Two proposals, many voices: Community, equity, and legacy at stake in Sound Transit proposal

By Carolyn Bick
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY

Betty Lau spent her early years in an abandoned building that housed her parents’ laundry business. With everything mechanized, the laundry was the first of its kind in Seattle’s Chinatown.

Lau’s childhood home was located in the second iteration of the city’s Chinatown, a community created after the Great Seattle Fire of 1889 ripped the first neighborhood apart. 

But as Lau grew up, she watched the area she called home leak away, even as certain governmental decisions—like the construction of I-5 and the Kingdome—dissected and hurt the newly developing neighborhood known today as the Chinatown-International District (CID), which spans South Dearborn Street to parts of Yesler Street and Main Street. These decisions, along with development that has jacked up the cost of living, has displaced many families who have not since returned.

Now, the soon-to-be-77-year-old Lau worries that she is watching as the third iteration of the place she and so many other generations call home is poised to be suffocated once and for all through a Sound Transit station proposal. In Lau’s eyes, the proposal Sound Transit appears to be leaning towards skips convenient access for anyone living in the CID or for anyone who wants to visit the area.

Dubbed “North & South of CID,” based on where the stations would be located, the current station plan created by Sound Transit is labeled as the “preferred” alternative. Two of its biggest champions are King County Executive Dow Constantine and Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell, both members of the board of Sound Transit, with Constantine acting as board chair. 

The station placement is part of a bigger project, the Ballard Link Extension, to create just shy of eight miles of new track and nine new station stops meant to link downtown Seattle with Ballard. The project is supposed to be completed by 2039.

The plan is one that has drawn repeated criticism from CID residents and community organizations. Lau is just one of them. She co-founded and belongs to Transit Equity for All (TEA), a campaign that boasts almost 11,000 supporters and 68 businesses and organizations—most of whom are in the CID—signed on as proponents of a Move Forward on Fourth campaign meant to advocate for the construction of a new Sound Transit station at 4th Avenue.

At the same time, the 4th Avenue station option has drawn support from CID residents and community organizations—InterIm CDA, Puget Sound Sage (PSS), and CID Coalition, to name a few.

PSS’ Rachtha Danh — who lives in the CID — told the Northwest Asian Weekly that he’s tired of fighting, and that if the different sides could come together, something good could come of this transit project.

“We’re fragmenting our opinions, using all our labor into fighting each other and not into dreaming of possibilities,” Danh said. “That’s why we have to get our act together and stop fighting each other.”

Community concerns ignored?

The North & South of CID plan was not originally proposed when Sound Transit asked the community where they wanted a station. Originally, it was a choice between 5th Avenue and 4th Avenue. In mid-2022, the majority of community members supported a station at 4th Avenue.

But at what Lau (and Cascade PBS) termed “the 11th hour” in March 2023, Sound Transit pitched the North & South of CID stations, cheaper alternatives to a 4th Avenue station, after voters nixed the idea of a station at 5th Avenue. Supporters of a station at 4th Avenue say that Sound Transit has now prolonged the project by investing time and resources in search of a cheaper option, rather than prioritizing the input of local residents who offered their majority opinion.

Proponents of the North & South option say that the 4th Avenue station option would take a longer time, which they say would increase the risk of displacement during the project. It would also cost more money.

Both pro-and-anti-North & South of CID cohorts cite community displacement and disruption in their primary arguments against the proposal.

If the shorter-timeline North & South of CID project prevailed, 4th Avenue supporters say that the feared displacement would still happen only over a longer, more extended period of time, with generations of families and business mainstays forced to move out of the area.

Kathleen Barry Johnson, the executive director of Historic South Downtown (HSD), told the Northwest Asian Weekly that the North & South of CID station placement would upend literal decades of community and government partnership planning around Union Station as a central hub in the CID that would connect currently disparate parts of the CID.

“It was stated, it wasn’t in our head,” Barry Johnson said of this planning in an interview with the Northwest Asian Weekly. “There were multiple meetings regarding the hub in particular, but this happened with other community projects as well, [with] a sentence similar to, ’Oh, let’s wait on that when light rail comes in. We’re going to redo this whole area.’ So, that was a stated assumption that a lot of planning and a lot of the community’s goals had to wait until light rail came through.”

She later explained that a station at 4th Avenue “would, conceivably, include activation of Union Station as a transit station,” due to the relative placement of both the existing Union Station and a possible 4th Avenue station. 

She said that this is because a station at 4th would mean that Union Station would see natural growth of foot traffic and increasingly consistent use, “as people pursue their commutes and take advantage of whatever opportunities are developed in the station as a natural flow to their day.”

While Sound Transit has said that it wants Union Station to be activated as a transit hub, even if it chooses the North & South of CID station placements, Barry Johnson said that this set-up “would require consistent, permanent effort to curate the activation of Union Station so that people who are on their way to other places chose to detour into the Station to take part in whatever is happening there.”

“Someone, some entity, would need to be responsible for that, and this need would never abate,” she said.

Asked how the agency would handle a Union Station activation, Sound Transit’s Rachelle Cunningham replied, “Sound Transit, in partnership with the City of Seattle and King County, is engaging with the community around the South Downtown Hub planning efforts.”

Cunningham—the public information officer who specifically handles the Ballard Link project, which encompasses the station placement at issue in this article—also pointed to the results of this past February’s planning workshop for more information.

Historical context

Huy Pham, the executive director of Asians and Pacific Islanders in Historical Preservation (APIAHiP), has closely kept a bead on the issue. Following Pham’s collaborative efforts with the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation—which has also expressed support for the 4th Avenue option—the National Trust for Historic Preservation last year named Seattle’s CID as one of the 11 most endangered places across the United States, joining many other Chinatowns across the United States.

In an interview with the Northwest Asian Weekly, Pham highlighted past instances where cost considerations influenced planning decisions, such as the construction of the I-5 overpass in the 1960s, which particularly affected the connectivity of Little Sài Gòn with the rest of the CID.

In addition to physically dividing the CID, the overpass also destroyed homes, businesses, and places of worship. In 2011, Seattle opted for a First Hill streetcar that connected Little Sài Gòn with the rest of the CID. The streetcar’s route and construction was chosen based on, among other things, cost.

But, repeatedly, the costs saved have not gone back into the community. Sixty years later, the overpass still renders Little Sài Gòn largely cut off from the rest of the CID, as the First Hill Streetcar makes its mournfully slow journey through the area, trailing the unfulfilled promise of a “Culture Connector” expansion in its low-ridership wake. 

(Former Mayor Jenny Durkan stopped work on the Culture Connector, due to cost calculation errors that meant the project cost significantly more than projected. Just last year, the city’s transportation department found that the project would cost $445 million, almost double what it had been in 2018, when Durkan halted the project.)

“If we have to talk about it in an economic and financial sense, then what we’re asking for is bold investment” using whatever cost savings come from the North & South of CID option, Pham said. 

Putting it back into the community can be as simple as overhauling the First Hill Streetcar, revitalizing the CID’s struggling businesses, or putting the money into the Seattle Chinatown International District Preservation and Development Authority (SCIDpda), he said.

Danh agrees that the First Hill “streetcar itself was a mess,” but doesn’t agree that a 4th Avenue station would result in anything different.

Danh said that Nihonmachi—Japantown—belongs to the pro-N&S of CID coalition, and that “there were a lot of businesses in Japan town that did not survive [the streetcar’s route construction].”

“We have Japantown business owners in the coalition, and they’re very fearful that the construction on 4th would prevent folks from accessing their business,” Danh said. “They’ve been through the streetcar construction, so I feel like they know what they’re talking about from the fear that the city is just taking apart the neighborhood. I feel like with the 4th Avenue station, they will be taking part of the neighborhood, but we would not be getting it back.”

The way Pham and others see it, this N&S of CID station placement proposal is no different. It’s yet another cost-saving measure scooped from the body of the CID, without any benefit to the CID in-kind.

“Why are we asking seniors [and] thousands to millions of transit riders … to walk uphill to get back to their neighborhood or to get to the airport or to visit their family and friends when it is sensible to build it on Fourth Avenue?” Pham said, pointing out that the placement of North & South of CID stations would mean an uphill walk for transit riders going through the area.

Both Pham and Lau also pointed out that Sound Transit wants to name the South station “Dearborn Street Station,” which they feel makes riders believe it is situated at Dearborn Street on the edge of the CID. 

The proposed station is actually at the Shell Station on Dearborn Street, half a block away from the edge of the CID on Dearborn Street, which The Urbanist’s Doug Trumm and Stephen Fesler say comes with its own impacts.

“Tunnel boring machines will pass under 6th Avenue S—the middle of Chinatown—and result in very noticeable humming and vibrations within structures,” the pair writes. “As current and former residents of the U District and Roosevelt can attest, this can be a serious nuisance, especially at night.”

Barry Johnson said that once people finally reach the part of Dearborn Street at the edge of the CID, they will also have to contend with the street’s dangerous crossing conditions, with speeding cars the principal concern.

“They’re not going to do that, because they have to walk six blocks to get to the other train when they might just go up to Westlake [Center] and work through the various connections there and go home,” Barry Johnson pointed out. “It’s just going to be harder. People are going to follow the path of least resistance and not make those steps and connections in CID.”

When asked about the ease of getting from the station to the CID, Danh said that “We’ll have to do some rearranging of the streets.”

“We do want it to be a walkable, pleasant walk, so that folks aren’t in danger of being hit,” Danh said. “I think that’s one of the many reasons the aunties and uncles like to live in this neighborhood, because they can walk everywhere and they don’t have to wait for a light rail.”

Cunningham said that Sound Transit and the City of Seattle are working together via a specific South Downtown Hub planning process on a number of projects in the CID and Pioneer Square.

“South Dearborn Street is one such focus area where, earlier this year, different options for improving the right of way were explored in community workshops and traffic study,” Cunningham said. “The finding from this work was to look at tapering roadway width between Maynard Ave S and 5th Ave S/Seattle Blvd S to increase sidewalk and landscape buffer, as well as decrease pedestrian crossing distance at key intersections. The crossing experience could be further enhanced through urban design of the station entrance plaza. … Station planning and any potential modifications to the rights-of-way associated with the Ballard Link Extension project are still being actively considered.

Cunningham said that more detailed information could be found on the South Downtown Hub website.

Travel woes

Pham also worries that this is not a journey they will want to go on, and might not even be one that transportation officials would end up recommending. This fear is not unfounded. Pham remembers that in the course of suggesting the best routes for last year’s Taylor Swift concert, King County Metro created a special shuttle route that largely avoided the CID.

Earlier that same month, the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) created walking paths for baseball fans who wanted to attend the Major League Baseball (MLB) All-Star Game.

The path skirted the CID, leading game-goers around CID businesses.

“When I saw that, it was like a preview of how … a station like North & South of CID would be implemented,” Pham said. “They literally want people to go around our neighborhood rather than go through it and enjoy it. I think right now we are being neglected rather than suffocated to death.”

It’s unclear if the suggested routes caused a slowdown in businesses, but when asked about how they were faring, CID business owners told KING5 that they were struggling.

Matt Chan, the late CID advocate whom Seattle Times columnist Naomi Ishisaka interviewed for her column on the matter, told Ishisaka that the CID “was like a ghost town.”

“The arrows that were placed on the ground to direct people to the stadium illustrated the problem,” Ishisaka wrote. “The arrows barely touched the CID at all, and ‘just directed you out of the neighborhood. There weren’t any arrows directing you to the neighborhood,’ [Chan] said.”

Ishisaka herself said in the article that she “began to hear more and more from CID community members trying urgently to rally support for neighborhood businesses.” 

“A Facebook group to support the neighborhood began sharing posts lamenting the scarce foot traffic and featuring grassroots flyers with QR codes directing people to a map of CID businesses created by Intentionalist, an online guide created to support businesses owned by marginalized people,” Ishisaka wrote. “Volunteers began handing the flyers reading ‘Support Local, Support Small Business’ to passersby.”

Barry Johnson agreed that such station placement would lead to a decline of the CID—over time, and not all at once, but without the economic influx that a station convenient to the CID would bring, the area would eventually see many long-standing community businesses permanently shutter their doors.

“You’re just drawing off a center of activity, and it draws it off pretty far south. I know that Sound Transit wants to call it the Dearborn Station, but … it’s a half a block, at least, south of Dearborn [Street in the CID], even if they put an entrance and a tunnel north of Dearborn,” Barry Johnson said. People who would normally “pop over” to Uwajimaya, Dim Sum King, or another CID-based business staple won’t have any incentive to do so, she said, echoing Pham’s concerns.

Danh feels differently.

“I think with the North and South locations, it does make people get out and walk. And I think when you walk [around] somewhere, you get to exploring,” Danh said, when asked about the concerns reported by businesses. “I think that they’ll bring folks into the neighborhood. People are drawn in this neighborhood. It’s one of the cultural identities of Seattle.”

Given that the placement of the North and South stations would be at the outskirts of the CID, the Northwest Asian Weekly asked Sound Transit directly how it would avoid the acute economic pains the CID reported feeling last year.

“With a station already located in the CID, it’s unclear why CID-based businesses may not have seen the same ‘boom’ that downtown businesses did,” Cunningham said.

Cunningham also asked the Northwest Asian Weekly to send along articles regarding the business troubles CID businesses reported last year so that she could better address the question.

After reading the stories, Cunningham said that Sound Transit did not have anything more to add, and that it’s unclear how the placement of the light rail station would contribute to this issue.

Economic impacts

Supporters of the North & South of CID options point to the cost of a 4th Avenue station , as well as the increased time it would take to create, which could mean migration out of the area, as well as a longer period of disruption, as the station is built.

Mayoral press secretary Callie Craighead said in an email that the baseline cost estimate is anywhere from $1.2 – $1.3 billion, and said that this estimate comes from the environmental impact statement (EIS) examining Sound Transit’s original proposal for a 5th Avenue station.

“Our response assumes this as the baseline cost. Also from that EIS, construction of the 4th Avenue Shallow option is estimated to cost about $1.8 billion, so up to $600 million over that baseline,” Craighead said. “In 2023, Sound Transit released an additional study of stations, which estimated that construction of North/South options would have an additional cost of $157 [million] over the baseline, so total cost would be around $1.4 billion.”

Cunningham confirmed that these figures are accurate, and sent along the draft EIS with the projected cost summary.

Craighead told the Northwest Asian Weekly that the office “has heard concerns from a wide range of CID residents, business owners, community organizations and advocates about the disruptive impacts that up to ten years of construction, equipment staging, and traffic detours would have on the community to build a station at 4th Avenue, including how it would cause further displacement in this already vulnerable neighborhood.”

“After weighing these concerns, the increased cost estimates expected for building the 4th Avenue station … and considering the disproportionate harm that the neighborhood has faced from past infrastructure projects like I-5 and I-90, Mayor Harrell proposed the motion to study the North & South CID Station options as the preferred alternative, which was passed by the Sound Transit Board of Directors last spring,” Craighead continued.

However, Sound Transit’s spending on studying the North & South alternatives, due to rising construction and engineering costs, might actually be adding to the very expenses they claim would come from building the 4th Avenue station, as The Urbanist pointed out in a recent article.

Elder concerns

Proponents of 4th also cite the steep uphill grade working against elders trying to use transit to get to medical care, and to and from the Amtrak station or the airport.

Danh says that using transit to get to the airport doesn’t make sense, when someone is travelling to a different country.

“I think some proponents of 4th are saying, ’But how will the elders get to the SeaTac airport?’ Bro, have you traveled to a different country?” Danh said. “When you’re traveling to Asia, you’re not going with just a backpack. You’re going with suitcases. You’re going with a cardboard box of gifts for people. And you’re never using the light rail for that.”

“If you’ve ever taken the light rail to SeaTac, you also have a long walk from where the light rail drops you off to the gates,” Danh continued, explaining the process of getting from the Light Rail airport stop to the airport itself. “So, most folks who do need to go to the airport—our elders  they have friends, they have family who pick up their stuff and drop them off.”

When asked whether Sound Transit has ridership numbers for the number of people who use the train to get between the CID and the SeaTac stop on the light rail, Cunningham said that while Sound Transit tracks ridership, and it can be done by station, there is no way to track destinations.

However, the tracker does show the percentage increase in station use since 2019, which could offer some insight into light rail use to and from SeaTac. According to the tracker, ridership at the SeaTac station has significantly increased. Cunningham confirmed that the tracker is, for all intents and purposes, correct.

Lau and fellow TEA member, Brien Chow, spoke with the Northwest Asian Weekly in early July about the matter. Chow lives in Renton, but his mother—Ruby Chow, the late, history-making activist, politician, and community connector—was born in Seattle’s first Chinatown.

Both noted that the North and South of CID station proposal appears to be part of a larger trend of development slowly squeezing out communities of color from the Seattle area. Once again, Lau and Chow said, the reality of the situation appears to stand in contrast to how such development proposals are packaged and sold to the public.

But Danh said that it’s TEA who is selling something in contrast to reality, and that they are specifically doing it to play off elders’ fears of displacement.

“I wouldn’t say outright lying, but they have told some mistruths about what can be available to them with Fourth Avenue,” Danh said. “One thing we found out about the elders in the neighborhoods is they don’t use light rail too much. Some folks don’t even know the difference between streetcar and light rail. They tend to stay in the neighborhood or they use the bus.”

“Elders aren’t a monolith, but elders, if they are on a schedule, they know the bus schedule. They know how to get from one place to the other,” Danh continued. “So, if anything, we should be trying to get the bus routes to be more accessible for the elders.”

InterIm CDA also feels that 4th does not address the issue of displacement.

Derek Lum, InterIm CDA’s policy and advocacy manager, forwarded a position statement to the Northwest Asian Weekly. The coalition sent the statement last year to Sound Transit’s now-former CEO, Julie Timm, and Sound Transit’s board.

In the letter, InterIm CDA said it was “appalled” by both the original 4th and 5th Avenue options, as neither appeared to address the core issue of displacement. It pointed to the up to 11 years of construction impacts that would both harm business and lead to displacement. In contrast, InterIm CDA wrote, the North & South of CID “combination makes construction duration significantly shorter with significantly less potential impact due to distance.”

InterIm CDA, along with PSS and CID Coalition, also released a public statement about the North & South of CID options, stating that the placement would secure “the future growth and development of the CID neighborhood to be equitable, affordable, and a sustainable place for immigrants and working class communities of color to live and thrive for generations to come.”

But the board of the organization representing the neighborhood hit hardest by I-5’s construction, Friends of Little Sài Gòn (FLS), released a statement of their own, in the form of an opinion piece in the South Seattle Emerald. 

In the piece, the FLS board specifically pointed to political discourse around the matter that was responsible for “falsely pitting our community’s fears of displacement, gentrification, and desire for transit equity in a city experiencing hyper wealth inequality against the simultaneous and very urgent need for connected, reliable, efficient transportation options that also support climate resilience.”

The FLS opinion piece specifically pointed out how damaging past projects had been, writing that “without proactive mitigation commitments for the CID, we foresee further destabilization and displacement, isolation, and loss of culture and identity that has already occurred in this historic neighborhood for multiple generations.”

And yet, it is this same I-5 that has pro-North & South of CID community members concerned about construction at 4th Avenue.

CID Coalition is a grassroots, community-based organization that advocates for the CID. In a recent Real Change News article, CID Coalition member Sue Kay said that she remembers growing up, as the construction of I-5 was underway. She told Real Change News’s Marian Mohamed that while it was sold to the community as being beneficial, it was anything but.

“Kay remembers how special it felt to walk down the street with her mother while out shopping and the strong connection she and her mother had with those who lived in the area before the demolition,” Mohamed wrote. “The congestion, pollution and noise I-5 forces upon the residents of the CID have propeled Kay to fight for a neighborhood she remembers for being a place of solace for so many.”

While Kay is opposed to the 4th Avenue option, she also acknowledged in the Real Change News article that there appeared to be similarities between this station construction plan and the construction of I-5. Even with the North & South of CID option on the table, Kay is concerned that the government is once again not prioritizing communities of color, and their legacies.

Both Danh in his interview and InterIm CDA in its letter highlighted the potential for North & South of CID stations to foster transit-oriented development, which “could also help push back against displacement pressures in the area and possibly provide affordable housing in a community where many are either living in lower quality housing or simply locked out of the opportunity to live near the CID due to cost.”

In a 2023 press release supporting the North & South of CID placement, a coalition consisting of InterIm CDA, PSS, and CID Coalition wrote that while they were collectively glad of the North & South of CID alternative, they still saw that there is work to be done, namely in “pedestrian improvements for walking and rolling, lighting, and wayfinding among other community benefits and mitigation connected to the light rail line as well as righting past harms.”

“[The coalition] will also advocate for a platform to connect Sounder to the South of CID station, expanded greenspace and protections for City Hall park, and access to culturally relevant, community based [equitable transit-oriented development] eTOD to provide much-needed affordable housing for the neighborhood,” the press release continues.

As before, when she watched the second iteration of her home fall to development, Lau believes that the station placement that skips convenient access for CID residents and potential visitors is meant to open the area for more profitable development—and would feed into King County Executive Dow Constantine’s plans for sparkling new campuses in his Civic Campus Plan Initiative, as Seattle Transit Blog’s Sherwin Lee pointed out in a piece published last August.

Constantine is also the chair of the Sound Transit Board, the public agency that manages and operates the Link light rail throughout Seattle and Tacoma, as well as the Washington regional Sounder commuter rail, and an express bus service. Sound Transit ultimately determines the placement of transit projects.

When asked how Constantine’s position on the board, alongside his proposed campus initiative in his role as King County Executive did not present a conflict of interest, executive press secretary Amy Enbysk answered in an email that the board is “heard and took seriously concerns from business owners and community groups about potential gentrification, traffic and construction impacts, and the past harms from large infrastructure projects like I-5 and the Kingdome.”

“Leaders representing the City of Seattle echoed those concerns and endorsed the new alternative leading up to the March 2023 vote to select preferred alternatives for the Ballard Link Extension,” Enbysk continued. “The County had not launched the Civic Campus Initiative when the new alternative was proposed and planned to reimagine the County campus regardless of station location placement. The County is concluding a year-long visioning process with community members, government partners, and academic partners that will inform a master plan.”

But “launched” is not the same thing as “planned.” 

Barry Johnson recalled learning about the campus plan during a meeting with Constantine’s office in December 2022. She told the Northwest Asian Weekly in a follow-up email that the campus master plan was “100% underway” when Constantine proffered up the land underneath the administrative building in March 2023.

“I saw the campus plan at a presentation in Pioneer Square [on Oct. 23, 2023]. My understanding is that since that time, there have been efforts to refine the proposal,” she wrote.

Constantine’s own Civic Campus Initiative timeline appears to prove Barry Johnson’s recollection about learning of the plan at her December 2022 meeting with Constantine’s office: According to the timeline, Phase IV, “Strategic Plan and Analysis,” began in 2020 and is ongoing.

“Why would you build new neighborhoods, when you’re not taking care of the ones you’ve got?” Lau said of the plan. “Look at Belltown. Look at Third Avenue. Look at what’s happening with CID. … If you look at the Sound Transit website, there’s a lot of fancy talk about collaboration, meaningful engagement, using the Racial Equity Toolkit. And it’s all lip service.”

Harrell also serves on the Sound Transit Board.

Together, Harrell and Constantine are two of an 18-member board of regional governmental figures. One seat on the board is always reserved for the state’s secretary of transportation, while three more seats are reserved for the executives of King County, Snohomish County, and Pierce County.

The North & South of CID station plan is one that Harrell has endorsed. He announced last year through the Office of the Mayor that he was proposing as a Sound Transit Board member a specific motion that would “advance the North of CID and South of CID stations to serve the Chinatown-International District and Pioneer Square.”

The Urbanist wrote in its article last year that both Constantine and Harrell have ties with Urban Visions, one of the area’s largest development firms. In summary, Constantine’s revolves around a nixed deal, while Harrell’s ties are indirect, through his deputy mayor Tim Burgess’ 2019 PAC.

According to The Urbanist article, Urban Visions stands to make a hefty profit, if the two-station plan goes through.

The Northwest Asian Weekly reached out to Trumm and Fesler at The Urbanist to ask whether they had heard anything more about the issue.

“The short answer is no,” Trumm said. He said that while the most recent station placement appears to include a large chunk of Urban Vision’s land holdings.

“[W]e don’t have any certainty if Sound Transit would purchase the entire property or only a portion or continue to lease for staging purposes and then turn the improved land back over to Urban Visions after the station is built,” Trumm said. “Big tradeoffs exist for each scenario. Buying less property would mean lower costs, but lesser [equitable transit-oriented development] opportunities. On the other hand, this isn’t an ideal spot for low-income housing when considering the proximity to a major freeway interchange and industrial zones, in other words a concentration of air pollution.”

When the Northwest Asian Weekly asked what the latest information was, regarding the land Urban Visions owns, and the options Sound Transit is considering, since it would need the land for the South station development, Cunningham said that Sound Transit is in the midst of developing a conceptual design of the South station, and that details would be available in a forthcoming draft environmental impact statement (Draft EIS).

“Acquisition of property rights needed to construct and operate the station will not begin until after the project’s Record of Decision from the Federal Transit Administration, which will follow the completion of the Final EIS,” she said.

When the Northwest Asian Weekly attempted to clarify whether its understanding that there would need to be a purchase or lease of the land owned by Urban Visions was correct, Cunningham replied, “It’s too early to say what property might be required. More information about the project footprint will be included in the Draft EIS.”

The Northwest Asian Weekly also reached out to FLS and SCIDpda for comment in this article. SCIDpda did not respond, and FLS declined to comment.