Belltown Messenger

Summer is almost here! Soon we in Seattle will be able to get out and about. One great thing that we can do in Belltown is ride the Waterfront Streetcar. The streetcar or trolley has served citizen and tourist alike, speeding from the International District to Myrtle Edwards Park. I have spent many wonderful minutes on board (it only goes 1.6 miles after all). Taking it to and from Mariner's games in the warmth of a summer afternoon is hard to beat. Every year 400,000 people ride the streetcar.

But it looks like our days spent on the streetcar might be numbered. The streetcar's maintenance barn is to be demolished if the plans for the Seattle Art Museum's Olympic Sculpture Park are realized. Apparently the maintenance barn would block views of the Sound and disrupt access from the park to the waterfront. Which is true but are the views, worth the loss of a city icon? Can't some compromise be worked out?

To me the most serious question is why was the land that the maintenance barn sits on was allowed to be included in the land that SAM was going to use for their park? The Waterfront Streetcar has been in existence for 23 years, it isn't like they didn't know it was there. Now we are going to either lose the Streetcar or the park or be forced to pay millions to move the barn and extend the line. According to The Seattle Times, the plans for the park have been around since 1999, but it wasn't until 2003 that King County started to look for ideas on replacing the maintenance barn. Why did it take so long? The ground breaking for the park is set for June 1st of this year. So now we don't have much time to figure out what to do with the trolley line. And haste will make waste.

Luckily the Port of Seattle has stepped in, and is trying to help save the trolley. They have pledged to donate land that will be used for a new maintenance barn. This land is 1.2 miles north near the Helix pedestrian overpass in the Interbay area. This is a great idea, but it will still cost us a lot to build and extend the line, estimates are in the $9 million range. I just want to know why no one seemed to take the Trolley into account when they were designing the Olympic Sculpture Park? Or why the money to take care of the trolley wasn't included in the budget for the park? I really like the designs for the park and think it will improve life in Belltown, but I wish this had been better thought out, so we didn't have to scramble to try to save the trolley.

Seattle can have both a park and a waterfront streetcar. Hopefully we will be able to compromise on this and it won't hurt the pocket book too much. Getting to add 1.2 miles to the trolley would be fantastic. But there are a lot of constituencies to make happy, so let's roll up our sleeves and get to it, because this is going to be hard work. Considering the park is set to open in 2006, the clock is ticking.