An obscure federal board’s haughty effort to sell off and dismantle the National Archives’ Seattle campus has been halted by the Biden administration, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget announced today, in a decision cheered by the Pacific Northwest’s congressional delegation.
“I am writing to withdraw OMB’s January 24, 2020 approval of the sale of the Federal Archives and Records Center,” Acting OMB Director Shalanda D. Young announced in a letter to the “Public Buildings Reform Board”.
“Tribal consultation is a priority for this Administration. [T]he process that led to the decision to approve the sale of the Federal Archives and Records Center is contrary to this Administration’s tribal consultation policy, and I am accordingly withdrawing OMB’s approval of the sale of that facility.”
The letter added:
“Any effort to sell the Federal Archives and Records Center in the future, through any available and appropriate authority, must comply with at least two substantial requirements. First, it must be preceded by meaningful and robust tribal consultation, consistent with the President’s January 26, 2021 Memorandum on Tribal Consultation. Second, it must proceed through the appropriate administrative process, based on a new factual record, and must comply with the attendant substantive and procedural safeguards of that process.”
The NARA Seattle campus is an important resource for the Pacific Northwest. No amount of consultation will ever justify its dismantling. Before a federal judge (and now Biden’s OMB) intervened to stop this ill-conceived sale, NARA was going to move the contents of the facility to California and Missouri.
NARA’s Seattle campus is aging, to be sure. But the solution is not to demolish the building and move the records. It’s to modernize the facility.
Both of Washington’s United States Senators were quick to hail the decision.
Senator Cantwell said:
“OMB, under the Biden administration, has come to its senses. It believes denying a population access to its historic records is wrong. I’m glad they are going to continue to allow Tribal communities to access this important information.”
Senator Murray said:
“While this process never should have begun in the first place without Tribal and local consultation, I’m glad that OMB has listened to local Tribes and reversed their decision to approve the sale of the Seattle Archive building. I want to thank everyone who made their voice heard throughout this process, and be clear I will continue working to ensure the generations of artifacts and history stored in the Seattle facility will remain accessible to stakeholders across the Pacific Northwest.”
As alluded to above, the idea to sell NARA’s Seattle campus came from the “Public Buildings Reform Board”, a five person entity that was created a few years ago by an act of Congress. The board did not bother to seek public input prior to getting Trump’s OMB to sign off on the sale. An attorney for the board stated last year that the board was “not required by statute to seek public input first.”
That kind of attitude is wholly inconsistent with the values the people of this country expect their representatives, whether elected or appointed, to govern by.
The “Public Buildings Reform Board” should be abolished. An entity that has no sense of proper purpose or accountability doesn’t deserve to exist. Publicly owned buildings and public lands deserved to be treated with care and reverence — they belong to the people of the country and cannot be easily reclaimed once sold off.
Congress must recognize that it made a mistake in 2016 by setting up an unaccountable board and charging it with making weighty decisions about properties like NARA’s Seattle campus. This mistake should be rectified through bipartisan legislation as soon as possible. We hope the Pacific Northwest congressional delegation will step up to lead that effort.
Friday, April 9th, 2021
The wait is almost over: Northgate Link will make its debut on October 2nd, 2021
Sound Transit’s long-anticipated Northgate Link light rail extension is nearing completion and will be ready to accept riders in a little less than six months, agency leaders announced during a brief ceremony this morning.
Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan addresses the media at the ceremony announcing the opening date of the Northgate Link extension (Photo: Andrew Villeneuve/NPI)
“With Northgate’s completion, Sound Transit will enter an exciting period of opening major light extensions every year through 2024, nearly tripling the region’s light rail system from twenty-two miles to sixty-two miles,” said Sound Transit Board Chair and University Place Mayor Kent Keel.
“This drumbeat of progress will extend service to Tacoma’s Hilltop in 2022, East King County in 2023 and Lynnwood and Federal Way in 2024. It will position us to keep building to complete voter-approved extensions to Tacoma, Everett, West Seattle, Ballard, DuPont and other destinations across the region.”
Sound Transit has set October 2nd as the target date for inauguration of service. In keeping with agency tradition, that’s a Saturday. Every previous Link light rail station grand opening has also been on a Saturday. There are currently sixteen stations in the system; when Northgate Link debuts, there will be nineteen.
The existing stations opened in 2009 and 2016:
The three forthcoming Northgate Link stations are:
U District and Roosevelt are underground stations that feel like subway stops. Both have wide sets of non-emergency stairs that go all the way down to the platform, unlike Capitol Hill and University of Washington, plus heavier duty “transit grade” escalators that tolerate wear and tear more gracefully.
Northgate, on the other hand, is an elevated station built over the streetscape alongside Interstate 5, as you can see from this aerial photo taken today:
The brand new Northgate Link light rail station, as seen from several dozen meters above the ground (Photo: Andrew Villeneuve/NPI)
“This milestone will transform commutes and communities, and further demonstrate the power of light rail to whisk riders to their destinations quickly, sustainably, and absolutely reliably,” said Sound Transit Board Vice Chair and King County Executive Dow Constantine. “King County Metro Transit will expand Northgate Link’s benefits by tying local bus routes with stations, so thousands of commuters can simply skip the daily Ship Canal Bridge bottleneck.”
Liberating people from I‑5 congestion was a key objective of the 1996 Sound Move plan that supplied Sound Transit its initial funding and project mandate.
The Sound Move plan called for a light rail line that would run from Northgate to SeaTac. As noted above, Sound Transit was able to complete the southern segments of the system over a decade ago, and even opened a new southern terminus several years ahead of schedule (Angle Lake).
Neighborhoods located to the north of the Ship Canal have waited nearly a quarter of a century for light rail to reach them and begin service.
But their extraordinary patience is about to be rewarded at last.
Construction on Northgate Link has gone smoothly, and Sound Transit is in now a position to deliver the new stations on the revised 2021 timeline it committed to back when the Northgate Link extension moved out of the design phase.
A test train at Sound Transit’s Northgate Link light rail station (Photo: Andrew Villeneuve/NPI)
Just as importantly, Sound Transit contractors are hard at work constructing more stations in three different directions, which means we won’t have to wait half a decade for additional neighborhoods to land their service.
In 2023, the system will undergo a massive expansion as crews finish the build-outs of the Sound Transit 2 extensions. It won’t be long before light rail will begin crossing Lake Washington and the Snohomish County line. Light rail will also soon extend significantly further south, almost to the Pierce County line.
An additional set of light rail extensions approved by voters as a part of Sound Transit 3 (2016) remain in the design phase. Rising real estate costs, coupled with the pandemic, have thrown serious wrenches into the projects’ finances.
I asked Sound Transit CEO Peter Rogoff whether the Biden administration’s American Jobs Plan (also known more colloquially as the infrastructure bill) could help those Sound Transit 3 projects. Rogoff (formerly the Obama administration’s Federal Transit Administrator) is hopeful, as are ST boardmembers.
The Northgate Link extension cost nearly $2 billion to construct, and was made possible in part with a $615 million TIFIA line of credit. The project is expected to wrap up under budget, Sound Transit says.
As Executive Constantine mentioned, King County Metro will make significant route changes in tandem with Northgate Link’s opening. Community Transit will do likewise, under the leadership of its new CEO, ST alum Ric Ilgenfritz. This will allow bus service in many neighborhoods to be further optimized.
The Northgate Station is a great example of a fully multimodal facility.
It is adjacent to Metro’s existing Northgate bus hub, which has plenty of bus bays. It has a brand new parking garage steps away from the light rail platform and mezzanine. It will also have a beautiful pedestrian and bike bridge that crosses over Interstate 5, linking the station to North Seattle College.
The bridge is under construction now and should be finished by October 2nd.
NPI has covered every single light rail station opening in Sound Transit’s history, and we look forward to reporting on the opening of Northgate Link this fall.
# Written by Andrew Villeneuve :: 3:20 PM
Categories: Core Encyclopedia Topics, Public Planning
Tags: Link Light Rail Station Openings, Transportation
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