VISION

THE OPPORTUNITY

The confluence of opportunity is unprecedented. 335 acres of public land along Seattle's shore are in transition, facing the most dramatic natural panorama in the state, perhaps in the country. This demands a holistic approach which considers moving vehicles as only one of a host of concerns. We are a city with a densifying downtown and no place to let loose. We are a city heading a charge toward sustainable building, while pouring polluted runoff into our struggling bay. We are a city that remembers its recent wilderness, a city in love with our watery terrain, yet largely remote from contact with the water itself. We are a city that knows landscape as active and visceral, not just as scenic backdrop. How could we build a freeway along our shore without exploring the greater possibilities?

DREAM IT, BE IT

Here is the chance to lure locals, families from all over the region, and visitors to our most sublime and mysterious territory. We have the chance to inject new, year-round economic vitality into a stagnant tourist zone. We can refresh rather than injure Elliott Bay's delicate marine ecology. We can create a place where the urban and natural worlds mix, and in which our city's character is enriched by that confluence, a real place for everyone, not just drivers, or tourists, or waterfront condo owners. This site is too important, too rich, to address it as just a highway megaproject.

Instead, we propose a larger strategy that weaves our more fundamental, complex and diverse desires into an evolving shore for a city pursuing its dream of itself.