Three Ideas for Revitalizing Seattle’s Downtown

For the past year, I have been meeting with a group, mostly architects and planners led by John Savo at the Seattle architecture firm NBBJ, mulling ideas about what to do about our ailing downtown Seattle. Time to float a few of the better ideas.

We began with the simple idea of getting all the buses off Third Avenue, which has gradually become a major busway and a blightway. Third Avenue is a flat avenue tying together Pioneer Square at the south end and Seattle Center at the north terminus. It’s wide and at the center of our downtown. It is lined with some fine historic buildings like the Seattle Tower that could be converted into housing and other active uses.

Metro Transit stubbornly needs this important bus corridor, key to its county-wide system of buses, and Metro is an immovable political juggernaut. Our first thought was to create a northwest couplet on Second and Fourth Avenues, already each one-way. But spreading the bus blight to other downtown north-south streets would also be stoutly resisted. 

Then along came a solution, suggested by Salone Habibuddin, the new director of Real Estate Development for the UW including the Metro Tract, and this configuration seems more plausible. Turn Third Avenue (now a four-lane busway) into a two-lane busway, widen the sidewalks and let some other vehicles use Third, and then turn either Second or Fourth Avenues into the other part of the couplet — two bus lanes in the opposite direction. (The lane not taken is converted into a greenway.) That half-loaf compromise might bring along Metro. 

Another solution we discussed was intercepting the downtown buses at a north and south terminal, and having a shuttle (likely free) that could take people to downtown destinations. This idea, which may ripen as traffic intensifies, ran into a Metro dogma that people don’t like transfers and would flee the buses.

Still another idea is to piecemeal Third Avenue, sending the loud and stinky buses around certain sections. There are two promising areas. One is the area just south of Seattle Center, creating a grand entrance through the Science Center and extending the greenery of the Center a few blocks south on Third Avenue, making that part of Third Avenue bus-free.

The other area of opportunity is around the south end at Government Center, where there are two ready developers, Greg Smith of Urban Visions and Mickey Smith of Martin Smith Commercial Development. King County properties are in play (the ugly admin building is empty, and the rundown King County Jail should be moved). Add to those the the embarrassing, since-2005 hole in the ground at Third and Cherry, the Bosa site. 

At the heart of downtown is the Metropolitan Tract, original site of the University of Washington, which is now looking (yet again) at how to improve its aging buildings such as the Financial Center, built in 1972, and at opportunities for expansion (such as the post office facility along Third Ave., across from Benaroya Hall). The idea would be to expand the UW footprint downtown. There used to be a branch of the University Book Store in the Tract, and the UW Press used to occupy the Skinner Building before moving to Safeco Tower in the University District.

Re-Universitizing the Metropolitan Tract would be attractive for people living and getting to downtown, and many universities such as Portland State and Arizona State realize the advantages of locating downtown for extension classes, health clinics, cultural offerings, faculty housing, and industry incubators. Think of major cities (Toronto, Chicago, Boston, New York, Montreal, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Atlanta, London, Nashville, Los Angeles) that have thriving university centers as part of the downtown urban texture. 

Downtown badly needs a boost for culture, shopping, visitors, and residents, and this 10-acre site, wholly controlled by the University of Washington, would seem to be a natural stimulant.

My third idea is thinking of downtown as several separate neighborhoods, each distinctively different and having a unique character. There is Seattle Center and residential Belltown, the cultural district (SAM, Benaroya, ACT, the Paramount and 5th Ave. Theatre), the Market/Waterfront, Pioneer Square, The University Tract, 5th Avenue shops, the handsome old financial center on Second Ave, Amazonia, the Chinatown International District, the stadiums.

Major cities develop distinct neighborhoods like Greenwich Village and Georgetown and Bloomsbury that are desirable in themselves and attractions for downtown exploring. Planners naturally think of connecting these areas by green and walkable streets, but I would suggest developing their distinctive flavors first (by decentralizing?) and letting the streetscape and transit take care of the connections.

In short, de-bus Third Avenue, universitize the University Tract, and develop individual character for downtown neighborhoods. Would it were so easy! Downtown has become a dumping ground, lacks leading developers like Unico and Jon Runstad, the city is averse to planning, and spending money on downtown is politically demagnetized.