Hot on the heels of the City Council approving the First Hill Streetcar line, the Capitol Hill Community Council’s Complete Streetcar Campaign (a group I’ve personally been involved with) is holding a kickoff party Tuesday evening to gather support and spread the word about efforts to extend the line further north and re-envision the Broadway streetscape.
The event is Tuesday, May 4th from 6:30pm to 10:00pm at Sole Repair (1001 E Pike St) on Capitol Hill. Free food is being provided by area businesses.
More information is available on Facebook. See you there!
From the campaign’s website: “The streetcar extension is of great value to First Hill as it connects residents and workers there to retail and restaurant destinations on Broadway. It will also connect them with green space at Volunteer Park and the cultural treasures of the Seattle Asian Art Museum. The extension is a win-win for all of the neighborhoods affected by the streetcar, including First Hill.”
Cost is only $20 million. Why isn’t an LID being pursued along Broadway, the way SLUT was financed to a large degree?
First, the money to complete the streetcar line, at least from International District Station to Capitol Hill Station, is coming from Sound Transit.
Second, the LID for the SLUT is falling well short of covering the cost of operating the SLUT. The City of Seattle is keeping it going with loans from the general fund. Given the city’s ballooning budget problem, that is not going to last forever. And neither is the city going to find the money for extending the First Hill Streetcar without a bond issue or a TIGER grant, IMHO.
Third, the excited supporters of the line are mostly neighbors and mom-and-pop shop owners. Broadway is not the major area of well-financed large corporations that South Lake Union is.
Kudos to the Capitol Hill Community Council for convincing the city to have the streetcar stay on the same streets for as long as possible. (Um, that is, in length, as opposed to taking as long as possible to travel down those streets, or — as is relevant only to a bus line — never changing the route of a line.)
I understand the financing for the initial segment. This is for an extension. A 10 mil LID is not a huge deal, if all of Broadway participates, and I think the LID for SLUT was for capital, not a pertetual operating subsidy, as you suggest.
My original point is still standing. If it’s of great benefit to 1st Hill/Broadway residents and business, then what’s wrong with a Local Improvement District, which is exactly what those things are for?
That gives them ‘skin in the game’ and leverage for all sorts of grant funding to complete the project.
One of the problems with a LID on Broadway is that the property is owned by a huge number of owners, rather than in South Lake Union where Vulcan owns a huge chunk of property. An LID needs 60% approval, which in South Lake Union meant getting Vulcan on board. On Broadway you not only have more owners, but many of them are absentee owners, meaning they are out-of-state or out-of-city. They may not have a real stake in the neighborhood and may not plan on owning the property long enough to care about future gains in land value. Anyway, in my talks with folks in the neighborhood and the city, the consensus is that a LID would be much more difficult in Capitol Hill. Also, you are correct that LIDs, by law, can only be used for capital expenses. It makes sense for us to seek some combination of Sound Transit and federal money before moving on to other options.
Yes, the problem with SLUT funding is lack of streetcar and station sponsors which was expected to bring in several hundred thousand per year. Three stops have no sponsors, including the station right between Amazon buildings:
http://www.seattlestreetcar.org/map/default.asp
Also we recently lost sponsor Evergreen Bank to the FDIC. I don’t know the funding impact, maybe Umpqua Bank will renew the sponsorship.
Isn’t this just a function of the bad economy? Advertising has been in a major decline, so it makes sense that streetcar sponsorship would go into a lull as well.
[hijacking]
Wondering if the streetcar proponents can post a link to the excellent video they ran at the event tonight.