A rendering from the 2019 study
The Seattle City Council is preparing a resolution calling for the lidding of I-5 through the city, reviving legislative efforts to spark what could be massively expensive — and possibly massively lucrative — developments and tying together neighborhoods in the city’s core.
The council’s Public Assets and Homelessness Committee heard a presentation on the resolution proposal Wednesday that is all but ready for approval. Officials want to finalize the planned resolution with the Washington State Department of Transportation before taking action at the committee and then the full council level.
Committee chair Andrew Lewis said a vote on the resolution could come later this month.
“This resolution states the City’s support for lids across Interstate 5 (I-5). It follows a study by the Office of Planning and Community Development (OPCD) that determined that lids connecting neighborhoods across I-5 could be feasible,” a council memo on the planned resolution reads. “It asks OPCD and the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) to work with state and federal agencies, elected officials and Lid I-5, an advocacy organization, to develop a plan to integrate lids into plans and projects related to I-5. The resolution also suggests creating a Public Development Authority to support this work.”
The proposed resolution would set the next stage in moving efforts to lid the freeway into real plans. CHS reported here in 2019 on a $1.5 million study that explored the technical feasibility of building a lid with possible green spaces and public parks, schools, and affordable housing developments.
Any projects would be a significant engineering challenge and costly. “The more the lid has to hold up, the more expensive it is to build,” the presentation to the committee on the new resolution simply states.
Federal money may be available to help boost the effort. The projects could also present the city with vital revenue opportunities as it looks to manage an increasingly challenging budgetary environment.
A citizen-led Lid I-5 group advocating the capping of the freeway and working to develop ideas for what to do with the new real estate has taken shape.
For Capitol Hill, a new swath of land reappearing between areas like Melrose and downtown could bring major economic and social changes. In the meantime, the completion of the $2 billion expansion of the city’s convention center has already reshaped some of the Hill-downtown connection points.
Meanwhile, other freeway lid projects with more modest development goals are in motion including over Montlake and Roanoke Park where 520 will be capped with park land and bike trails.
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YES PLEASE!!
Lid the whole freaking thing from Portage Bay all the way down to SODO.
So many reasons to do it:
We’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain from lidding this eyesore.
Ditto!!
Just lid it already!
I swear I will be a good lad for a spell if they lid it.
Same. Hopefully this will aid accessibility to the neighborhoods for the physically challenged who’d rather not take public transit.
As a transplant, I’m not sure if this would be of value but, a short history of why I-5 came to be where it is. I imagine it had something to do with bulldozing, sequestering redlined neighborhoods like with so many other urban cores.
Unlike many other cities, I-5 bulldozed right through commercial parts of downtown, poor neighborhoods, middle class and affluent areas, dense areas of apartments and single family. It cut off and isolated the Cascade neighborhood (now part of South Lake Union) and left North Capitol Hill/Roanoke mansions on fronting I-5 instead of a quiet neighborhood.
Yeah, not so much really but nice try. I-5 went through some pretty unredlined neighborhoods …Oh well. Spin your tale…
How will I throw Rocks at cars?
Total waste of money considering the shape the city is in right now. We have a budget shortfall. Is anybody paying attention? This would be a major drag down on already desperately needed infrastructure projects.
How much would this cost taxpayers? It must be in the billions of dollars, for questionable benefits.
The city’s feasibility study from 2020 indicates that the lidding project could cost around $1 billion to $2.5 billion. (There are a lot of variables regarding cost, so that number’s pretty wiggly.)
It also estimates that when it’s complete, the new housing, retail, jobs, and park space could generate $3.1 billion in economic activity per year.
We’re coming up on eight years since I wrote about the creation of the Lid I-5 group for The Stranger! Very exciting to see how much has been accomplished in that time — advancing the project from “having conversations about it” to “having more conversations about it.”
It’s the Seattle process! Next we’ll have a referendum, and then a referendum on whether to act on the results of the previous referendum, then a referendum on whether to cancel the whole thing, and so on…
I will vote “build the lid” on each referendum which comes my way, of course! It would be a great improvement to the city.
For folks questioning costs – this would provide long-term dividends for the tax base as well as the environment, people’s quality of life, community connections, mobility and physical connections across neighborhoods. It would bare minimum provide much needed green space to two of Seattle’s most dense and growing areas.
Check out some of the case studies for inspiration: https://lidi5.org/case-studies/
Unlike the millions spent every year on the freeways and highways themselves that provide none of the above.
And how do we pay for it? I mean King County just bonded for the construction of the convention center… Seattle tax payers had to pay the bond on the Kingdome for 15 years after it was demolished. The powers that be have found ways to pay for worse things.
That money would be better spent on public transit. Use it to expedite Sound Transit. More bus lanes. Hell, at this point, fund a traffic unit to cut down on all the poor driving lately too. Lidding I-5 is less a need and more a want. Further, how’s Freeway Park doing? Is it still a ‘pleasure’ to walk through?