With Lunar New Year around the corner and people from around the city likely to be visiting Chinatown and the International District for the festivities, it's an important time to think about the past and future of this vibrant neighborhood.
Chinatown hasn't always lived in the sandwich of land between Jackson and Dearborn just south of downtown. Successive displacement caused by fires, anti-Chinese riots, and infrastructure projects pushed the neighborhood to where it is today, on land that in 1857 sat on or below the shoreline of Elliot Bay. Since then, the construction of I-5, the former Kingdome, and other major projects have continued to impact the Chinatown-International District (CID). Now, many residents and community members fear that, as Sound Transit builds a new light rail line from West Seattle to Ballard, the new station planned for the CID along that route could cause a fresh wave of displacement.
The exact location of that station, however, is still up for debate, and a final decision won't be made for a couple of years yet. But the information that the Sound Transit board receives now from their staff, outside experts, and community members alike will ultimately shape what that decision is.
Right now, there are seven options total across three possible sites: 5th Avenue South just east of the existing CID station, 4th Avenue South just west of that station, or South Dearborn Street a quarter mile south of the existing station just a block below Uwajimaya.
In 2022, when Sound Transit released its first draft environmental impact statement for the West Seattle to Ballard line, there were just six alternatives, three options of varying depth on 4th Avenue, and three on 5th Avenue. Seeing these proposals, the Chinatown-International District community pushed back hard. The 5th Avenue option couldn't happen, they said.
The options proposed for 5th Avenue, right about where the Chinatown Gate stands, would carve a hole in a core of the neighborhood — tearing down the buildings that currently house Joe's Bar and Grill, Mochinut, Seattle Best Tea, Ping's Dumpling House, UmmaDak, Jollidaze Cafe, Oasis Tea Zone, and Bank of America.
The main attraction of the 5th Avenue location is its quick connections to existing local and regional transit options and its ability to provide ample space for new transit-oriented development of both commercial and residential spaces. But advocates in the community doubted whether businesses displaced during the six to seven years of construction would be able to survive in the interim, let alone be able to afford to return to the new retail space when it opened.
UmmaDak specializes in Korean fried chicken and serves up onion rings, waffle fries, and seasoned rice cakes.
Ping's Dumpling House serves dumplings and other Chinese specialty dishes. According to Vanishing Seattle, it's been open since 2012, and the dumpling recipe is from the owner's hometown of Qingdao, Northern China.
Seattle Best Tea, owned by Joe Hsu and Lydia Lin since 1996, serves quality products from Taiwan organic and Chinese high mountain teas to boba tea and tea-flavored ice cream.
Mochinut is a franchise selling mochi donuts, Korean cheese on a stick, and Korean hotdogs.
Joe's Bar and Grill is a well-known dive bar that's been at the corner of South King Street and 5th Avenue South for decades.
Oasis Tea Zone (at this site since 2001) sells boba teas, popcorn chicken, rice bowls, Nutella wontons, and other snacks. They're open late and have a mini arcade.
Jollidaze is owned by the Le family and is a year-round, Christmas holiday-themed ice cream shop.
Bank of America CID branch has been serving this neighborhood for decades.
Construction is another concern for the community. Along 5th Avenue South, construction may take five to six years for the 5th Avenue Shallow Diagonal Alternative. Businesses such as Hood Famous, Dough Zone, and E-Jae Pak Mor would be heavily impacted.
Given all the potential detriments, the CID community responded to the 5th Avenue proposal with near-universal condemnation.
Some, like Betty Lau and Brien Chow, who have been following discussions around the new CID station since 2019, argued that Sound Transit should then "move forward on 4th." But many others didn't see the option on 4th as being much better.
Like 5th, the 4th Avenue option would provide the opportunity to create a sleek transit hub connecting multiple light rail lines, Amtrak, the Sounder, the street car, and a variety of bus routes. Moreover, it would do all this without causing direct harm to the community in the way 5th would.
But building along 4th would also be the most costly, time consuming, and technically challenging option while also creating rampant congestion in the surrounding neighborhoods, the CID in particular.
While no construction project is without its complications, pursuing 4th Avenue would mean having to demolish a portion of the 4th Avenue viaduct, contend with the existing BNSF railway, work around underground structures stabilizing Union Station and nearby buildings, and build within even more of the loose soils piled up south of downtown over a century ago during the Jackson Street Regrade that excavated a hill and created new land from the waste.
All of this means that the construction would be an exceedingly complex process that could easily take twice as long as building on 5th, potentially up to 12 years.
Moreover, two community organizations, the CID Coalition and Puget Sound Sage, have argued that building on 4th would also have an unacceptable impact on the community. Constructing this station would entail shutting down at least a portion of 4th Avenue South for years. Around 30,000 vehicles per day travel along the 4th Avenue South viaduct. So, any construction closures would produce "substantial traffic detours through nearby arterials and neighborhoods such as the CID and Pioneer Square," a Sound Transit report says.
Many of these cars and trucks would be diverted into the CID up 5th, 6th, and Maynard avenues, organizers with Puget Sound Sage and the CID Coalition say. They fear that all these vehicles clogging neighborhood streets could rob them of something that makes the CID special: its pedestrian-friendly environment where community members hop between shops and restaurants — most of them owned by families who have long lived in the neighborhood.
Even the 4th Avenue advocate Betty Lau mentioned that it is important for her to be able to walk between shops around the CID — which she emphasized as a part of her opposition to a 5th Avenue station.
However, a survey conducted by the local nonprofit Historic South Downtown highlighted that people are attracted to the convenience of a 4th Avenue station. In a letter to the Sound Transit board dated November 14, 2024, Historic South Downtown said that, in their survey, they found that people supported the 4th Avenue option "by an exceedingly wide margin." Around half of respondents cited convenience as their main justification.
Meilani Mandery, an organizer with the CID Coalition, is an avid transit user and understands the allure of convenience. "If we were building a city from scratch, then of course creating the sexiest, most efficient, transit system would be the dream," she said, "but we're already here, and you've got to build around us. You can't build through us again."
"Urbanists care about convenience, and they don't care what gets rolled over for that convenience," said Rachtha Danh, an organizer with Puget Sound Sage. "We do."
With all the concerns that emerged around the 4th Avenue option during a public comment period in 2022, Sound Transit proposed a seventh potential option just south of CID along Dearborn Street.
The Dearborn option is what groups like the CID Coalition, Puget Sound Sage, and InterIm Community Development Association prefer.
Since the station isn't directly adjacent to the existing transit hub, it doesn't offer the same connectivity that 4th or 5th would. Still, because the proposed location is only blocks south of the existing CID station, supporters argue that transferring between the different transit services would be only slightly less convenient but no less feasible.
Brien Chow, however, believes that building on Dearborn instead of 4th would break the spine of the emerging Sound Transit network. "It takes the possibility of the regional system from a world-class system to a third-class system," he said.
He and Betty Lau also point out that the shift to Dearborn Street could make it more challenging for people who aren't able-bodied to visit the CID or take full advantage of Seattle's public transit.
Mandery, Danh, and their comrades in Puget Sound Sage and the CID Coalition have a big reason to support the Dearborn alternative, though: It would minimize the direct impact to the community.
The construction would demolish a gas station, occur across the street from the Nikkei Manor retirement home, and encroach on the Inscape Building, which provides studio space for local artists and is the former historic Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) building. Other than that, the community impacts are limited, given that much of the land is either vacant or underutilized.
And unlike the station option along 4th, the Dearborn alternative also provides the opportunity for building new, equitable transit-oriented development of housing and commercial space.
Lau and Chow are skeptical that this development would actually benefit the CID. But Mandery and Danh argued that it's perhaps the only opportunity that the CID community has ever had to actually expand and bring much-needed affordable housing into the neighborhood at the same time.
Derek Lum, InterIm's community and advocacy manager, also said that InterIm prefers the Dearborn alternative because of its potential for equitable, transit-oriented development. He did acknowledge, however, "it's not just going to happen through osmosis." It'll take the City, Sound Transit, and community organizations working together to ensure that new development is built in a way that actually serves the CID community, which includes thinking about family housing and finding ways to make it affordable for people whose annual income falls far below the Seattle average.
For now, Sound Transit has said that Dearborn is their preferred alternative too, but it'll still be a couple of years before the final location is selected, and their opinions could certainly shift.
Later this year, Sound Transit and the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) will release an updated draft environmental impact station for the Ballard Link Extension. Once the document is made public, the agency will invite people to provide public comment.
From there, the Sound Transit board can either affirm or modify the preferred alternative, said Rachelle Cunningham, a spokesperson for Sound Transit. Afterwards, there will be another round of environmental review.
Once the board receives the final environmental impact statement from the FTA, they will select the project to build sometime in 2026 or 2027.
In the meantime, the Sound Transit board is always open to receiving public comment on the proposed locations for the CID station (and any other future stations) during their System Expansion Committee meetings on the second Thursday of each month at Union Station.
You can learn more about the alternatives by visiting CIDStationAlternatives.info.
This article is published under a Seattle Human Services Department grant, “Resilience Amidst Hate,” in response to anti-Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander violence.
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