There is an ironic situation on the Seattle waterfront: the Port of Seattle has become the kind of obstacle to economic development it was created to overcome.
About 100 years ago, the railroads had a lock on the waterfront. Their arrival had connected Seattle to the rest of the continent, but they were strangling waterborne trade. In 1911, the community formed the Port, which went on to build new docks at Salmon Bay, Smith Cove, Bell St., and south between the railroad tracks and Elliott Bay.
Today, however, about 250 acres of that land, stretching from Interbay on the north to the mouth of the Duwamish on the south, sits vacant, paved over, and locked behind high fences. There is enough land here to build three Seattle Centers, and if just one of these properties, Terminal 46, were overlaid on downtown, it would stretch from First Ave. on the west to I-5 on the east, and from Pine St. on the north to James St. on the south.
Mandated to serve as the lead economic developer for Seattle and the surrounding areas, the Port could reuse that land to attract new investment to the region. But, rather like the railroads, the Port is now an impediment to commerce, because it is sitting on its holdings while doing nothing to redevelop them.
The shipping business is now gone, probably permanently, and even if that business were coming back, automation would have so decimated the jobs that it would do little for the city economically. At a time when immigration restrictions, research cuts, and software cutbacks are hurting our universities, research institutions, and software industries, we need this land to lure talent and investment.
Here is my vision for how we can reuse this land, based on decades of planning for this kind of development. I suggest a new way of planning, one that will result in the creation of exciting places integrated with the rest of the city, rather than the standard “destination development” that is so typical on many waterfronts.
Avoiding Boring Development
One of the biggest problems with large-scale waterfront redevelopment is that it is formulaic. The second problem is that, because it is usually detached from its surroundings and the daily life of the city, few residents go there regularly.
The standard mix of uses in waterfront redevelopment, not only at the Port’s own Bell Harbor complex but in Bremerton, Everett, and other cities up and down the West Coast, is a marina and waterfront restaurants, a hotel and small conference center, some office space, and some apartments. This formula was developed 50 years ago. Aside from some concerts and festivals in the middle of summer, it usually generates little life.
The formulaic process for this is driven by design and generic uses rather than starting with an idea for how a place could compete for people’s time, money, attention, and loyalty. Formulaic master planning uses a paint-by-numbers approach that colors in the resulting blocks red, yellow, orange, or blue for retail, residential, hospitality, and office space. It’s like laying out large subdivisions in the suburbs. We need to think and plan differently, especially for how we live and work post-COVID.
Taking a Cinemagraphic Approach to Development
“Place-making” focuses so much on the buildings, streets, and landscaping of a place that it neglects why people are there in the first place. It’s as if someone made a trailer for a new movie and showed only stills of the sets, without any of the music, motion, drama, and characters that are the essentials of a compelling story. Great stories, and great places, have drama. We care about the characters and we “inhabit” the stories.
In the last 40 years, there have been two great movies that depicted modern life in Seattle and that helped draw new people and business here. The first, and most obvious one, is Sleepless in Seattle. The less obvious one is the 1989 movie, The Fabulous Baker Boys, which set the stage for the city being a good place to live again. Starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Jeff Bridges as two jazz musicians working together and falling in love, the movie is set downtown.
One scene, shot at a time when Pioneer Square was coming back, shows Michelle Pfeiffer coming down the fire escape outside the apartment in her old brick building, landing on a street that is silent and empty in the early morning. The movie also contrasts their life with that of the Jeff Bridges’ character’s life in the suburbs, where he teaches music to children.
The new idea for our vacant waterfront land would be about a place at the foot of the city, right next to the Sound, where people live and work day-to-day without having to get in a car. Imagine the following scenes, set not with young singles but a family newly moved back into the city from the suburbs. In late afternoon, a man and a woman open the drapes to their living room, and beneath them a ferry is sweeping away from Colman Dock. The woman, a slight smile on her face, says, “Toto, I’ve got a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
The next morning, that same woman is dressed in white overalls in a workshop. For decades, Seattle has sent companies that make things to the suburbs. We need space in the city for the next generation of manufacturing of drones and other smart devices will be small and medium-sized, and we need a place for them within biking distance of where we live.
In the midday, their teenage son boards a van from the new division of Raisbeck Aviation High and rides over to an internship at an aerospace company near Boeing Field. To attract families, Seattle needs better schools that will engage students in hands-on experiences.
In mid-afternoon, the man walks into a local coffee shop, smiles at a barista he obviously knows, and sits down at a long table filled with other people working at their laptops. Today, software and business professionals work from home more than two days a week, and many want to take a break from their home screen and see other people.
All of these scenes take place within a short walk or bike ride of one another. We have world-class waterfront sites downtown that are vacant. Most of those sites look across the mountains that are capped with snow year-round. Terminal 46, the site that is so big that you could lay it over much of downtown, is just a ten-minute walk from Pioneer Square. Let’s get new life in them.
From TOD To GOD
With so much land, how do you keep this redevelopment from becoming a collection of disparate neighborhoods and commercial districts? With greenways. If transit-oriented development (TOD) has been the big planning idea of the last 30 years, greenway-oriented development (GOD) is both an old idea and the one that is working today. People are now living more locally, and to the extent they can, they want to get out and walk or bike to their destinations. The High Line in Manhattan, the Belt Line in Atlanta, and the Emeryville Greenway south of Berkeley have each attracted billions of dollars in both commercial and residential investment.
We have an example of greenway-oriented development here in Seattle, along the Burke-Gilman Trail in Ballard and Fremont. To the west, one of the most interesting and lively parts of Seattle is now the old industrial area in Ballard west of the 99 Bridge and south of Leary Way. This includes not only the old shipyards and the supply houses serving the fishing industry, but West Marine, PCC Markets, and, across 15th Ave. from Sephora, Made Cascade, an industrial design and machining firm that prototypes new parts. To the east, at the base of Stone Way in Fremont, Brooks Sports’ headquarters is just steps from the Burke Gilman.
In the future, it is quite possible that biotech companies will locate in University Village, a ten-minute bike ride down the Burke Gilman from the UW Medical Center. Why are these “lifestyle locations” popular? Because they help companies draw good people.
Creating Places for Everyone
Whenever there is talk of redeveloping vacant, publicly owned land, someone says, “Let’s put low-income housing there.” But we need these lands for economic development, and they must include not only a mix of uses and activities, but of people.
One way to make a place affordable for both businesses and people is to reduce or eliminate the need for a car. The present value of owning, operating, and garaging one is about $250,000, or about 30 to 40 percent of the cost of a smaller dwelling unit. Make the place more car-free and it will also be more affordable.
Facilitating Change
In terms of redevelopment, the Port is both the best and worst owner of this land. Best because the Port’s mission is economic development, and it has the financial capacity to undertake large-scale development. Worst” because the Port is a slow-moving institution focused almost solely on the airport.
The biggest obstacle to changing our waterfront is probably lack of awareness that these sites are even there or available for new use. You can drive over SR 99 and look over at all the vacant land next to Puget Sound. Then think about what your life would be like if you could do many of the things in your life without getting in a car. And then tell family or a friend about this idea. Those steps will help get things moving there again.
Discover more from Post Alley
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
