Seattle Center: daily destination?

The Century 21 Committee unveiled a trio of proposed changes to Seattle Center on Tuesday, with recommendations ranging from subtle to spectacular.

Last November, Mayor Greg Nickels charged the 17-member committee with updating Seattle Center. The group spent eight months putting together three ideas intended to create more open space and better amenities.

"Our task is to look out 50 years," said Jeff Wright, co-chairman of the Century 21 Committee, adding that they let their imaginations run wild. "The alternatives are from 'do nothing' to very elaborate change."

The renovation comes as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation plans to break ground on its new headquarters across the street — a 12-acre campus to be developed in phases in the next 15 years.

It's not the first time a makeover has been proposed for Seattle Center, which was built for the 1962 Seattle World's Fair. In 1988, Walt Disney Imagineering devised a plan to revitalize the 74-acre park by demolishing the International Fountain, Memorial Stadium and Center House.

Met with widespread disdain, the Disney proposal was quickly dropped.

In an effort to avoid another public outcry, the Century 21 Committee held more than 60 meetings with community organizations and residents to collect input for the future of Seattle Center. The resulting three proposals, presented by Portland-based SRG Partnership, are designed to make Seattle Center a community gathering place.

One of the new plans would create green space around the Center House. The Fun Forest activity building would be replaced with an outdoor amphitheater and the surrounding buildings demolished to make way for a fountain and more landscaping.

A second recommendation marks off open space facing Broad Street and downtown and would require the city to purchase Memorial Stadium from Seattle Public Schools. The land would be used for a parking garage to serve the Center and to create a 14,000-seat amphitheater, an exhibition hall and retail space.

A third plan would create two bands of green space stretching across Seattle Center and replicates plans for the purchase of Memorial Stadium and development of garages and retail space.

All three proposals call for dramatic changes to the Center House, knocking out the old armory walls to create an atrium. City planners are also considering a fourth option that would leave the park untouched.

The committee hopes renovations will change the makeup of visitors to Seattle Center, transforming it from an event destination to an everyday public space.

"We want to make this place even more pedestrian-friendly, even more walkable," said Robert Nellams, director of Seattle Center.

Nellams says local development has already increased the number of people who use the Center day to day to walk their dogs and take their morning runs, and he hopes the proposed changes will raise those numbers even higher.

"It's a regional facility that wants to be your neighborhood park," Nellams said.

That neighborhood park might be dotted with retail space.

Nellams said the Century 21 Committee determined that people wanted more amenities but emphasized that the Center was committed to remaining first and foremost a public space.

"We want to keep it as public as possible, but that balance between commercial, private and public is delicate," Nellams said.

The four alternative plans will be scrutinized during the next year for their environmental impact and potential effects on surrounding neighborhoods.

Linda Shen: 206-464-3301 or lshen@seattletimes.com