Seattle Waterfront
Last night, Waterfront Seattle held a meeting at the Seattle Aquarium which attracted over 1,000 participants (only one hundred or so were expected).
The question they posed to every participant was “What makes a great waterfront?”.
For those unable to attend, you still have time to answer:
Because of the construction of the Deep-bore Tunnel, the Alaskan Viaduct and Seawall will be coming down, and the Seattle Waterfront will be expanded.
Seattle Waterfront
Seattle Waterfront
Seattle Waterfront
Seattle Waterfront
This whole thing is very exciting for yours truly. Currently, I am a ten minute walk from Pike Place Market, which means I will be a 15 minute walk (or 5 minute bike ride) from the new waterfront.
Personally, I’ll be happy with most anything they come up with, but I do have two things on my wish list:
1) Do not waste one, single, solitary square foot on the scourge known as “parking”. Parking is dead space. It encourages driving and has no business in an urban core.
2) Put the Waterfront Streetcar back into service. The stations are still there (although in disrepair), and so are the tracks (again, in disrepair). I think the reinstatement of this train should be a high priority.
Aside from that, I’ll just be happy to have a spot on the sound to hang out. Currently, I spend a great deal of time in Victor Steinbrueck Park, and while it’s a great park, it’s not actually on the Waterfront.
If you have thoughts/opinions on the project, be sure to click on the link above and make yourself heard.
The “new” Waterfront will not be completed until 2018, but some portions of it may be available as soon as 2013.
Update: A good article about the new waterfront, complete with rendering:
Have a look at Vancouver’s waterfront. That’s all.
MaureenC — I lived in Vancouver over five years. The waterfront isn’t very activated with commercial activity. Great for jogging, not for partying–maybe with the exception of the intersection of Davie and Denman. Seattle, however, has retained vibrant commercial activity along its watefront, so that it’s not just a place to dock your boat.
That’s all.
I heard that Vancouver uses it’s waterfront to store the corpses of people who die while waiting for universal healthcare.
So you dealing weed or sex when you hang out at the park?
The rendering looks great and seems to be like the Embarcadero in SF. Looks like a nice space for art sales, and other “fair” like activities.
Believe it or not, Rex, there are people who need to park. Businesses at the waterfront will want customers, and they don’t want to exclude potential customers because you don’t know how to buy a decent car and commute in it. If you want to avoid a parking facility, then you want to kill business by limiting the customer base of the waterfront.
“Need” to park or “want” to park?
There is a difference.
Are you aware of the number of great urban parks that have absolutely no parking whatsoever?
Do you think NYC should excavate a portion of Central Park and put in parking spots?
In my opinion, inner-city business that depend on suburban automobile commuters are business at constant risk (at least higher risk than they should be). Increasing congestion and destroying the urban landscape to “help” those businesses simply leads to more congestion, and inevitably drives out people who would be otherwise be happy to live in and patronize walkable/bike-able neighborhoods.
95% of the PNW is rural/suburban, and I think people actually enjoy getting away from that for awhile.
For instance, it’s damn-near impossible to park in the Pearl District, and that neighborhood seems to be doing okay given the recessionary realities.
They did great things in San Francisco after the Embarcadero Freeway was torn down. Literally the entire waterfront has been transformed. There are businesses on the piers now. The ballpark development took an old industrial district and made it a great place to live, work and eat.
On the subject of streetcars, the F line was resurrected using rehabbed PCC cars and a few random other cars from around the world. It runs down Market from the Castro out to Pier 39, and has been huge for both tourists and locals. This site has a few thousand shots of the old streetcars and shows off some of the redevelopment that has happened over the last twenty years: http://world.nycsubway.org/us/sf/muni-market.html
Will the Ferries come in at the new area. A lot of the businesses I saw on the SF Waterfront catered to people coming and going on the Ferries. (I was there at 6am to 8am)
I think one of the keys to making a city ped and mass transit friendly is to make destinations that people want to go to that encourage you to leave your car at home.