Design teams come up with 22 ways to redo waterfront

By Susan Gilmore
Seattle Times staff reporter

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With imagination the only constraint, nearly two dozen teams held captive for two days in February have created their vision for a downtown Seattle waterfront without the viaduct.

The 22 teams, about 300 people in all, created their dreams for the city's front porch.

While they had the choice of picking any of five options for replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct, virtually all teams chose a tunnel — although one team designed the waterfront with no viaduct replacement, moving the traffic onto surface streets and leaving Alaskan Way in place. None of the teams picked an overhead bridge like the existing viaduct.

"For architects and planners, this is a once-in-a-century opportunity for a city to rethink its waterfront," said John Rahaim, planning director for the city's Department of Planning and Development, who led the effort. "We want to make it one of Seattle's public places, a place where people want to go. We got a lot of great minds at the table."

While the state Department of Transportation has not chosen its preferred alternative for replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct, that hasn't stopped architects and designers from crafting their own post-viaduct visions for the Seattle waterfront.

The 22 designs for Seattle's waterfront without the Alaskan Way Viaduct will be on display from 5:30 to 9 p.m. tomorrow at the Bell Harbor International Conference Center at Pier 66. Questions on the viaduct designs should be e-mailed to waterfrontplan@seattle.gov.

Half of the 22 teams that will display their efforts tomorrow are architectural firms, a quarter are architects and planners who signed up as individuals, and the rest are interested citizens who formed teams.

The city made sure each team had at least one architect, said Rahaim, and the teams include representatives of Washington State Ferries and Vulcan, the Paul Allen company that is remaking the South Lake Union area.

That the teams chose the tunnel option was no surprise, Rahaim said. "It's been clear in the nine months of public process that you either put the traffic underground or not put it there at all," he said.

The teams were put to work for two days in February with several givens: Colman Dock will stay put, the Seattle Aquarium will be expanded, the viaduct will be replaced, there will continue to be a road along the waterfront, there probably will be a terminal for passenger-only ferry service, there will be a monorail along Second Avenue that will provide access to the waterfront but will encroach on views of the water, and a pedestrian overpass will be provided at Thomas Street to connect the Queen Anne area with Myrtle Edwards Park.

The project banned seaplane terminals, housing over the water and new container terminals along the central waterfront.

The teams agreed on many themes, including a beach at Pier 48, natural shorelines at the Olympic Sculpture Park and Terminal 46, and shelves along the seawall.

They also called for a waterfront promenade, an amphitheater, the remaking of Colman Dock as a grand public space, and better connections from the waterfront to the sports stadiums and downtown Seattle.

The teams were told they had to provide new waterfront open space, a continuous public right of way for pedestrians next to the water, places where people could touch the water, and a safe route between Pike Place Market and the waterfront.

Rahaim said there were a few unlikely proposals, like one team's suggestion to eliminate all the piers on the waterfront and replace them with parks. But, he said, most of the ideas are doable.

The teams were not constrained by costs.

Replacing the viaduct is likely years away. Other than some funds for preliminary design and environmental review, there's no money for a new road.

Cost estimates released last year say a new viaduct would cost between $2.5 billion and $4.1 billion, depending on which option is chosen. The state last week released the environmental-impact statement for the project and plans to announce its preferred alternative later this summer.

The most-expensive replacement option is a tunnel through the central waterfront, and the teams based their designs on that alternative.

The 22 teams represented several states and five countries, said Rahaim, adding that the designs will be available, perhaps later this month, on the city's Web site: seattle.gov/dpd/centralwaterfront/

Susan Gilmore: 206-464-2054 or sgilmore@seattletimes.com

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