Proposed waterfront project ‘undermines’ everything the city has been working on

At least one Seattle City Council member doesn’t want to see a portion of the Alaskan Way Viaduct preserved as a park.

Sally Bagshaw told the council on Monday morning the initiative to maintain part of the viaduct would throw a wrench in projects the city has worked on for more than a decade.

“My concern is it contradicts everything we’ve been working on the last 12 years,” she said. “And it undermines what we’ve been doing with the waterfront.”

Bagshaw worries that Initiative 123, which calls for a new bike/pedestrian bridge on the waterfront, looks good at first glance. If approved, it would connect the bridge with a portion of the viaduct. But it would have a “negative impact,” she said.

The initiative is “really an opposition to all the public work” that’s been done over the past several years, Bagshaw said. That includes removing the viaduct, building a connection between Pike Place and the waterfront and other projects in the works, she said.

On top of “undermining” the city’s work, the initiative “does raise significant legal questions for both the city and state,” council member Tim Burgess said.

The council must discuss the initiative that calls for the construction of a mile-long, six-acre park. The initiative calls for a block of the viaduct to be incorporated into the bridge.

A discussion by the council over whether or not to send the initiative to a public vote follows the efforts of the I-123 campaign to get enough signatures. The campaign recently received the required number of signatures from voters to put the initiative in front of council members.

By law, the council must either approve the project or send it to a ballot in 2016.

Can the council support such an idea? Could voters?

The Seattle waterfront doesn’t have the best track record for major projects. The tunnel project is more than two years behind schedule and the machine responsible for boring through the city’s earth is still under repair. That alone might make the proposed bridge difficult for voters to get excited about.

Even people &#8212 or at least one person &#8212 have lost enthusiasm for Initiative 123. The Puget Sound Business Journal reports that real estate developer Martin Selig has pulled out of the project. Selig contributed about $300,000 to get the initiative onto a ballot.

Selig said he will not give any more to I-123’s efforts because the project has gone through too many changes, the Business Journal reports.

Plans have changed. I-123 originally called for a large portion of the viaduct to be turned into an elevated park, similar to that of New York’s High Line Park. Doing that, however, would be too costly as much of the viaduct would have to be retrofitted, according to an engineering study. The study found that building a new bridge and incorporating a chunk of the viaduct would be a better way to go.

The current plan, according to the I-123 campaign, would cost about $165 million. If approved by the City Council, a public development authority would be formed to build and operate the park.

Before any of that happens, though, the City Council or voters must decide if they’re willing to risk another waterfront project in the wake of the current fiasco.