A Rail Line Runs Through It
Next month Sound Transit’s Link line is supposed to open the neglected Rainier Valley to growth and investment. About time.
Kim Pham has had ringside seats on all the big changes coming to the Rainier Valley, the impoverished, polyglot district that descends like a wide slow river through Seattle’s southeast quadrant. In 1985, 10 years after the Vietnam War ended and six years after he came to this country, Kim started a graphics business in Columbia City, the run-down historic district at the valley’s heart. Soon afterward he moved to bigger quarters near Rainier Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Way, the valley’s main intersection. But printing flyers and menus was just a way station toward Kim’s real goal: “Ever since the war, I have a dream,” he says, smiling. “I want to start a newspaper.” In 1986 the dream came true and Kim launched the weekly (now semiweekly) Nguoi Viet Tay Bac, aka Northwest Vietnamese News.
Kim watched as one immigrant group after another poured into “Southeast,” Seattle’s Ellis Island: Vietnamese and other Southeast Asians landed where Italians, Japanese, Chinese, Filipinos, Samoans, and Orthodox Jews had already passed, followed in turn by Mexicans, Central Americans, and Somalis, whose bright robes and hijabs light up the sidewalks like spring flowers year-round. He saw Columbia City become a glamorous island of pubs, galleries, and theaters. He chronicled the pell-mell growth of Little Saigon, the teeming business district along Jackson Street at the valley’s head, and the rise of another Vietnamese business district, surpassing Jackson Street, along MLK Way.
Meanwhile, along that same corridor, the most dramatic transformation in the valley’s landscape in half a century is reaching fruition. Since mid-March, a stream of shiny new trains bearing Sound Transit’s ever-so-Northwest aqua-and-blue logo has tooled up and down the middle of Martin Luther King Jr. Way, racking up their federally mandated test hours before they start carrying passengers. This is the first phase in Sound Transit’s Link Light Rail, the little engine (with the big budget) that could. On July 18, after two decades of delays, cost escalations, and ballot challenges, Link will start running between downtown and Tukwila, with Sea-Tac Airport soon to follow.
Kim Pham and his staff (mostly his kids) know from personal experience how big projects like rail lines can affect established urban areas. Six years ago Link’s -McClellan Street station displaced their office and neighboring businesses. They moved to King Plaza, a Vietnamese shopping center three miles to the south, overlooking the Othello Street station. The passing trains there are a thrilling sight, speedy enough to make the Lake Union Streetcar seem like a shopping cart. Come July they will ferry passengers downtown in just 10 to 15 minutes. And they will pass as often as every seven-and-half minutes during rush hours, a boon to those commuters who live near the valley’s four widely spaced stations.
Fortunately for Sound Transit’s ridership prospects, a massive redevelopment by the Seattle Housing Authority, Southeast Seattle’s largest landlord, will plant more residents nearby—adding more than 600 owner-occupied homes to its Holly Park (now -NewHolly) and Rainier Vista housing projects, next to the Othello and Alaska light-rail stations. The operative buzzword is “transit-oriented development.” Clustering stations, stores, services, and residential density together, putting everything within easy walking and pedestrian access. “When the trains start running, investment will follow,” says one booster, Seattle City Council member (and Rainier Valley resident) Sally Clark.
Published: June 2009
What a lazy piece of writing/reporting. Two sources, and one of them a loser from decades-old lawsuits against Sound Transit? Hey Eric, aside from the bizzare rantings of people like Ray Akers, the valley wanted rail in the street.
We didn’t want a concrete wall of pillars or a tunnel that would be impossible to police. Did you ever make it out of Wallingford to see MLK before it was rebuilt? It’s light night and day.
Funny that this piece hits about the same time as the Times piece on the RV and Beacon Hill being one of the only bright spots in the region for real estate – thanks to light rail. It’s really puzzling why someone like Ray Akers – who makes a living selling real estate – is too blind to take advantage of what’s right in front of his nose.