Waterfront Businesses Challenge Waterfront EIS
Businesses Say Waterfront Project
“Not for All”
if Public Access Not Improved
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE November 15, 2016 FOR MORE INFO: Ryan Smith (206) 521-0506
Seattle
–
The Seattle Historic Waterfront Association announced today it has challenged the
adequacy of the City’s analysis of
alternatives and impacts of rebuilding Alaskan Way and creating a new park along the Seattle waterfront. The Seattle Historic Waterfront Association is a non-profit made up of waterfront businesses and property owners to protect, preserve, and enhance the historic Seattle waterfront for the benefit of the entire community.
“
We are very excited about the vision for an enhanced Waterfront for this great city, but as with any
great project, the devil’s in the details and that’s where the Waterfront Project EIS falls short. I
f the
project proceeds on the basis of this EIS, it will fail,” said Ryan Smith, of Martin Smith
Inc, which owns and operates several properties along the waterfront.
“The City is proposing to double the number of visitors to the waterfront while eliminating most
all parking and public transportation along the central waterfront. It will not work and this is too important a project
to let that happen,”
said
Kyle Griffith, whose family owns and operates Miner’s
Landing and the Great Wheel.
“
If you care about the waterfront and take the time to read the
City’s
EIS, you will see that the City has designed the Central Waterfront to be inaccessible to the very families and customers who have been the majority of the visitors to the Central Waterfront
,” said
Kyle.
News Release Seattle Historic Waterfront Association
Waterfront Businesses Challenge Waterfront EIS
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November 14, 2016
“The City
is currently planning to spend over $700 million on this project
,” Ryan said
.
“Shouldn’t
we get this right? Unfortunately, the City has failed to address certain critical elements and challenging the EIS is the only way to make the City address these shortcomings.
”
The City of Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) on October 31 issued its Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) for the projects that will follow completion of the deep-bore tunnel, tearing down the SR99 viaduct, and rebuilding the seawall. The three principal projects are to relocate Alaskan Way, build a waterfront promenade, and build the Overlook Walk, a major new pedestrian overpass connecting the Pike Place Market with the waterfront.
In the Waterfront Association’s appeal of
the FEIS, the group points to critical flaws, including: 1.
The FEIS legally fails to describe and evaluate
the project’s
effects. 2.
The FEIS fails to consider important alternatives and current data. 3.
The new waterfront as designed will be inaccessible to most visitors. In its appeal of the FEIS, the waterfront businesses said market research shows 53%-74% of waterfront visitors arrive by car. They are day visitors, not downtown commuters, typically family groups of three or more people to a car, frequently with children in strollers, grandparents, or both. They are unable to walk
long distances, are unfamiliar with Seattle’s transit system, and
want to park within sight of their destination. The SDOT FEIS omits these essential points. The FEIS reveals the project will remove 453 on-street parking places as well as 189 off-street parking places. These 642 parking spaces are essentially all the line-of-sight parking for the waterfront, as well as a very large percentage of all parking reasonably available to family day- visitors. There is no basis to conclude that those visitors would actually come to the Central
Waterfront if they had to park as far away as the City’s FEIS assumes.
Compounding the lack of accessibility, there is no transit service planned for the new waterfront and the planned First Avenue streetcar will remove more nearby transit and parking. Th
ese practical facts elude the City’s analysis
, so the FEIS presents a waterfront project that is fatally flawed. It assumes that the majority of visitors, people who cannot walk great distances and are unfamiliar with the city, will somehow make their way into the downtown core and then attempt to get to the waterfront. The FEIS says a key goal is to connect the new waterfront to downtown, but it fails to improve the East-West pedestrian connections at multiple streets. In fact, the FEIS never recognizes that the affected environment of the Waterfront Project is one of the most important visitor destinations in the City of Seattle, with at least 4.5 million unique pedestrian visitors per year needing to come to, and cross to the west side of, Alaskan Way.