By Daniel Beekman Seattle Times staff reporter
Imagine towers sprouting where King County’s downtown Seattle jail and offices now stand. A new government complex spanning Interstate 5 to Harborview Medical Center. A new, different sort of detention center built above a Metro bus lot in Sodo.
Those are some ideas that members of an advisory group convened by King County Executive Dow Constantine have been asked to discuss in recent months, as Constantine lays the groundwork for redeveloping the county’s eight-block downtown campus into a new high-rise neighborhood.
Participants include representatives from community and business organizations, human services providers, and labor unions.
In an interview this month, Constantine said a county consultant has presented scenarios to the advisory group in order to “stimulate conversation,” rather than to immediately hammer out a concrete plan. Decisions about how precisely to redevelop the campus are still years away, according to the executive. The advisory group meetings haven’t been public.
Yet materials from the group’s meetings show significant work already being done to analyze various scenarios, with the Sodo concept getting a lot of attention. A presentation to the advisory group in March identified that idea as having lower costs and more opportunities than other options. The county’s consultant, an architecture and design firm called Northwest Studio, has drafted a series of artist’s renderings to illustrate the idea’s potential and spent much of a July meeting fleshing out the concept.
Constantine has described the county’s current Seattle jail as obsolete and pledged to close it, but the county will continue to need a detention center of some sort somewhere “as a legal matter and a practical matter,” he said. (The county also operates a jail in Kent.)
Moving the Seattle jail could allow the county to redevelop a valuable downtown property, and constructing a new detention center, plus courts and offices, on a Sodo site the county already owns could save money, advisory group members have been told. There isn’t much happening near Metro’s Atlantic/Central Base today, but Constantine, Mayor Bruce Harrell and other Sound Transit board members voted earlier this year to step toward putting a new light-rail station just north of the over 23-acre bus parking and maintenance lot, rather than in the Chinatown International District.
Less clear at this point is whether erecting a new detention center and courts raised above a bus lot would be logistically or politically realistic.
“I think the consultants doing the design work are intrigued … but I think it’s way too soon to say what direction we might go,” Constantine said.
Multiple scenarios
The Civic Campus Initiative advisory group is meant to support a vision that Constantine initially sketched in March, during his annual State of the County address. Wedged between Pioneer Square and Seattle’s commercial business district, the county’s campus includes the beleaguered jail, a century-old courthouse and an administration building shuttered last year because so many employees now work remotely, rather than in offices.
Constantine has said he wants to revamp the area by partnering with developers to convert or replace certain buildings, possibly via long-term lease agreements. The projects could include mixed-income housing and invigorate a sometimes-desolate zone, while money from the deals could be redirected to pay for other county needs, he has said.
The advisory group convened soon after Constantine’s speech and also met in April, June and July. There’s one more meeting scheduled, for September.
King County Civic Campus Initiative advisory group members
Alliance for Pioneer Square; Downtown Seattle Association; Seattle Chinatown International District PDA; Downtown Emergency Service Center; Chief Seattle Club; Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle; Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness; King County Coalition of Unions; King County Bar Association; Sodo Business Improvement Area; Nitze-Stagen
“The group is very diverse. It’s a good group, a group that can really solve some stuff,” said Michelle Merriweather, president of the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle, which is participating in the process.
The March meeting included a walking tour and an overview. The site of the existing jail is worth about $100 million to $200 million. A new justice-system model could “cater to people,” rather than punish them, the group was told.
Architecture firm Northwest Studio introduced four scenarios:
- Renovate the existing campus;
- Construct new offices and renovate the existing jail;
- Construct new buildings, including a complex spanning I-5;
- Move some functions, like courts and corrections, to the Sodo bus base.
The consultant estimated the net cost of the last scenario at $514 million to $1.56 billion (accounting for revenue from downtown real estate deals), making it the least expensive. Northwest Studio also described the last scenario as having the most opportunities, because it could accommodate “reimagined” legal facilities and be a “catalytic project” for the Sodo neighborhood. A prominent developer with properties where Sound Transit may dig a new station plans to build office or lab space and housing there.
The April meeting included additional details about the scenarios, including a rendering of a three-story county complex above the bus base. The June and July meetings included more, with the consultant mapping out how a new detention center, courts and offices might be arranged on the Sodo site, with solar panels vaulted above the new complex.
Government officials have been holding similar discussions in a separate group, said Patrick Oishi, the presiding judge for King County Superior Court.
Asking questions
Suzette Dickerson, a representative for the King County Coalition of Unions, said the Sodo scenario is “the main one that we keep hearing about” in the Civic Campus Initiative advisory group meetings, leading participants to wonder whether county leaders are trying to push that particular option.
“We don’t know, so we listen … and we ask questions,” Dickerson said.
Erin Goodman, executive director of the Sodo Business Improvement Area, is another group participant. Any planning for changes in Sodo should include input from business and property owners there, she said.
“This is a historic project that’s going to have a significant impact,” she said about the campus initiative. “It’s important that everyone is engaged.”
Oishi, the presiding judge, isn’t wedded yet to a particular redevelopment scenario, but he thinks everyone (attorneys, jurors, defendants, etc.) needs to have easy and equitable access to the justice system, he said.
Alison Eisinger, executive director of the Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness, said the Civic Campus Initiative advisory group’s conversations have been “exploratory” in nature. SKCCH is one of many organizations that have called for the county to shut down the existing Seattle jail, where 10 people have died in recent years. Though the county will likely continue to have a detention center of some sort, “What that jail should actually look like is more important than where it should be,” Eisinger said.
Drawing up scenarios for a new county complex over I-5 or in Sodo have helped officials and stakeholders think about how to close the existing jail and create a more “restorative environment” elsewhere, Constantine said.
The I-5 option would connect to health services at Harborview but is “a bit more fanciful,” while the Sodo option is “just one possibility,” the executive said. The underlying notion is that “we’ve passed the time when this downtown should have a whole block taken up with a jail,” he added.
The advisory group will probably make some recommendations later this year and there will be additional opportunities for community members to weigh in, said Calli Knight, an adviser in Constantine’s office. Then Constantine and the Metropolitan King County Council will discuss what might be doable, with requests for development proposals still years away, Knight said.