Waterfronts

A few weeks ago, I happened to find myself in a conversation with several folks on the subject of public docks. I lamented the disappearance of the old Washington Street public dock just off Pioneer Square, which was the last, neglected public point of access on Elliot Bay to downtown Seattle when I first moved here. By the time I was sailing again regularly, it was long gone, and downtown Seattle is just a drive-by on our way elsewhere in Puget Sound now. It seemed criminal that such a great maritime city should have such lousy waterfront access for boaters.

Captain Dave Petrich, of farmboat.org and cedarwave.com fame, was one of the folks I was talking with and he mentioned, in passing, that in a recent report, Seattle was named one of the worst waterfront cities in the world. I went digging around and found the report in question; it’s not really that recent, but we’re number six on the “bad” scale.

The re-development that will accompany the massive Alaskan Way Viaduct Replacement Project will help remedy many of the report’s critiques, but there’s not much in it for boaters. The Washington Street Pier is slated to return. However, it was never exactly a model of accessibility or accommodation. Bell Harbor Marina will remain the only protected, publicly-accessible dock downtown, but it is ridiculously small by modern marina standards and it’s often full.

The other major saltwater marinas in Seattle, Elliott Bay and Shilshole Bay, are both excellent facilities with reasonable rates and solid amenities, but neither are anywhere even close to their respective neighborhood hubs, let alone downtown, nor are they even minimally served by public transit… a death-knell for any tourist-minded cruisers who might otherwise consider a stop in Seattle.

This got me to thinking about some of the other urban waterfronts along the Salish Sea we have visited. Vancouver, Victoria, and Nanaimo all have extremely integrated urban/shore interfaces… and, not coincidentally, a lot of visiting cruiser traffic.

Petrich is pitching an idea for re-using some of the old 520 bridge pontoons to form a breakwater on the downtown waterfront to shield a new marina in the area of Pier 48, using the Washington Street landing as a base, after the Viaduct replacement project is complete. I thought it was a great idea; in fact, with a little digging, I found that it is one that has sprung up in the imaginations of several participants in an informal challenge called Re-think/Re-use to determine the fate of the old pontoons. Dave’s idea is modest in comparison; some of the designs call for Shilshole-scale marinas sheltered behind several of the old 520 spans.

At this point, it seems unlikely that such a project will come to fruition (although Dave was also one of the original proponents for a deep-bore tunnel on the waterfront as a replacement for the Alaskan Way Viaduct; small ideas sometimes find their footing to grow into major initiatives). But as he and I were talking about the idea, I found myself thinking that it’s a pity that a city with so much to offer so close to the water, and with such a tremendous maritime heritage (and still a vital center for the marine trades) has such a terrible relationship with its own shoreline. Seattle is already a destination for larger cruising ships, a role that brings in thousands of tourists (and their hard-earned money) every summer. Why not smaller craft as well?

Life on Lake Union is as close as we have found here to the cosmopolitan marriage of cruising and culture other major cities manage to offer. Yet it’s a venue that is itself threatened both by the relative inaccessibility it holds for cruising boats and the regulatory environment that the city is attempting to construct in the name of saving it. Even if the former could be addressed by a new marina downtown, the latter seems likely to persist. The city’s original proposal to define and regulate as a “live-aboard” anyone spending more than four nights in a given week aboard their vessel has been scaled back sharply, but in it, and simultaneous efforts to otherwise restrict non-industrial waterfront uses, there is some indication as to the general direction in which local government is heading. And though the Puget Sound waterfront of the city is not favored with any terrific natural anchorages in the first place, it doesn’t matter much, because the city allows recreational anchorage in only one location, and that’s on Lake Washington. The red carpet is not exactly out for small-craft here.

Of course, it’s not as if other northwestern cities have not gone through similar growing pains and difficulties with their waterfront communities. Victoria and Vancouver both have gone through spasms dealing with the challenges of offering attractive and accessible space for cruisers alongside sometimes cranky permanent residents and challenging industrial spaces. Nanaimo is going through such difficulties even now.

Vancouver, particularly, had little success revitalizing the downtown waterfront until the international Exposition in 1986 provided motivation and funding to clean up the False Creek waterway, work that was furthered during the Olympics three years ago. Other Vancouver waterways, such as the Fraser River, remain relatively amenable to leisurely, unregulated anchoring, but that situation may not persist, either, as derelicts there prove an increasing threat.

Producing a waterfront that is friendly and amenable to cruisers requires a delicate balance between over-regulating them out of town, and at the same time providing effective tools for managing the inevitable floes of derelicts that may arrive under the same banner. I think Seattle’s fears of an exploding liveaboard population, whether well-grounded ornot, are serving to cripple the wonderful cruising destination it could be for transient boaters.

But as many other cities around the Salish Sea have aptly demonstrated, it doesn’t have to be an either/or situation. False Creek is thriving, for all the controversy. Victoria’s harbour, despite being even more tightly regulated, manages to accomodate liveaboards and still provide substantial amounts of safe, affordable transient moorage. And smaller cities, from Poulsbo to Port Townsend to Port Hardy, are all managing to thread the needle between providing facilities for cruisers and turning into floating shanty-towns.

Seattle could do it, too, and we should.