SEATTLE CENTER AND THE MONORAIL

After thoroughly reviewing the issue, I conclude that the monorail should use the Mercer Street route around the Seattle Center, and the City Council should remove the cross-Seattle Center route from consideration. Construction of the monorail across the Center grounds is likely to be incompatible with the Center's open space. The alignment around the Seattle Center on Mercer Street meets the Uptown community's interest in a convenient station, offers a more productive station on the east side of the Center, minimizes impacts on residents and businesses, and avoids conflicts on the Center grounds.

The City Council has been asked to act expeditiously to assist the Seattle Monorail Project (SMP). I have reviewed the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS), listened to the comments of a wide range of people and groups, both in person at the public hearing and via email and letter, and analyzed the arguments made for the two alternative routes. It is appropriate for the Council to express a route preference now.

Interestingly, the SMP itself has taken several actions expressing a preference for particular routes (well before all information is in), including advocating for the cross-Center route and carrying out station design work only on its preferred stations - in some cases stations not identified in the DEIS! This involves considerable expenditure of money and time, and effectively eliminates options by advancing preferred station locations.

The Mercer Route was the original preference of the Uptown community, before the so-called Northwest Route emerged as an option, because it provides the station that best serves Uptown. In addition to supporting the station at the Northwest Rooms, it also provides the best opportunity for an eastside Seattle Center station that provides convenient access to the Seattle Center while minimizing dangerous pedestrian street crossings. The Mercer Route is also preferable because it follows an existing transportation right-of-way. A major element of the route is next to a parking garage, the only location on either route where the adjacency of the monorail clearly has no impact. And using the street avoids running a transportation project through an open space that is integral to the Seattle Center Master Plan.

While the SMP now states that the Mercer Route would cost $10 to $16 million more than the cross-Center route, they have provided little documentation to substantiate this increase from the $6 million difference identified earlier. If this revised estimate, before even going into engineering, is indeed valid, what does this say about the cost estimates for other route elements?

Some arguments critical of the Mercer route are factually inaccurate. There will be no lane reduction on Mercer and consequently no impacts on travel times on Mercer. The Mercer Route will not generate sound or vibration impacts on performance venues (logical, since the cross-Seattle Center route is at a similar distance), and will not impair the drop off area at McCaw Hall.

Visual impacts of the monorail guideway and columns will be significant on either route. Moving the architectural wall between the Uptown neighborhood and the public gathering space of the Seattle Center a few yards to the south still creates a barrier and separation. While visual representations for the Mercer Route have included several measures that appear more unsightly than representations for the cross-Center route, these representations cannot be taken as literal before engineering.

Perhaps the least credible argument for running the monorail through the Seattle Center is that it would enhance it by providing views from the moving trains. To borrow an analogy, that's like flooding the Sistine Chapel so that people have a better view of the ceiling… or damming the Grand Canyon so that people have closer views of the canyon walls.

There is no perfect solution to this issue. However, the Mercer Route best integrates good transportation planning with appropriate land use.

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BIOTECH CODE AMENDMENTS

Mayor Nickels has proposed land use code amendments designed to encourage biotech development in South Lake Union. The Mayor's decision not to do an environmental impact assessment of these amendments is currently under appeal, and the Council will not act on them until this issue has been resolved.

The amendments propose the following changes:

• allowing additional height, floor area, and roof coverage to accommodate mechanical equipment for laboratory uses;
• adopting the height measurement technique used in the downtown zone, which measures from the street frontage rather than the low point of a property;
• reducing parking requirements for research and development laboratories; and
• revising loading dock regulations to provide for centralized loading docks for buildings in 'campus' environments.

These changes will not increase the amount of commercial floor space that can be developed, and thus will not increase the number of employees that the buildings will support.

The amendments are not essential to biotech development in South Lake Union, as significant development is taking place under current regulations. However, biotech representatives indicate that they will increase the area's attractiveness by providing for more efficient buildings that will optimize cost-effectiveness.

Since these proposals will not add zoned capacity, they will have limited impacts on development in South Lake Union - accelerating it, but likely actually reducing the number of employees that could be accommodated (an argument for reduced parking requirements is that there is a greater amount of floor space per employee). The additional height allowed may have a visual impact, but adding 10 to 20 feet to some buildings in zones that are already at 65 to 85 feet is of limited significance. The reduced parking requirements could be beneficial to the neighborhood if the calculations are correct. I have asked industry representatives to provide data on actual usage at existing biotech buildings to help gauge the accuracy of projected use.

The primary risk is building more facilities suited for biotech than the market will fill, which could require building owners to reconfigure buildings for non-laboratory uses. These buildings are more expensive than conventional office buildings, and would likely not be competitive and potentially could be left vacant. Since the anchoring biotech uses include the University of Washington, the Fred Hutchinson Research Center, other well-established nonprofits, and several major companies, and since health care and associated biological research is likely to continue to grow in the future, there is a good chance that this problem can be avoided.

On October 6, the Council unanimously adopted Resolution 30635, to study whether biotech-specific provisions should be applied to biotech regardless of location, and whether provisions about height measurement and loading docks have citywide benefit that should apply to any use. This addresses my concern that the proposed amendments favor South Lake Union biotech at the expense of other businesses and areas.

On balance, I think these amendments have some useful benefits to biotech development, and are not likely to have significant negative impacts. If the Hearing Examiner finds that the impacts could be significant enough to require further study, I will review the additional information provided. The agreement to look at possible citywide applications addresses my major concerns, and I am currently planning to vote for these amendments.

I will evaluate each element of proposed changes in South Lake Union as information is developed, and make a decision as to whether the public interest is served by the proposal. I am committed to working to ensure that adequate housing accompanies job development, that the jobs pay living wages, and that there is housing available for low and moderate-income residents.

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A LEGISLATIVE AGENDA FOR PEDESTRIANS IN SEATTLE

The following is the legislative agenda for pedestrians that I will propose next year to follow up on the successful Pedestrian Summer program.

1. Reduce the threshold for requiring sidewalks with newly constructed buildings. Currently, builders are only required to provide sidewalks if they are constructing at least 6 to 10 units (depending on the zone). Most of Seattle has sidewalks because builders were required to provide them. Optimally, any new construction would be required to provide sidewalks, and the threshold should be reduced to as close to one unit as is feasible.
2. Review zoning to expand the area of the City that is designated Neighborhood Commercial (NC). Requirements for pedestrian improvements are less in Commercial and Industrial Commercial Zones (IC). There are significant areas of the city that should have better pedestrian environments (including large areas of South Lake Union and monorail station areas), and changing the zoning designation should help that.
3. Provide standards for Green Streets, and expand the designation. A number of "Green Streets" have been designated, intended to be pedestrian friendly streets in dense neighborhoods of the City. Unfortunately, there is not a clear standard for what the designation means, and what actions should be taken to implement the Green Streets vision.
4. Better coordinate the City's pedestrian designations, and classify additional streets as pedestrian routes. Seattle has P-1, P-2, Major Pedestrian Streets, Special Landscaped Arterials, Green Streets, and Key Pedestrian Streets. The goal of these designations is to promote pedestrian activity by requiring specific improvements such as wider sidewalks or more extensive landscaping. Unfortunately, the number of designations is confusing, and should be overhauled and made more systematic. Pedestrian designations should be also extended to additional streets. North 45th Street in Wallingford is a prime example of a street that should have a pedestrian emphasis, but which currently has no designation.

I will also work for administrative changes to coordinate the placement of utility poles to ensure that sidewalks are free of obstructions, especially important for people with disabilities; change Street Use Permit standards to require pedestrian paths when sidewalks are blocked off for construction; allow lower speed limits (down to 20 MPH) on residential streets with problematic traffic issues; and increase the allowed type of traffic calming measures on minor arterials, especially those that are primarily residential and are heavily impacted by speeding traffic such as N 56th Street and Boyer-Fuhrman.

A key to making the needed pedestrian improvements for the future will be to develop a long-range source for funding sidewalks, and include that in a future transportation levy or other new funding mechanism. Seattle should commit at least $5 million a year to new sidewalks (along with matching funding for drainage improvements). The new Citizens Transportation Advisory Committee (CTAC II) will be reviewing Seattle's transportation financing early next year, and recommending new ways to fund our transportation needs. Sidewalks should be a crucial part of this. Priorities must be for Urban Villages, arterials, and walking routes to school.

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QUOTE:
"As a society, we regard the laws of nature as optional when in fact they are absolute. Meanwhile, we regard our own customs and laws as immutable when in fact we can change them whenever we collectively decide to do so. In our minds we have perfectly reversed the way nature and culture actually function."

-- Gary Patton

DEEP THOUGHT:
“The idea of fame is repulsive. I want to save the world."

-- Eleanor Antin

Citizen participation and engagement are critical for maintaining democracy -- fostering it is a key task of elected officials. It's my hope that this newsletter will inform you about issues, inspire you to get involved, and that together we can make things work better in this great city. Please send me your feedback, so we can keep things lively, interesting, and useful. And please forward it along to friends who might be interested.

Richard Conlin
Your Seattle City Councilmember

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