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Friday, February 8th, 2019

Where should Sound Transit put Link’s South Maintenance Base? There’s an obvious answer

With Puget Sound’s light rail spine set to expand in all direc­tions thanks to vot­er approval of Sound Tran­sit 3 in 2016, the agency has begun the process of look­ing for a place in South King Coun­ty where a new main­te­nance base could be located.

Present­ly, Link has just one main­te­nance base, in Seat­tle’s SoDo neigh­bor­hood. A sec­ond one is under con­struc­tion in Belle­vue’s Spring Dis­trict, which will serve the needs of the East Link exten­sion when it comes online in 2023.

Sound Tran­sit says a third base will be need­ed to enable Link to prop­er­ly serve Fed­er­al Way and Taco­ma, and is iden­ti­fy­ing places where that base might go. Some of the loca­tions the agency is study­ing would dis­place exist­ing busi­ness­es, like the new Dick­’s Dri­ve-In Restau­rant in Kent or these busi­ness­es in Fed­er­al Way.

The own­er­ship of Dick­’s is, shall we say, less than thrilled about the prospect of hav­ing to move some­where else, even if it would­n’t hap­pen for sev­er­al years.

The com­pa­ny has been using its cus­tomer mail­ing list to lob­by Sound Tran­sit and the City of Kent in oppo­si­tion to the poten­tial tak­ing of its property.

“Just one month ago we opened our sev­enth restau­rant, on Pacif­ic High­way South in Kent,” Dick­’s EVP Jas­mine Dono­van wrote in a Jan­u­ary 28th email.

“As we did in 2011, we asked our cus­tomers to tell us where to build it. We received over 170,000 votes. With all the amaz­ing com­mu­ni­ty sup­port and par­tic­i­pa­tion we were shocked to learn that Sound Tran­sit was con­sid­er­ing tear­ing down our brand-new restau­rant along with the rest of this shop­ping cen­ter [the Mid­way Shop­ping Cen­ter] to build a Tran­sit Main­te­nance Facil­i­ty,” she continued.

“It’s not easy to locate this facil­i­ty when you are look­ing for thir­ty unob­struct­ed, flat acres near the rail line,” Sound Tran­sit CEO Peter Rogoff observed when he was asked about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the restau­rant hav­ing to move. “This (Mid­way) was one of the six sites that could be rea­son­able. We are going to study it. We are not select­ing it… we are study­ing it along with oth­er alter­na­tive sites.”

Oth­er sites Sound Tran­sit is study­ing include a large church (the Chris­t­ian Faith Cen­ter in Fed­er­al Way), a res­i­den­tial neigh­bor­hood near S 316th Street and Mil­i­tary Road S, and a col­lec­tion of com­mer­cial parcels in Fed­er­al Way that are home to sev­er­al busi­ness­es, name­ly Garage Town, Ellenos Yogurt, and NW Equip­ment Sales.

The reac­tion in Fed­er­al Way has been com­pa­ra­ble to the reac­tion in Kent, where city offi­cials sided with Dick­’s and are demand­ing Sound Tran­sit remove the Mid­way Shop­ping Cen­ter site from its list of pos­si­ble OMF South sites.

As it so hap­pens, there is a site where OMF South could go that would not dis­place any homes, church­es, or small busi­ness­es — and it’s also on Sound Tran­sit’s list. It’s the for­mer Mid­way land­fill in Kent, near South 246th and 252nd (PDF). 

This six­ty-acre prop­er­ty sits between Pacif­ic High­way South and Inter­state 5. It was once home to a grav­el pit (1945 through 196) before it was used by the City of Seat­tle as a land­fill (1966 through 1983). It sub­se­quent­ly became a Super­fund site.

Man­age­ment of Dick­’s wants Sound Tran­sit to pick the Mid­way land­fill site for OMF South, as does the May­or of Kent, Dana Ralph. But as Sound Tran­sit points out, it’s legal­ly required to con­sid­er the alter­na­tives before it makes a decision.

“Peo­ple must under­stand that under the law we must look at a range of rea­son­able alter­na­tive sites,” Rogoff told KIRO7 back in Jan­u­ary. He went on to observe: “Hav­ing to build over the land­fill could cost hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars in addi­tion­al cost in com­par­i­son to some of the oth­er sites under consideration.”

That may be true. But Sound Tran­sit must con­sid­er more than just dol­lars and cents when mak­ing this deci­sion. When­ev­er pos­si­ble, the dis­place­ment of homes, busi­ness­es, and church­es should be avoid­ed for pub­lic works projects like the exten­sion of Link light rail. Spar­ing house­holds and small busi­ness own­ers the anx­i­ety and has­sle of relo­cat­ing should be a pri­or­i­ty for Sound Transit.

Some­times the tak­ing of prop­er­ty is unavoid­able, as there are no bet­ter alter­na­tives. But here would seem to be an obvi­ous answer to the ques­tion Where should we put this base? The for­mer Mid­way land­fill site, that’s where!

Nat­u­ral­ly, Sound Tran­sit is oblig­at­ed to inves­ti­gate all the options, and we do not begrudge them for doing their due dili­gence, even if that process offends some.

But when it comes time to make a deci­sion, we think the for­mer Mid­way land­fill site ought to be cho­sen for this project, even if it entails a high­er price tag.

Would there be risks involved with pick­ing the Mid­way site?

Yes, almost certainly.

But fur­ther envi­ron­men­tal reme­di­a­tion of the Mid­way site would be a wor­thy invest­ment that would ben­e­fit every­body, espe­cial­ly com­mu­ni­ties in South King Coun­ty. In our view, projects that clean up our built envi­ron­ment and reverse the mis­takes that pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions made are always worth it.

The cost of any repur­pos­ing of the site will like­ly have to be borne by tax­pay­ers any­way, since the pre­vi­ous user of the site was a city… Seattle.

We can under­stand Sound Tran­sit’s staff and board poten­tial­ly being con­cerned with the prospect of choos­ing a loca­tion for OMF South that runs up the costs asso­ci­at­ed with the project. After all, crit­ics would sure­ly turn that into fod­der for attacks. But let’s face it: those crit­ics are going to attack ST no mat­ter what it does.

The agen­cy’s crit­ics either open­ly clam­or for its total demise (like Tim Eyman, who wants to rip away ST’s fund­ing with I‑976) or demand the impos­si­ble: deliv­er projects on the cheap, quick­ly, with no dis­rup­tion to any­one’s liveli­hood. That is sim­ply not pos­si­ble when a project involves con­struct­ing new right-of-way.

And new right-of-way is what Sound Tran­sit is in the busi­ness of building.

Sound Tran­sit won’t win over its diehard crit­ics no mat­ter what deci­sion it makes with regards to this or any oth­er project. How­ev­er, the agency has a gold­en oppor­tu­ni­ty to leave South King Coun­ty bet­ter than it found it.

Pick­ing the for­mer land­fill site for OMF South would be tak­ing the bull by the horns, so to speak. But Sound Tran­sit has wel­comed dif­fi­cult chal­lenges before.

For instance, fig­ur­ing out how to get Link across Lake Wash­ing­ton was no pic­nic. Light rail has nev­er been deployed on a float­ing bridge before. The crit­ics said it could­n’t be done. Sound Tran­sit is prov­ing them wrong.

The agency does­n’t have to take on this chal­lenge alone. In fact, it should­n’t. The Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture should step in to help with the fur­ther cleanup of the for­mer land­fill by appro­pri­at­ing funds for envi­ron­men­tal remediation.

Sound Tran­sit could also approach the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment for assistance.

As the agency has learned fol­low­ing the recur­ring fail­ures of its esca­la­tors at Capi­tol Hill and Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton Sta­tions, some­times try­ing to save mon­ey in the short term does­n’t work, and pro­duces major headaches down the line.

We think it makes more sense for Sound Tran­sit’s lead­er­ship to think long term and make deci­sions that will stand the test of time. Board­mem­bers must act in the best inter­est of the com­mu­ni­ties Sound Tran­sit is try­ing to serve and the region as a whole, even if that may entail accept­ing high­er risks and costs on a giv­en project.

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2 Comments

  1. That fam­i­ly run busi­ness is just a bunch of self serv­ing land­ed gen­try. What a bunch of com­plain­ers for peo­ple born into a liveli­hood. I’m not hav­ing anoth­er Dick­’s burg­er ever.

    # by Aaron P :: February 12th, 2019 at 3:37 PM
  2. In my opin­ion the best place for the OMF SOUTH
    would/should be the Mid­way Landfill.
    It’s not being used for any­thing else, is very avail­able, and
    you would­n’t have to tear down any exist­ing busi­ness­es or
    residences.

    We haVe been wait­ing a long time for the new DICK­’s in Kent
    so please don’t tear it down.

    # by Mary Mickels :: March 10th, 2019 at 5:09 PM
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