Take The SR520 Bridge Replacement Survey

The Montlake Community Club invites the community to take their survey regarding the next phase of the SR520 Bridge Replacement Project. 

The survey is open through Friday and asks for the public's assessment of the Washington State Department of Transportation’s (WSDOT’s) public engagement concerning its construction plans, including views on saving the Montlake Market, as well as WSDOT’s adherence to the City Council’s 2015 Resolution 31611 in completing the design and construction details.  

Montlake Community Club website says:

Community leaders in Montlake, Portage Bay/Roanoke Park, N. Capitol Hill, Laurelhurst and Madison Park seek to assess WSDOT’s outreach, transparency and engagement with impacted neighborhoods.  

This is a community-driven survey, not to be confused with WSDOT’s recent Montlake Market Survey. Please help us collect this important data by filling out this survey.  

Results will be posted online and provided to the Seattle City Council, Mayor Durkan, State Legislators, and Governor Inslee, and WSDOT.

A Laurelhurst Community Club Board Member provided the Laurelhurst Blog with this report from the most recent WSDOT meeting:

• The design/build contract was awarded to Graham Construction, and they are currently working with WSDOT to refine key elements of the next phase which is the re-build of the Montlake Interchange. Construction will start in late 2019, and continue through 2024)
• The Montlake intersection to the south has both a gas station, and a market, which is on private land, and the adjacent communities would prefer a design that saves both amenities.

• The grassy lid will be built over the west portal and will have direct access ramps for bus and carpool transit, bike trails, and a transit station.
• New stormwater systems will capture run off and be purified to re-use  in the new park vegetation.
• A protected bike landbridge will be built over the new lid, connecting north and south  parts of the interchange form the Arboretum access to the Sound Transit station.
• Testing of the soil around the existing gas station and Montlake Market revels high levels of contaminants, which are normally associated with fuel stations, but WSDOT and/or land owner must remediate before construction or disturbance of the soil.
• A temporary ramp to connect vehicles entering SR520 from the south will be constructed to use while the lid and new expanded eastbound ramps are being built out.
• The meeting run by WSDOT was targeted to the Montlake community, and they asked for public feedback about the cost/benefits of three options for saving the Montlake Market. The gas station will be demolished because its property will be used in expanding the on-ramps to SR520 heading East (similar to now, just wider).
• Three options: 1) Preserve the building itself, but close its operation permanently, or possibly reopening it  later 2) Preserve market and operate it continuously during all construction impacts and 3) Remove the market building. Various cost and time savings associated with these scenarios were discussed, and despite the increase time and money, the comments from the audience expressed a strong desire to retain the building either for continuous operations (with more difficult access) during all phases of the project. The other popular option was to lease the parcel to WSDOT during construction, but then take it back and upgrade at the end of the project.  The contamination issue of the soil and groundwater was also discussed, and the public expressed concerns that the removal be done to EPA standards and protect existing surrounding soil and waterways.

Here is a post with the most recent information about the project:

The Market: The Fight Isn’t Over

At the end of January, WSDOT held a public meeting where the department presented new design plans that seek to preserve the Montlake Blvd. Market and limit construction impacts on the market’s property. 

The good news is that Graham’s design and proposal will likely cut a year off the project. Further really good news is that it appears WSDOT is conceding it can avoid use of the Montlake Market and Gas Station properties.  Graham’s designs eliminate many of the impacts WSDOT sited in their condemnation and demolition plans for the market property. The bad news, however, is that despite proving their ability to avoid the market and shifting construction impacts away from the property, WSDOT is still pursuing a full condemnation in order to use the rest of the property as a staging and storage yard for the next 10-years, throughout the Portage Bay phase. One of their representatives also claimed they needed the properties for the project’s “associated risks,” although he did not elaborate. 

Read more about the meeting in this story by KOMO News. 

In terms of saving the market, WSDOT estimated that keeping the market operational throughout construction will add an additional 45 days to the project and $20 million to the cost. This may seem like a lot at face value, but it appears to be intentionally misleading. WSDOT presented this figure without any discussion of the cost to acquire the property and avoided mention of other associated costs, such as lost tax revenue from the market, gas station and cell towers, which runs nearly $1 million per year.  

All told, WSDOT’s costs to acquire the properties could be as high as $33 million, with WSDOT paying an estimated $20 million on top of that to keep the market operational should the agency proceed with a full condemnation.  Moreover, they are ignoring the social and other costs they’ll impose on the communities we live in, loss of “walkability/bikeability” to and from the Market, drive time, cost and frustration to get to alternative market and gas locations, reduced property values of our homes from proximity to 10 years of loud, noisy construction, and the elimination of one of our few community gathering spots.  And, even using WSDOT’s inflated cost estimate, keep in mind the number is a fraction of the project’s $4.51 billion budget. 

These figures amount to what can only be considered as an absurdly steep price to pay, especially in light of WSDOT presenting the new designs last week showing how they can avoid the properties. WSDOT’s only remaining reason for acquiring the Market site appears to boil down to construction staging and storage. The notion of spending $50 million in taxpayer money to turn the heart of Montlake into a construction and equipment staging yard for the next 10 years is unacceptable to the Montlake Community Club. Our neighbors deserve better. 

The Montlake Community Club is continuing to engage with our legislators as well as WSDOT to keep staging off of the property and to make sure all options to save the market are pursued.  

You can help by reaching out to WSDOT Secretary Roger Millar, Speaker Chopp, Rep. Nicole Macri and Sen. Jamie Pedersen at the emails below and carrying this message: Roger Millar: millarr@wsdot.wa.gov, Speaker Chopp: frank.chopp@leg.wa.gov, Rep. Nicole Macri: nicole.macri@leg.wa.gov,Sen. Jamie Pedersen: jamie.pedersen@leg.wa.gov

Here is most recent information from WSDOT:

SR 520 construction resuming in Seattle; read about it in our ‘2019: The Year Ahead’ newsletter With major SR 520 construction resuming soon in Seattle, we want to provide you a snapshot of what’s coming up. You’ll find the highlights in our latest newsletter – “2019: The Year Ahead.” It covers the key construction activities for the SR 520 Montlake Project, along with ways for staying up to date on all the work. Graham Contracting Ltd., our Montlake Project design-build contractor, will begin preliminary fieldwork in the coming weeks. Construction will ramp up later this spring. We’ve created a new set of webpages, called the SR 520 Construction Corner, to help keep you informed on what to expect and how construction will affect your travel in and around the corridor. Planning for the remaining SR 520 “Rest of the West” projects is also moving forward in 2019. The SR 520/I-5 Express Lanes Connection Project is slated to begin construction in 2020, with the Portage Bay Bridge and Roanoke Lid Project scheduled to start in 2023. We’ll share more information about opportunities to get engaged in the design features and aesthetics of these projects as they move forward. Our 2019: The Year Ahead mailer should arrive this week in homes along the SR 520 corridor. We hope you’ll take a few minutes to read it. Montlake Market survey results now online Thank you to everyone who participated in our recent online survey. We solicited community feedback on the upcoming Montlake Project, its potential effects on the Montlake Market, and our ongoing efforts to see if it’s practicable to preserve the market. We received more than 1,700 responses to the Jan. 30-Feb. 14 survey. You can now view the survey results on our website. We also included two opportunities for open-ended responses – and received more than 800 written comments. In the coming weeks, we’ll post a summary of these responses on our website, along with the market-related comments people gave us at our Jan. 30 public meeting or emailed us during the survey period. We will also post a complete, verbatim transcript of all the open-ended survey comments. We look forward to continued communications and interaction with community members and local elected officials regarding the Montlake Market property. You asked, we’re answering We’ve received a lot of questions from the community over the last few months about our upcoming SR 520 construction work in Seattle. We try to answer every question, individually, as promptly as we can. With so many of the recent questions focused on the upcoming Montlake Project or, more specifically, on how our work may affect the Montlake Market, we’ve posted on the SR 520 website our answers to the most frequently asked questions. The first Q&A addresses questions related to the Montlake Market. The second responds to questions about other Montlake Project topics.