Streetcar barn receives funding

The Metropolitan King County Council voted Monday to pay for the bulk of a $9 million replacement maintenance barn for Metro's waterfront streetcar, thus guaranteeing that the popular urban attraction will be temporarily taken out of service starting Saturday.

By appropriating $7 million to the new barn in Pioneer Square, the council also gave its go-ahead to the Seattle Art Museum to begin tearing down the existing facility at Broad Street on Nov. 28. The museum needs the land cleared to complete its $85 million, 8.5-acre Olympic Sculpture Park, which museum and county officials predict will evolve into an urban attraction all its own.

County officials expect it will take 18 months to two years to build the new streetcar barn, with the goal for it to be done — and the vintage trolley to be back in service — by the 2007 tourist season. The new barn will cover a half-block east of Occidental Square park, between South Washington and South Main streets.

It is part of a larger development that also will include market-rate housing, parking and cafe space. The city of Seattle and the Port of Seattle already have contributed $1 million each to the project.

Before approving the $7 million expenditure, the council discussed whether it made economic sense to build a new barn because the waterfront streetcar will need to be taken off line again as soon as construction begins for replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct. The sequencing of that construction is uncertain.

But Councilwoman Julia Patterson, who unsuccessfully tried to lower the county share to $4.5 million, said, "We are investing $7 million into a structure to house our trolleys when it is very possible we won't be able to provide any transit services from those trolleys for as long as a 10-year period of time."

Councilman Dwight Pelz, however, said Patterson's idea to extract a higher percentage of the facility's costs from the city would delay both the building of the sculpture park and the replacement barn. Representatives of Pioneer Square, the Chinatown International District, the waterfront, the Urban League of Greater Seattle and the museum all urged the council to appropriate the $7 million.

"We have an opportunity to do what the community clearly wants," Pelz said.

During the streetcar's down time, free-fare buses will run along a similar route, serving the waterfront, Pioneer Square and the Chinatown International District.

The museum is paying for the costs of demolishing the existing barn, the Broad Street passenger station and track, as well as building a new passenger station to be incorporated into the design of the sculpture park.

Stuart Eskenazi: 206-464-2293 or seskenazi@seattletimes.com