So Long, Sodo

Yuppie flu is spreading through blue-collar Seattle, and Terminal 46 is the hot zone. The gentrification contagion started with Safeco Field and Seahawks Stadium and is now threatening to spread west to the 88-acre container-shipping terminal, the last big facility of the marine industry next to downtown.

You have seen 46's three towering orange cranes south of the ferry dock. They are the biggest container cranes in the world, standing 120 feet tall and costing $7 million apiece. But they represent just a fraction of the $70 million in public investment that is pouring into Terminal 46 from its owners, the Port of Seattle.

Terminal 46 provides 1,336 jobs and results in $73.4 million annually in personal income and $69.6 million in state and local tax revenue. The jobs are good-paying, unionized, blue-collar employment—longshoremen, truckers, and railway workers—precisely the kind of work that Seattle, and the U.S. in general, is desperate to hold on to in this age of outsourcing.

What could fell such a colossus? Try condos, high-tech office space, sweeping parks, and a new sports arena. Frank Stagen, 69, CEO of Nitze-Stagen, is a creative, brilliant, and shrewd player in Seattle's development community and has set his sights on what he says might be the most valuable piece of real estate in Seattle.

Stagen contends that change will sweep away industry at Terminal 46, and rather than be passive and haphazard about the process, Seattle should be bold and decisive and build an iconic structure similar to the Sydney Opera House amidst a 21st-century creative community of housing, offices, and green space. It would, Stagen thinks, simultaneously propel the economy and be a model for how the city can grow up instead of sprawling farther out. Stagen sees such great potential for the site not only because it is larger than Seattle Center's 74 acres and is on the water, but because it would be a blank slate where developers would be unencumbered by existing buildings or the street grid. Call it the Seattle Commons on the Sound.

Stagen and his allies also want the city to approve a host of zoning changes for the SoDo neighborhood, Pioneer Square, and the International District to encourage greater residential density throughout the area south of downtown.

Despite Mayor Greg Nickels' repeated declarations of support for preserving Seattle's remaining industrial lands, hizzoner also thinks that Terminal 46 will, in the long run, be converted to a mixed-use neighborhood by somebody. Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis says the mayor expects Terminal 46 to remain industrial at least through 2015, because of the likely extension of an existing lease; but after that, the site's prime waterfront location means it's destined for nonindustrial use. While Ceis acknowledges that 11 years seems like a long time from now, he thinks Seattle needs to better plan for its future. "It's good to think long term," Ceis says. "The view of Seattle has always been short term."

Nitze-Stagen's president, Kevin Daniels, echoes those points. After South Lake Union is developed, Daniels says, Terminal 46 is the next place for Seattle to grow. In development terms, 2015 is just around the corner. "Let's discuss it now before it's too late," says Daniels.

Ceis also says the mayor supports Stagen's effort to produce more housing in the south end of downtown and will propose a package of zoning changes within the next year.

Against this powerful assembly of real-estate interests and political machinery stands another man with great ambitions that turn on Terminal 46, and he's putting together his own coalition of economic and political power. New Port Commissioner Alec Fisken is an unlikely advocate for the city's gritty blue-collar industries. The 56-year-old, brainy graduate of Yale and Harvard, where he got a master's degree in public administration, makes his daily bread as a policy adviser for the mayor. (Port commissioners are paid $500 a month plus per-diem expenses for their part-time work.) Fisken thinks the Port of Seattle can turn its seaport into a profitable venture by making alliances with other Northwest ports and setting minimum rents on container shipping terminals. In short, flexing a little muscle in the marketplace.

In defense of the working waterfront, Fisken finds himself part of a motley coalition that includes two of the other four Port commissioners. Standing firm against a change of use for Terminal 46 are the fast-talking, labor-backed, environmentalist engineer Lawrence Molloy and the 18-year veteran of the commission, Pat Davis, a global-trade advocate who received notoriety—and brickbats—for bringing us the World Trade Organization conference in 1999. "We can have condos and sports stadiums lots of places," notes Davis, "but you can't bring container ships up Third Avenue." These three commissioners disagree on many other things, but they all believe that Terminal 46 is a unique facility for marine industrial use that, if lost to mixed-use development, could never be re-created elsewhere in Seattle.

(Vision 46)

Terminal 46 sits on deep water that allows the huge container ships to approach without the expensive dredging that ports in other cities have to do. Just one mile down the road is the Seattle International Gateway, a railroad yard where containers that arrive by water from Asia can be shipped east. The terminal also has good access to Interstate 5 and Interstate 90 for containers being carried by truck.