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.

By Eric Scigliano

But so far two other players essential to any Rainier Valley renaissance have held back: private developers and retailers.

Since the 1970s virtually no for-profit, market-rate condos or apartments have gone up in the valley. Then, starting in 2006, a slew came off the drawing boards, spurred by three factors: the imminent light rail, Columbia City’s popularity, and the late great real estate boom. Bye-bye, boom. The market chill and financing freeze have killed some projects and slowed others. The largest, 370-plus apartments that Harbor Properties wants to build on a soon-to-be vacant industrial site in Columbia City, is still proceeding, but on a slower track.

Throughout the Link line’s planning and construction, Southeast Seattle has ridden an emotional and political roller coaster. Transit officials first proposed running through the largely uninhabited Duwamish industrial corridor. Southeast Seattle advocates urged an alternate route, down Rainier Avenue, their district’s main commercial corridor. Be careful what you wish for. Sound Transit agreed to a valley route, but down MLK instead. And rather than tunneling, as it will under neighborhoods north of downtown, Sound Transit opted to run the tracks down the middle of MLK Way.

Southeast Seattleites cried unfair at the disparity: Once again their district—with its surfeit of subsidized housing and shortages of parks, police, swimming pools, and crosswalks—was getting the short end of the funding stick. As they feared, the line’s construction made MLK a near-impassable gauntlet, displacing many of the businesses along the route; 71 out of 310 moved and 25 closed. Many more doubtless would have closed if Sound Transit, prodded by the neighborhood uprising against surface rail, hadn’t established a mitigation fund. So far it’s dispersed over $15 million to 178 affected businesses, from pho joints and minimarts to car repair shops and an Elks Club.

Despite that lifeline and rail advocates’ rosy forecasts, new retail is conspicuously absent from Seattle Housing Authority’s redeveloped Rainier Vista. “Why would anyone want to live there if they can’t get a latte?” asks veteran valley Realtor Ray -Akers. The housing authority blames the poor economy and hopes to sell a couple vacant parcels at the corner of MLK and Alaska for mixed residential-retail development. But Akers, who helped bring a movie house, a hip bar, and other amenities to Columbia City, sees the retail shortfall at Rainier Vista as symptomatic of a broader failure to attract new business to the corridor. The first business to open at the new McClellan station was a pawnshop—“our first ever in the valley,” he notes bitterly. “And the most notable new businesses down here are payday loan outlets.”

Down the valley, the Vietnamese merchants—Kim Pham’s customers—have held on. But Kim fears that the trains that were supposed to bring new life to this Little Saigon 2.0 will doom it instead. The reason: You can’t get here from there. And if you do, you can’t park.

MLK Way emerged from the construction as a sort of slow-motion divided highway, broad and stately but hell to cross or turn left on. Its on-street parking was lost to the rail line, and King Plaza’s lots are already full. Soon commuters will try to park here and ride, and competition for spaces will get even fiercer. The stations have no park-and-rides; the City wants passengers to walk, bike, or bus to the train, not drive. It will institute residents-only street parking, further squeezing the merchants’ customers, who drive in from areas far off the rail line. Already, says Kim, rising rents have pushed many out to smaller suburban shopping districts.

“Before,” he says, “it was like Vietnam here”—a cohesive, concentrated ethnic district. “Now we can never have that. Where do we go?”