ALLIED ARTS :: WATERFRONT

Dream: A Great Seattle Waterfront

Let's dream. Suppose you feel like heading down to the central waterfront. No particular destination in mind. You'll decide when you arrive. There's always plenty to do.
     Getting there is easy now that the Viaduct is gone. Every downtown street leads straight to the water's edge. You could go via Yesler, a concourse of broad trees and brick sidewalks that leads from the Pioneer Square pergola to Coleman Dock. Or you could take the new University Street Cultural Corridor, skirting the Symphony Hall and the Art Museum, proceeding down Harbor Steps past the low amphitheater of the Plaza of the Arts. Once a parking lot, it's now as lively as Courthouse Square in Portland, with non-stop music, outdoor theater, and political oratory worthy of Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park. You could descend from the Pike Place Market or follow the hanging gardens of Vine Street. Along these paths, city life spreads west, extending each neighborhood out to shore, and water flows back to the land, in fountains and ornamental cascades.
      Let's say it's a Saturday afternoon, clear and sunny. You want to go somewhere where you can gaze long distances over water, feast on a panorama of mountains. You could try the Coleman Ferry Deck. The spectacular new ferry terminal, with its rooftop park and interior retail spaces, now rivals the Sydney Opera House as a waterside icon. Or you could climb the green slopes of a re-engineered Kite Hill built atop Pier 46 from the landfill and rubble produced by the demolition of the viaduct and the construction of a cut and cover tunnel. The slow descent from the Pike Place Market is never less than awe-inspiring. Whether you head down the Grand Stairway from Victor Steinbrueck Park over the footprint of the old viaduct to the door of the aquarium, or wind your way down the captivating spirals of the new Market Observation Tower, you're guaranteed a succession of unrivaled vistas of Mount Rainier, Elliot Bay, and the Olympics.
      Maybe you just feel like ambling, meandering along from one end of the waterfront to the other. No problem. There are hurry paths and wander paths. Start at the north end of the waterfront by the new Olympic Sculpture Park and just follow the Public Art. Specially commissioned site-specific pieces create a trail of striking civic icons that leads all the way to Pioneer Square. There are even arches and benches constructed from surviving chunks of the Viaduct. Slip down into the hidden cove built along the seawall beside the aquarium. (You don't have to go to Alki anymore just to find a beach.) Here you can dip your toes in the sand, and observe marine life in tide pools. Perhaps you'd rather start near Jackson Street and walk north from Duwamish Basin Park on the site of the old Pier 48. Amazing to think when you watch the legions of sunbathers and frisbee players relaxing in this marvelous park that the site was used for many years as a parking lot for a car rental company. If you feel like reaching down and scooping up water into your hands, then walk along the Seawall Quay, a floating dock set along a portion of the seawall or explore the vast seductive labyrinth of islands, marshlands, greenswards and canals that used to be Piers 46-37. If you're in more of a cafˇ-hopping, people-watching mood, then cruise the city edge of Alaskan Way. The loading docks on the back sides of the buildings on Western used to languish under the viaduct. Now they feature a lively range of cafes, restaurants, grocery stores and locally-owned shops.
      Maybe you don't need to go down to the waterfront. Maybe you already live there. Maybe you're one of the fifty thousand people who has moved back downtown ever since Seattle created a lively, dense urban environment with housing available at all income levels: housing for seniors, for families, artist lofts, temporary housing for vendors. Maybe you live in one of the new mixed-income housing enclaves below the Market, or else in Cargo Town, a reconfigurable temporary housing prototype built from cargo containers and sharing a pier with traditional waterfront employments.
      If this were a weekday, you would drop your kids off at the K-12 school on Pier 48 and then walk to work downtown. But it's a weekend and you're running errands. You can shop at the Waterfront Supermarket or hop a ride on the trolley up to the Pike Place Market. Ever since the Waterfront Street Car migrated to Western, the trip up to the Market is a snap. Or maybe you postpone the errands to bike along the region's finest trails or to stop off for a dance class at the Downtown Community Center. Later on, you'll take your family swimming in the outdoor saltwater pool on the People's Pier located on an expanded Pier 62-63, which also features basketball courts and a renovated concert theater.
      Whoever you are, whether you live on the waterfront, or in the North end of the city, or anywhere in Washington state, you will want to be present at dusk on the Great Lawn below the Pike Place Market for the opening of Seafair. Hard to believe that this festival once opened with a motorcade along an undistinguished downtown avenue. Now, with the seaward beacon lights lit at the end of each floating pier, with the flotilla of ferries and boats strung out across the bay, it's a spectacle to rival any maritime festival in the world. Gazing out at the sea and the mountains, at the extraordinary site nature has offered us, you're happy that for the first time in our history, we've paid the proper homage to it.