to own the stadium, a nice long term revenue stream would actually be preferable. As for the Memorial Wall, this can obviously be relocated, refurbished, and upgraded at reasonable cost and doesn't necessarily need a Stadium to go with it.
The Memorial Stadium question is an interesting one at the moment, because the Sounders are likely to go major league anytime now. Paul Allen is likely to be a partner in such an enterprise. Given that he has his more money than the average bear, plus his hands in both the EMP and QWest (not to mention trolley cars and Lake Union real estate) he could be a major player in the fate of Memorial Stadium if he wanted to be.
Key Arena is a different story. A plan to upgrade it for the Sonics would make sense if the owners were different. If they decamp to Okie-doke City, then the City should insist on a promise from the NBA for a new and different team. With such promise in hand, then investing in the existing KeyArena would seem to still make sense. Tearing it down and putting in a storm vault with a lawn on top strikes me as non-sensical not because of what they want to build, but what they want to destroy. I'm all in favor of the bigger, greener, more open Seattle Center. But let's keep the major institutions that are there and upgrade them, and let's connect the Center to a central transportation hub (and parking) beneath the Center.
In any event, KC's and Ron Sims' interest in the Seeatle Center should be more than welcome. I think we're starting to see the centrifuges refining the uranium so that someday we get to critical mass. The opportunity here is that a consensus builds for what needs to be done, who the players are, what the costs are, who pays, and who will receive the cash flows that ensue from revitalization. I'm beginning to believe that something really great will be the result of all this.
Posted Thu, Oct 11, 5:38 p.m. inappropriate
"Bravo, Ron. What a good idea for the Seattle Center. Better than yours, Brewster, in that it puts the open space next to the residential neighborhood rather than on the urban side. I hope that the City folks can put their egos aside and give this approach the attention it deserves." -- Paul Schell
The "Brewster" idea Schell refers to is a proposal by a group called Friends of the Green at Seattle Center (or FROG), which would put open space at the heart of the Center, on top the former Memorial Stadium, the Fun Forest, and Center House. FROG proposes that Key Arena, if it is not being kept for Sonics and major music events, should be a roofed pavilion, open to the public on all sides, with a winter garden and other all-weather attractions inside and lots of meeting rooms, the Center High School, and other community uses in the lower levels.
Posted Fri, Oct 12, 8:23 a.m. inappropriate
RE: Memorial Sadium "opportunity": It doesn't look to me like any critical mass is happening. And unfortunately Sims has positioned himself in an odd place, comes to the table too late again, and is likely to just extend this extended debate even further.
I sorta like the idea Sims has. But there's little chance that he'll actually do anything about it other than position himself as for something different. His track record when it comes to bringing people together to actually do anything is pretty miserable: take his proposed trail airport swap and his failure to produce a transit plan he could support this fall as two big examples.
Your own vision of Utopia at Seattle Center seems enormously costly (all about a new arena for pro sports) and void of necessary reality when it comes to the Sonics, the NBA and a whole lot of other things.
One fallout from calling things RAT and generally making enemies on other priorities is creation of bad blood that tends to prevent anything "really great" from happening.
Posted Fri, Oct 12, 12:39 p.m. inappropriate
You know how many guys got "diamond" engagement rings out of that thing? And how many area ex-wives got really steamed when they tried to sell them at Porcello Jewelers?
But seriously, a guy with a couple rolls of quarters could invest them at the digger machine thus avoiding the necessity of a trip to Friedlander's or Phil's Jewelers in Ballard near Mossback's Denny's.
Seattle is becoming increasingly unfriendly to families as is without an further attacks on the institution of marriage.
Save the Digger Machine!!!
The Piper
Posted Sat, Oct 13, 11:57 a.m. inappropriate
Why not just bulldoze the entire site and put in a golf course for you movers and shakers. So much green space for the drunks and homeless is such a great idea! Have you walked around Lower Queen Anne lately? Have you gone to the Center and NOT gone into the Center House? Who dreams up these ridiculous "plans"--no one making under $200,000 a year I'll bet! Sheesh.
Posted Mon, Oct 15, 3:16 p.m. inappropriate
Nice to see KC CEO working on the next big thing now that Metro runs so well...: Memo to Ron, et al:
Before we tackle the 74 acres... How about making sure we can GET there... Between the Viaduct, 520, Sound Transit, Land Use Planning, Metro Transit, and a few other items on the plate, I would like to see what we have working well first.
Not very sexy, but all that metro sewer line we put in in the 1960's is fast coming to the end of its lifespan. I still wait 45 minutes while "out of service coaches" whiz by to make an 18 block transfer from downtown to Lower Queen Anne. I am still waiting for the Benson Trolley, which last I heard, we are spending 18 million to build a NEW garage and maintanence center in historic Pioneer Square... when the rails end 6 blocks from Metro's Main Downtown Garage (could we not just run the tracks 6 blocks for Less than 18 Million?).
Nice to see an open mind, but will we, and our leaders once again change our mind on the Seattle Center's future -- and if so, how many more times? We cannot even relocate a Skate Park!!! We voted against both the stadiums we have, voted for a monorail 4 times before we killed it, and now this clever set of ideas. I am all for progress, open space, et all, but what about the infrastructure FIRST?
How about extending the monorail beyond westlake... maybe curve it down Pine or pike, with a Market stop on second, then down to Pioneer Square, and on to the Billion dollars worth of Stadiums we have. The monorail has carried more than 44 million folks... Metro can build it, run it, pay for it, and then we can chat about what next for the center...
Lets get Brightwater built, then talk about the Seattle Center. Lets make sure we save the farms, then talk about the Seattle Center. Grand parks are a great idea, but the voters said NO to the Commons TWICE, and now Mr Allen own's 80 % of the land to do as he pleases... and still convinced us to spend 50 Million of our money to buy a streetcar... when we have one we cannot run the one Mr. Benson spent a decade chasing for the lack of trolly maintainece barn, while the rails end just SIX BLOCKS before acres of Metro owned land that specializes in electric trolleys...
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