February 22, 2006

By ADAM HYLA
Editor

It may be sittin’ on the dock of the bay, but there’s no time to waste.

To replace its worn pilings, Washington State Ferries’ Colman Dock is scheduled for a $233-million remodel starting next year. And the dock’s impending renovation is providing a group of environmentalists and urban planners a chance to do some dockside dreaming.

A salmon-friendly bay shore, replete with greenery and fed by clean freshwater — not the car-tainted, toxic-laced runoff pouring down from First Avenue. Shallow pools where people can get their feet wet. A viewing station to watch the Port’s cranes load cargo. Heat-exchanger coils spiralling into the depths of Elliott Bay, helping warm or cool waterfront buildings. The world’s first waterfront building that incorporates fish-friendly habitat right against its walls.

These are some of the big ideas brought forth in the monthly meetings sponsored by People for Puget Sound and the City of Seattle. It’s an effort to make the Colman terminal “part of a new sustainable waterfront: Not a chi-chi place, a place that’s not just where tourists go but an authentic, real, working waterfront,” says Heather Trim of People for Puget Sound, who organizes the monthly discussions.

That’s a point that might become contentious as the state Department of Transportation searches for greater commercial and retail success at the ferry terminal. A new waterfront hotel or shops might be in the works — which could substitute for fare increases on ferry passengers, but would continue chipping away at the traditional economic uses of the area, says Trim. And a larger loading dock for waiting cars would shelter more salmon-eating predators in the black-top shaded water.

“ We can’t go back to a pristine waterfront,” says Trim. “That would mean tearing out everything up to First Avenue, since it originally had a bluff not unlike Magnolia’s. Instead, we’re looking for biological function to protect the juvenile and migrating salmon that are going along there.”

Doing the right thing, Trim says, is another example of jobs and the environment aligning: native tribes like the Muckleshoot have economically viable rights to fish the three to 12 million salmon that travel through Elliott Bay. Cleaning up stormwater runoff and building more eco-friendly piers would help protect their livelihoods.

One concept drawn up by People for Puget Sound shows the future ferry terminal extending onto an island in the bay — with sloping beaches and greenery nurturing fish and the food they eat. Piers would allow cars on and off the boats, leaving the banks untouched. Visions like this are a piece of the waterfront revisionism that has gone on since the Alaskan Way Viaduct was damaged in the 2001 Nisqually earthquake.

The state is still $400 million short of the $3.6 billion needed for even a scaled-down version of a downtown tunnel — the stated preference of Mayor Greg Nickels and the City Council. Over the next year the city plans to spend more time envisioning a freeway-free waterfront.

Yet People’s Waterfront Coalition leader Cary Moon says planners need to still grapple with one hard fact about the tunnel plan: the $3.6 billion project will only hide the highway from King to Pine Street, just about half its entire length. Neither is there money for the revitalized shoreline in the $3.6 billion tunnel plan.

The highway is projected to run above ground up to Pioneer Square, where it dives into the tunnel until Pike St., then re-emerges to soar over Elliott and Western Avenues on a rebuilt (and bigger) viaduct.

Moon’s group has noted that a central downtown without a highway is possible if traffic on the remaining street grids is effectively managed (“Highway Killers,” RC July 13, 2005). Most of the artists’ sketches of a future downtown don’t incorporate a highway at either end of the central waterfront. “You have to ask: are these honest and realistic?” says Moon of such pictures.

The money is there for Colman Dock, however, and the waterfront meetings are meant to “push the envelope” on fish-friendly design, says Trim. With environmental woes hitting Puget Sound from creeping sprawl and age-old pollution, she says we need all the habitable shoreline we can get.

“ We are at the point that we have to hold the line on hardening any more shoreline in Puget Sound. And we’re working hard on trying to reverse the damage in heavily industrialized areas.” 

[Get involved]

An eco-friendly future for the central waterfront takes shape every second Wednesday at lunchtime. Contact People for Puget Sound: (206) 382-7007 x215.