Seattle City Council Civic Development, Public Assets, & Native Communities Committee 1/16/2019

Are we ready?

Okay, let's get going here.

Let's do a call to order here.

Good afternoon.

This is a meeting of the Civic Development, Public Asset, and Native Communities Committee.

This is our first committee in 2019. Happy New Year, everybody.

The date is January 16 and the time is 1.30.

I'm Councilmember Juarez, Chair of the Committee, and I will soon be joined by Councilmember Bagshaw and Councilmember Gonzalez.

I want to thank all of you for being here today.

Under the Sheriff's Report, we have two presentations.

One from the Department of Parks and Recreation on the Discovery Park easement.

This will be followed by a public hearing specifically on item one of the agenda.

Second, we will get a presentation from the Office of the Waterfront on the legislative package regarding improving our waterfront, lovingly known as the LID, and all the documents and ordinances that will follow.

So with that, let's move into public comment, and we will take public comment at this time.

Please keep in mind and watch the clock that you have two minutes.

Please speak to the matters on the agenda.

When your name is called, please state your name for the record.

And again, please be mindful of the time so we can get through today's agenda.

So let's start, Nageen, with our very first, or how many people do we have signed up for the first, for general public comment?

Okay, let's start.

First is Alex Zimmerman.

Mr. Zimmerman.

Thank you.

Happy New Year.

So I want to talk about agenda number two, about waterfronts.

This plan that you have here to me look very strange.

It's like a joke.

So people who live in waterfront apartment will be paid $8 per month.

For my understanding, for last five, six years, because it's tunnel will become prices for one bedroom apartment.

I don't talk about three or five or 10 bedroom.

jumped three times, more than a million dollars.

So these people make approximately 300 percentage only for the last couple of years.

Right now, there will be another jump in prices because right now we have a very nice view.

You know what I mean?

We will have a very nice park around this for multimillionaires.

You know what I mean?

And poor people like me and another or minority or poor people will become sitting Bench, and look, wow, it's a beautiful city, Seattle.

How many millionaires live here?

Oh my gosh, I'm very happy I can see Cedillion and Branch and look, ocean.

Nice, it's a joke.

$1,900 is $8 per month.

It's a joke.

So my proposition is very simple right now.

How about 10% of profit?

What does this crook make, pardon, millionaire make for the last five, six years?

Simple, 10%.

It will be for another five-year jump up, another probably double.

So this is very simple.

So right now I speak to everybody who listen to me.

Is money what is we need doing?

Is tax sanction what is we need doing?

Not employee.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Zimmerman.

Next.

Bob Messina.

Okay, that's working.

Thank you.

So my name's Bob Messina.

I'm here to speak on the lid waterfront agreement details.

And I'm very supportive of it, first of all.

I'm not really here to I'm not an owner downtown.

I wasn't involved in that at all.

But I have been following the waterfront for the last 10 years.

And so this is a very good outcome for me to see this.

So when I saw your presentation materials online today, there's a downloaded slide presentation.

And I read through that.

Very good, comprehensive.

But I'm concerned about the 4.8 million that you have listed.

that the waterfront has listed for the maintenance operations and security, which is fine and good.

But on page 22, which details and breaks down this maintenance budget, it curiously omits the whole Aquarium Plaza and Overlook Walk as a non, it's non-covered.

So in other words, this page says all these areas are covered.

This area is isolated, it's called area number six, it does not have any coverage under this 4.8 million.

And it's more of a curiosity question.

I'm sure there's gonna be an answer to that.

But if you're gonna be voting on this, you don't wanna vote on something that this area is designated area number six, and in parentheses it says TDD.

Okay, that's to be determined.

So at the end of the month, you don't wanna be voting on a waterfront maintenance and security packages that leaves out the aquarium plaza to be determined.

I don't think that's satisfactory for everyone to be in the clear about what the maintenance is going to be of that.

I mean, it's clear the aquarium is a separate building, but if there's two big elevators there, there's stairs and steps, that's just a continuation of all the waterfront.

There can be a budget drawn up for that and presented to you.

So I'm here to say that I support everything, but I believe there's that incomplete part with the aquarium plaza.

So when you get to that point in your presentation, maybe you could inquire what's going on there.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next, next we have Nancy Bagley.

Good afternoon.

My name is Nancy Bagley.

I'm co-chair of the Waterfront Committee for the League of Women Voters of Seattle-King County, and here to speak on behalf of the League.

The League has been following this waterfront development process since 2004, since the very first charrette design meetings, the first public vision meetings, public participation.

We've been excited about the redevelopment of the waterfront, the possibilities with the viaduct coming down, And now the viaduct is down, plans are moving forward, and we congratulate the city, the mayor and the city council, as we've written to you and emailed.

We appreciate all the work that has gone into this plan and program, and now we encourage you to move forward.

There's this important step of the legislative passage to make the local improvement district portion of the package happen.

This has been part of the planning all along, and so we encourage you now to take that leap forward, move forward, and let's get it done for the citizens of Seattle.

Thank you.

Nancy, thank you so much for coming today.

Please sit down.

And I appreciate the fact that you have come over the years.

And a few years ago, you were not so supportive.

And I recall that when the aquarium was looking at expanding in options A, B, or C, and you were very adamant that we needed to make sure that it was on the C parcel, which thanks to all of the people that were here that helped us get there.

But I want to acknowledge how much work you've done and just appreciate the fact that you are coming today and saying you support this on behalf of League of Women Voters, but that your voice made a big difference.

Thank you.

Is there anyone else?

That concludes public comment.

Okay, great.

So with that, we will close public comment, and we will move into items of business.

And Nagini, you want to read that into the record, and then we'll invite the folks up here who are going to be presenting on the Discovery Park Partial Transfer of Jurisdictional Ordinance.

I'm guessing this is from DPR to SPU, and Tracy's going to...

Oh, okay, we've got the whole crew here.

Item number one, Discovery Park Partial Transfer of Jurisdiction Ordinance.

Great, so you guys know, you can introduce yourselves, and then we'll go through the, I guess it's a short PowerPoint, but it's short and sweet, so let's get started.

Tracy Ratzliff, Council of Central Staff.

Christopher Williams, Interim Superintendent, Seattle Parks.

Richard Golagung with the City Parks Department.

Hi.

Thanks.

Great, so I'll start out with a little high-level background.

We are required to come here whenever the department engages in real property transactions that require a transfer of jurisdiction, the acquisition of new property, lot boundary adjustments, really anything that affects the city's or the department's management of real property.

So I'd like to share a little bit of the background relevant to the ordinance under consideration today.

The city of Seattle adopted the Discovery Park Development Plan in 1986 This included the vision of acquiring the former military property and turning it into open space.

Over the years, we've made progress toward this development.

In 2007, we acquired an area called Cape Heart Housing.

It was a major addition of 24 acres of new park land in Discovery Park.

Under the purchase and sell agreement, the council authorized that the historically protected former military housing would remain as housing for private parties.

So this is the officer housing above the meadow.

It's an end holding.

The agreement also required that the underground water and sewer system that served the military housing would be upgraded and then transferred to Seattle Public Utilities.

And we've completed that step and are here to transfer the sewer system to Seattle Public Utilities.

Developing this work, program has been a collaborative effort between our two departments.

And I want to thank SPU Director Mami Hara and Danielle Purnell from SPU who've worked collaboratively with us to make sure that we follow through on this.

So at this point, I'd like to turn this over to Richard Gulagong from our real estate office to describe the proposed legislation in more detail and perhaps even answer questions.

Thank you, Christopher.

So as Christopher said, We basically purchased 23.9 acres of property from the federal government in 2007, and part of the purchase and sales agreement required an upgrade of utility systems.

Excluded from the transfer were the private inholding properties, which were formal Navy housing, and they required water and sewer for residential use.

Going to the next page.

And so why is the PTJO needed, which is a partial transfer of jurisdiction ordinance?

It basically takes the place of an easement, which is what would happen if this was a private property and SPU had to access the systems without, you know, any restrictions, number one.

But because it's a city department within a city, an easement's not the way you do it.

It has to be a partial transfer of jurisdiction.

The upgraded water and sewer systems have already been installed and they're functioning.

SPU has surveyed and accepted them formally also.

And since the system is underground and will require maintenance, SPU needs to be able to access the facilities without going through a permitting process through the Parks Department, which would, you know, reduce time, response, and efficiencies.

I might add that this also gets us around the whole I-42 set of constraints around utilities and parkland.

And every time the systems are accessed, the site restoration is required on park property.

So this graphic sort of shows you the alignment of the actual PTJL system.

The purple line is sewer.

The blue is water.

As you can see, it comes up south from Emerson Street and it progresses north through the park.

The two or the three hatched yellow figures are the actual private inholdings.

Montana Circles on the north.

and Washington Avenues, North and South, are below.

And are there any questions?

The nicest part about this is it's pretty simple.

The transfer is going to Seattle Public Utilities.

The work is done.

You're asking us to approve this.

Cut and dry.

Yes.

All right.

No, I don't think I have.

It's pretty straightforward.

Thank you, Richard.

You're welcome.

Christopher, we're not voting on this today.

We're just getting the information.

We had a chance to go through the ordinance and through the PowerPoint.

So thank you very much.

Thank you.

And I also would like to echo Christopher's sentiment that this is a great collaborative effort between SPU and the Parks Department to get this done.

So thank you, Council.

Okay, so don't leave yet, because we have to have a public hearing on this piece.

Okay.

So is there anyone signed up for public hearing on this particular piece of, or this information that they want to comment on?

Yes, we have one individual.

Alex Zimmerman.

Awesome.

Hello again, Mr. Zimmerman.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Alexey Merman.

I once spoke about this because I'm very interested about this.

For 250 years, what is America exist as government got bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger.

and worse, dirty, dirty, dirty, and dirty.

Totally right now, Seattle, good example how government destroy all people, all America.

This stupidity from business point of view, totally different.

Because the small people controlling by off-buying people can be more productive and better.

This American principle, that's why I come to America.

Because I don't like big government who are not working.

Look at Europe for the last 100 years.

Big government, more trouble.

Seattle, good example.

12,000 people, no one working or good.

If we pay a billion dollars for this salary.

So right now I speak to everybody, we need to stop this fascism.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

Okay, so public comment is now complete on that matter.

Let's read the second matter into the record, and then we'll have the individuals come up for the Office of the Waterfront.

Item two, Waterfront Legislative Package.

Local Improvement District Formation, Protest Waiver Agreement, Philanthropic Commitment, and Operations and Maintenance Plan.

We're gonna come talk to you tomorrow about that.

So we got a lot of folks here.

Hey, Dory.

We have Mayor Royer here.

Let's see, have a seat.

You guys decide where you, we don't have assigned seating, so y'all can decide where you want to sit.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, we have seven, eight people.

Where do you want it?

I'll just look.

Can you read this into the record?

Did you already read it into the record?

Okay, great.

So before we get started, as you all know, we have been working on this central, thank you, Council Member, the waterfront issue has been going on for a long time.

It's been documented, been going on since 2009 without going through the whole issue of everything that's been in front of just us, just this city council.

My understanding is that you're going to walk us through this 26-page PowerPoint, and we will talk about the LID formation, the protest waiver agreement, and the operation and maintenance agreement.

So what I'll do now is we'll do introductions, and then I'll say a few more words, and then I'll let you guys kick it off.

Tracy Razliff, Council Central Staff.

Marshall Foster, Director of the Office of Waterfront and Civic Projects.

Joshua Curtis, Partnerships Manager at the Office of the Waterfront and Civic Projects.

Christopher Williams, Seattle Parks.

I'm Eric McConnachie.

I work for the City Council and the Council of Central Staff.

Heidi Hughes, Executive Director, Friends of Waterfront Seattle.

Maggie Walker, Chair of the Friends of Waterfront Seattle Board and co-chair with Charlie of the Central Waterfront Committee.

which was the earliest committee.

And we have former mayor, Mr. Royer.

Introduce yourself.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I do it for you.

I'm trying to be respectful.

Yes.

Sorry.

We all know you.

Yeah.

I'm Charlie Royer.

I'm now the vice president of the Friends of the Waterfront Seattle and former mayor of Seattle during the period of time that Discovery Park was discovered.

You were one of the original co-chairs, right?

Back in 2009, is that correct?

Appointed by Mayor Nichols.

Okay, so you were one of the original co-chairs with Maggie, correct?

Yes.

Ten years.

Ten years you've been the co-chair.

Thank you very much for being here today, by the way, and being a supporter and giving us information.

And I just want people to know, particularly the viewing public, that you've been very gracious in giving me information and background and wisdom, and I appreciate that.

Well, we really appreciate your work on this going back since you came on the council and probably were interested in it way before.

We appreciate it.

Well, you have, working with great people, Maggie and Heidi, super free Hughes, and of course, Office of the Waterfront folks.

It's been a long journey, but I'm excited that we get through this PowerPoint because I know my colleagues have some questions.

I know you saw some questions that were raised during public comment.

We've spent countless hours with you, with Tracy and Eric, going over this, what it means, the negotiation team from the executive, and then on the legislative side, back and forth, back and forth.

So I'm really excited and I'm hoping that we are now at a threshold, the tipping point.

So I'm going to turn it over to you, Marshall, and you're going to walk us through this.

And my colleagues may interrupt you with questions.

All right.

Thank you, Chair Juarez and committee members.

It's always good to be here, but it's truly a delight for us to be here today.

The legislation that is in front of you is In a lot of ways, the culmination of this 10 years of work, where we are right now is we closed the viaduct on Friday.

Oh, we did?

Oh, we did, in case you didn't know.

No, I didn't know.

And I think all of us have been talking about what it was gonna feel like when that viaduct closed, and we've been imagining and envisioning, and we've been working with communities all over the city to envision this waterfront, and we're gonna talk about that.

But for the first time over the past few years, we can feel what it's really going to be like.

And this park, this 20 acres, will be an incredible asset for this community over many, many decades to come.

And the legislation that we have in front of you today really is the critical, I'm not gonna say the final piece of legislation, because there will be more, but it is...

an absolutely central part of completing not only the physical vision, but part of what's so unique about this is the partnership that has driven this.

This is a very unique project because of the scale of philanthropic partnership, business community, government, advocates working together literally for decades.

Work that goes even before the Waterfront Committee with many organizations who've been part of making this happen.

So we're very excited to be here.

Let me just quickly summarize the presentation for this morning, this afternoon, excuse me.

We're going to give you a quick background and sort of legislative scorecard on how we've gotten to today.

We're going to walk you through the key elements of each of the three ordinances.

There's three ordinances in this legislative package, an LID formation ordinance, a protest waiver agreement and an ordinance that would adopt or agree to that agreement, and an ordinance that would essentially deal with funding and the future operations and management of the waterfront.

And that last one is probably the most complex, and that really does put in place the partnership between the Friends of Waterfront Seattle and the Seattle Parks Department and our office to ensure this waterfront is safe and well-maintained for decades to come.

And the third one is the one that has the attachments from A to F in it.

That's correct.

With the term sheet and the pilot project and all of that.

That is correct.

Okay, great.

Because that's really the meat of the matter.

That is the meat of the matter, yes.

So let's keep moving.

Quick reminder of the scale of public discussion and engagement that happened around this.

This was just a few images from the work we did that culminated in the waterfront concept design and strategic plan Again, this great partnership between the city team, the Waterfront Partnerships Committee that really culminated in 2012 in a very strong, very broad agreement on what the vision for this waterfront should be.

And people engaged in everything from large events with literally 1,000 people attending to small conversations in pretty much every corner of the city that resulted in that work.

And I will tell you, that is still, the work that was completed there and the council actions that endorsed it, that followed, have been the guiding light for the design and what we now intend to build.

The picture on the bottom left, that's Maggie's shop, right?

Yeah, that's one of the, we call them graffiti boards that we used in the early phase where people could just go wherever their heart wanted to go in terms of what they wanted to see in the waterfront.

The top left was a kind of a watershed.

That was our first public meeting.

We expected you know, maybe 100 people, maybe 150 people.

That's the aquarium's main room.

We had 1,000 people, and the fire marshal actually had to tell us not to let anyone else in the meeting, which you never want to be in that situation, but it just shows you the scale of excitement and interest that we've had.

And, you know, Council Member Bagshaw could tell you about some of the workshops that preceded this with, you know, Allied Arts and other organizations.

There's always been a huge amount of public desire for what is now happening.

Right.

Council Member Bagshaw actually wrote Ferris wheel on that yellow.

That's why we have a Ferris wheel now.

Go ahead.

The other thing I just want to emphasize about this early phase of the work, we didn't have the opposite waterfront yet, and that was actually a good thing.

This was really formed out of a partnership internal to the city between the planning department, which was then DPD, the Department of Transportation, and the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation.

And there's been a huge, I guess, partnership and sense of common cause here from very early on in doing that planning and now being able to deliver on the vision.

Christopher, do you want to?

Sure.

So I think it was maybe six or seven mayors ago we got engaged in this work.

Can't keep up.

We are really happy to have been a part of this journey and I want to commend the volunteers who are here and Marshall and his leadership with the Office of the Waterfront.

I think for keeping us included all the way along this journey and This project represents an opportunity to add 20 acres of parkland to the waterfront.

And the city is built out and developed as Seattle.

You'd never dream we'd have this opportunity right now to make this happen.

Going forward, our role will be to maintain Waterfront Park and deliver the maintenance.

And I think the value in this partnership is that it represents what the partners do really well, i.e. the Friends of the Waterfront are great at fundraising, programming, and activation, and we maintain stuff.

And we're excited about that role to maintain 20 acres of new Waterfront Park land.

So we're excited to be part of this team and have been developing our muscle and capacity to be a good partner in some of the work we've done at Westlake Park and Occidental Park with deepening our partnership relationships with DSA and some of those other communities.

Thank you, Christopher.

All right, the Waterfront for All.

So you've seen these before.

These are the guiding principles that were created out of the first phase of the Waterfront Committee's work and the public engagement that took place.

These were actually endorsed at council in resolution and the early phase of the work.

And these have been really central.

Waterfront for All has been our banner from very early on.

But some of those other key concepts, sustainable design, reconnecting to the waterfront as that That resonates with everyone at a very deep level.

Mobility and access.

You know, this project is a park project.

It is also an infrastructure and transportation project.

We're delivering critical infrastructure with the new surface street, Alaskan way, with the new transit pathways, with the bike and pedestrian elements, and, you know, a really important part which I think you just heard from Christopher and we'll talk about more with friends, is consistent leadership and not only looking at design concept, but also operations.

We've been very focused on the plan to maintain, the plan for safety, making a sustainable plan to operate this park at a high level from the very first days of the work.

That's been as important as the design.

And I understand that these seven principles came out of the 2011 ordinance.

That's correct.

That's correct.

And I think with that, yes, just a summary of the total program.

As Christopher said, 20 acres of public parks, reconstruction of Pier 62, which is already underway, Waterfront Park, the new surface Alaskan Way connections, the new linear public promenade, which will run from Pioneer Square to Pike Place Market.

the Overlook Walk, which is one of the key new elements, which will create an elevated park connection from Pike Place Market to the waterfront, and then a whole series of east-west street improvements that will create green fingers from the waterfront reaching into all of our downtown districts, Pioneer Square in the ID, the Central Retail District at Pike and Pine, completing the Bell Street Park, these kind of critical neighborhood connections that make the waterfront accessible to our center city.

our construction schedule.

We won't go through this in detail.

Now through 2023, what you will see with the completion of the viaduct demolition this summer is the waterfront construction will come right on their tail and ramp up significantly.

We're already under construction on several elements.

We already have a very active construction presence on the waterfront.

That will be the presence by the end of this year.

We will complete the surface street, Alaskan Way, by late 2021. And that's a critical milestone for mobility in the center city.

And then by early 2023, the entire project will be completed.

So let's walk through the scorecard of kind of where we've been on the legislation to get us the question.

Go ahead.

Marshall, you just mentioned that on that main corridor aspect on this timeline, that indicates it'll be completed by 2021. You mentioned that that is a critical point for mobility and just for folks who may not be following this project as closely as you and others might be.

Can you explain a little bit more about why?

Sure.

So, you know, we're all in the Seattle squeeze right now.

We're all, you know, finding our way with the closure of the viaduct.

A critical point in the construction of this project is that date, which is essentially, you know, the second half of 2021. We will open Alaskan Way, which will open up essentially more traffic capacity on Alaskan Way to help on the surface street, not the tunnel, on the surface street to take pressure off of all of our other north-south streets in downtown.

We will be opening the transit path.

much earlier.

I should have mentioned that before.

So an important part of the planning here is that Alaskan Way and then Columbia Street going into the downtown and up to 3rd Avenue will be the key transit pathway for Southwest King County and West Seattle, all the bus service there.

That will open earlier.

That's kind of critical path for us when we start in the fall.

And during the entire construction period, we will be keeping two lanes of traffic open in each direction along a temporary roadway along the waterfront.

So just to be clear, for local business access, for freight mobility, for all those things, we're going to ensure you can still get to the waterfront.

It'll get much better, Council Member, once the full road is open in 21.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Gonzalez.

So on the background, again, we've talked about 10 years of work.

You can see our first actions to establish the Central Waterfront Partnerships Committee, that was under Mayor Nichols.

They have played a critical role from day one, and Maggie and Charlie have literally been with us from day one.

That resulted in the creation of the guiding principles, and ultimately in 2012, the city council endorsed that concept design and strategic plan that I talked about.

An important note on that is we not only were talking about design, we were talking about how we would fund and build the project.

And the concept of a local improvement district and the concept of significant philanthropy were both incorporated at that time.

So again, very deep in the DNA of our work.

Those actions also called for the creation of a non-profit partner.

One of the things we've seen, both in Seattle and elsewhere, is the strength of those non-profit partners to help us activate and animate public space.

And so, shortly after those actions, the Friends of Waterfront was also established as a non-profit organization.

and actually goes on in 2014 to open Waterfront Space and to start really working with us, as Christopher described, on work in the field to activate public parks.

They've been a great partner at Waterfront Park already for several years, bringing people to the waterfront with great events that are super free.

Thank you, Councilmember Mosqueda, for joining us.

So 2013, I'll just get one other point on here.

In 2013, work really advanced significantly after council's actions to endorse the path.

We put the waterfront program in the capital budget, including the local improvement district, sort of planning for those investments, and a lot of technical work began on the LID.

And then in 2014, under Mayor Murray, we created the Office of the Waterfront.

And that's where we consolidated kind of key staff from planning and parks and DOT under one, to deliver this work.

2017, so you'll notice there's a little break there, 14 to 17. So one of the key things that we have dealt with successfully was the delay with Bertha, with the tunneling.

And so during that period, we really, we slimmed down, we stayed as lean as we could to sort of, you know, not spend unnecessarily.

And in 2017, as that path started to open up again, we came back to council to reaffirm the commitment to a lid as a key element, and the whole package of how we would move the waterfront forward.

At that same time, we asked Friends to come forward with an initial pledge of 25 million of the total fundraising campaign.

We're gonna talk about that in a little more detail in a minute, as part of the action that's in front of you now.

And I think they're in a place where they've definitely been able to do that.

So you can see there, essentially, those elements came together in 17. Outreach around the local improvement district really ramped up to a broad range of property owners around that time.

In 2018, we did the special benefit analysis, which is a requirement as part of the local improvement district to essentially determine how much special benefit in terms of real estate value is brought to downtown properties by virtue of the new park.

And that was actually done by an independent appraiser for the city.

In 2018, it was distributed broadly, and we actually created a set of a whole variety of different outreach tools around that that we'll talk about.

We had a council action in May of last year which was the resolution of intent to form.

That's the first formal step in the creation of an LID and that was completed in May and resulted then in a series of public hearings and additional outreach.

Some of that was what's required under state law, public hearings and kind of more traditional means.

We also did a whole variety of voluntary outreach as well that we'll talk about.

All right, so that gives you a quick overview.

Joshua's gonna walk you through each of the three elements of the legislation.

We should add that council did hire a hearing examiner over the summer.

Can you just briefly talk about that quickly?

Yeah, so we, per state law, city council has the option to either hold the hearings themselves or to hire a professional judge or a hearing examiner.

Council opted to do the latter.

So we hired, or you hired, the Seattle hearing examiner Ryan Bansal and he Conducted all for the public hearings and then he was back here in September to Convey to you all the results of those hearings and the report came out in September as well.

It did.

That's right.

You're an examiner Yes, and that is posted on your website.

Okay, thank you.

There's also a link from our website.

So before, thank you Marshall, before I get into this, I just want to call your attention to the number here of the legislation.

This is the 6,751st legislative action that you all or that the City Council has taken related to a local improvement district.

We owe Dory for that little piece of information because I was wondering why It was number 6751, and she said it's because it's the 6,700.

So when the people were saying that there were no lids ever done in the city of Seattle, Dory said, oh no, there's been well over 6,000 that have been done.

Well, there's been 6,751 that have been initiated.

Initiated, OK.

Not all of them were finally formed, but a great you know, the great majority of them were formed early in the 1900s.

There were about eight a week being formed.

Dory, you're being kind because you actually sent me an email telling me that the first lid was in 1899 or something, right?

Isn't that what you sent me?

1890. Yeah.

She's a nerd like me. 1891.

March 1891 for Broadway.

I just made an offhand remark and I got an email from Dory.

It said 1891, very first lid.

So thank you, Dory.

She's now the unofficial lid historian for the city of Seattle.

That's right.

That's right.

OK, so let's jump in.

Before you jump in, I'm realizing that I'm just quickly leafing through these.

Attachments and I noticed that in the draft version of the ordinance we didn't include a report of the office of the hearing examiner and I think that would be The report is like this big and it's yeah, we should include that.

Yeah, but I think the actual number of pages is like three but then there's a report and then there's the comments

Yeah, I do think it would be of value to the legislative record to include isn't it a great idea as a part of the legislative package at least at a minimum the hearing examiners report as Evidence of it being part of the work of the City Council and sure to comply with the state statute, okay Thank You councillor Gonzales.

That's a great idea

How many hours did the hearing examiner conduct public hearings?

Is that as part of his report?

It is, yeah, 20 hours.

We'll talk a little bit more about that in a few slides.

Okay, so a few key things that the formation ordinance in front of you does.

This, of course, is a follow-up to the resolution of intent to form.

It is the final step in the formation of the LID.

This does not set the individual assessment amounts.

If council approves this, then there will be an additional legislative process later this year that does exactly that, and property owners will have an opportunity to challenge their assessments at that time.

So what this does is it sets a cap of $160 million.

You will recall the first time we were here, that number was $200 million.

That has been revised to $160 million, and we'll talk more about how we got there.

And then the other really important thing that this does is per state law, this orders the construction and the completion of all of the LID funded improvements.

So the city is obligated to deliver these should it pass the formation ordinance.

Public outreach.

So Marshall talked a little bit about what is actually required by state law.

Two official public notifications following the resolution of intent to form.

That is in our newspaper of record.

Direct mailings to all 6100 property owners in the district.

And then we are required to do one hearing.

We did four and 20 hours.

That took place over weekdays, evenings, and weekends to make this as accessible as possible.

We also did above and beyond that about a year and a half of voluntary outreach.

Things to note there, there's about 100 individual and group briefings that range.

everywhere from a conversation over a kitchen counter, to a briefing of a homeowner association, to a corporate board, and everything in between.

A few other things to note, we did send a first set of letters out to those 6,100 property owners, letting them know about a public open house that was coming up.

We did that.

400 in attendance.

And then we also had a property search tool that we posted on our website and where property owners could go and they could actually access their preliminary assessment amounts prior to the official notification from the city.

You'll know that there's been over 10,000 discrete views of that website since it went up in May, or actually late April.

As part of the process Marshall mentioned, we hired an independent real estate appraiser to conduct a preliminary special benefit analysis.

As part of that work, he identified that prior to the LIDD-funded improvements, there would be about $49 billion of real estate value within the district for all 6100 parcels.

After the construction of those LID funded improvements, there would be $415 million of real estate value that would be added to that district.

So that is the special benefit that we talk about.

And how many blocks did we decide that was?

I'm sorry, say that again.

How many blocks did we determine that was for 61 parcels or 6,100 parcels?

Blocks.

Can we talk about that?

We did.

I would have to get back to you on that.

Okay.

Yeah.

I think you told me to meet him, but I didn't write it down.

It's okay.

Yeah, that's all right.

All right.

So based on that preliminary analysis, the city would need to assess a little over 38% of each individual's benefit in order to get to the $160 million.

I want to emphasize that that is a preliminary analysis should city council pass this legislation, then the city would hire that same appraiser to go back out and do a final analysis.

So the $160 million would stay the same.

Each individual assessment may vary very little, not much, but it's.

I know you're going to get to this further down in a pie chart, but the total proposed assessment at $160 million, that's within the whole project, which is $712 million, correct?

And we'll get to that pie chart in a moment to break down the city money, the state money, all the taxpayers that are pouring into this.

That is exactly right.

I should also note that that $160 million does not include financing costs.

So if somebody chooses to finance with the city, that would be above and beyond what their assessment would be.

And we'll get to that.

I'm supposed to be announcing at every meeting that I am at ground zero as someone who will be inside this LID area and That we as you all know we've gone through this I have now been approved to vote on it But I just want to make sure that the record is clear that I am part of this and will be part of the property That will be both assessed and taxed.

Thank you Okay, so what does this actually mean for a typical property owner?

So the median condo owner would have a one-time assessment of $1,900.

If they chose to finance that with the city over 20 years, that would end up being about $8 a month, plus financing, of course.

I will note here that some have expressed or had questions about whether or not we are including in that calculation parking and storage, which, of course, are very low in benefit.

I want to emphasize for you all that we have taken those out.

So this is an accurate representation of what the median condominium resident would pay.

Commercial owners, the median payment there would be $5,900, or if financed, $25 a month plus financing.

And then we also calculated how A renter living in the typical apartment building would be impacted if the property owner decided to pass this on, and that ends up being about $4 a month plus financing, of course.

So just to clarify, though, if you're a condo owner and the median tax is $1,900, you have 20 years to pay it?

Correct.

You can pay it off all at once or you can finance it with the city.

If you're a commercial owner and you're assessed at $5,900, you have 20 years to pay $5,900?

Correct.

Yes.

Okay.

The reason why I say that, I don't mean to sound cavalier or be flippant, but there is a lot of misinformation that people were being taxed every year and I just want to make it clear when we look at the assessment and how you put the numbers together that people have 20 years to pay this and then we'll get to the three areas where people can be exempted from those payments or they can be lowered.

I'll let you continue with your PowerPoint.

Thank you.

That is a perfect segue into the deferral programs.

So there are some that are available.

Currently, the state has three programs for seniors, disabled, and low-income individuals.

Those are 20-year deferral programs, and the cost for those would be borne by the state.

The city also has the option to create a two-year economic hardship deferral.

We are recommending that and have included that in the legislation.

I need to emphasize these are deferrals, they are not exemptions.

And so that's quite all right.

And so these are due either at the end of two years for the city's program or upon sale or change of ownership for the state program.

And there is interest levied on those.

And we thank Council Member Mosqueda for the graphics on this.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Council Member Gonzales?

Yeah, on the economic hardship deferral issue, can you just walk me through the thinking around why a deferral and not an exemption?

So per state law, there's only three types of properties that are actually exempted.

Those are federally owned properties.

They are housing authority owned properties.

So there are some public housing authority properties within the district.

And then there are agricultural properties, which, of course, we have none of those.

Those are the only ones that can actually be exempted.

And so there are deferral programs that are provided for.

But the state law is very clear that the only exemptions are for those properties.

So just so I'm clear in what you just explained, the reason why the City of Seattle in this proposed legislative package is not pursuing an exemption is because we are prohibited from doing so under state law.

That is exactly right.

That is exactly right.

I will note that there are a number of low-income housing providers within the district that are not exempted, but because of the long-term agreements that they have with either the city or the federal government are naturally at a zero benefit.

So they have nothing to owe to the district.

So they're not exempted.

That's a different scenario.

That's exactly right.

Yeah.

Great.

Oh, my favorite one.

Okay, so I'll just quickly summarize the table, and then Dory's going to walk us through the funding column at the left.

So you can see there, as you noted, Council Member Juarez, the $712 million would be our total program budget.

And you can see there, there are four critical pieces of it.

The city of Seattle funding at 249, and the state, you'll recall the WSDOT funding agreement that we brought here and had an adoption at council, including design costs, all in, that's $193 million commitment from the state of Washington.

That proposed a hundred and sixty million dollar local improvement district and a hundred and ten million dollars of philanthropy Which is a slight increase from our original Planning with friends of waterfront Seattle and Dory.

Why don't you walk us through the pieces?

so To cover the revised LID amount to make the $160 million local improvement district work, we are adding some funding to our budget for covering some of the cost, $10 million of additional funding has been pledged by the Friends of the Waterfront.

We feel we've reviewed their financial process.

Talked greatly with them and we feel very confident.

They'll be able to come up with that additional ten million dollars And have increased their total Contributions to the program to a hundred and ten million dollars we've also proposed to transfer from operating to capital, $8 million of funding from the Metropolitan Park District that was dedicated to the waterfront program for operations and maintenance to building the waterfront.

Because of the delay from Bertha, the delay to the program, We do not need those O&M funds to maintain the waterfront as early as we had originally anticipated.

And so we're going to move some of that money to constructing the waterfront park project.

Let me just stop you for one moment again just to clarify some from some of the constituents and some of the things that people are saying.

It's fair to say that or it's a fact to say that this waterfront project is not taking money away from the Metropolitan Park District in which the other parks Christopher may want to chime in.

because there was some chatter out there that somehow, because, you know, we also wear the hats of the Metropolitan Park District, and somehow we were taking money out of that six-year plan away and shifting it here, and therefore it was unfair.

And Christopher, you want to just respond, particularly for the viewing public?

Absolutely.

I think Dory is right in characterizing that because the park is not coming online, we did need the operations and maintenance dollars.

We do have two parks, though, on the waterfront, Pier 6263 and Waterfront Park at Union Street.

We will continue to set aside funds to maintain those parks during the period when the funds will be reallocated to capital from 2021 to 2023.

Some people were concerned that we were taking money and therefore some community centers and other park assets would not be maintained or there wouldn't be there for operations or for capital.

No relationship.

Good.

Thank you.

In addition, we have the commercial parking tax that City Council created in 2011 to fund viaduct and seawall and waterfront related improvements.

We'll be adding another $7 million of bond capacity using those revenues to help pay for the transportation related portions of the waterfront.

particularly the promenade.

And then in working with the city budget office, Ben Noble, the director, feels felt confident and added $10 million of currently unprogrammed real estate excise tax revenues in 2021 through 2023 to our financial plan.

Those funds have not been allocated to any specific projects at this point and he feels confident those will be available to help fund this program.

To round out that funding package, we reduced the scope of the project by about $5 million.

We originally had in the program scope four kiosks along the promenade.

We are reducing that number of kiosks down to one at Union Street, and that will reduce our cost by about $5 million.

Go ahead.

Go ahead.

Can you please describe what the kiosk was?

It's often awful hard for anybody to understand why a kiosk could cost 1.25 million.

So would you describe what they do?

So these were areas where we were going to provide space for either food and beverage or some public interaction.

They were not just they were one story buildings, but there were several stories of additional height to them to create kind of a focal viewpoint on the waterfront.

Because of the design in the waterfront area, there were going to need to be foundations that were many feet deep that were going to be quite expensive.

And so the trade-off of cost to was, we felt was not not justifiable in looking at this revised financial plan.

They were good candidates to take out already.

And so it helped us kind of be able to solve this problem.

It is important to have some activation.

These are designed to be at the key intersections where the public arrives on the waterfront.

So we're working with our team.

There will still be activation at those locations.

And we'll be working with Heidi and her team.

We just don't think we have to have these buildings at those locations.

And we're going to save some money in the process.

OK.

Okay, so I'm going to summarize for you the second piece of this package, the second ordinance.

So under state law, cities are allowed to enter into what are called protest waiver agreements.

One key aspect of how the state statute for LIDs is written is that at the point where a city forms an LID, which is where we are right now, property owners can formally protest and have the ability to overturn the city's ability to form it.

If 60% of the proposed assessment protests, it actually divests the city of its right to form.

And so state law anticipated the tension around that and allows for property owners and cities to enter into waiver agreements that allow the property owners to waive the right to protest so that everybody has certainty that this thing is going to be successful.

And that's exactly what we're trying to do here.

What we're proposing is a waiver agreement with a 20-year term, so that's consistent with the assessment term for those who choose to finance the assessment.

It's the same term.

And here's what the commitments would be from property owners and the city.

The property owners would commit that 51% of them would essentially agree.

So that's important because that's a large enough critical mass that we would have certainty that there would not be a viable protest of the local improvement district.

So that group would waive its rights to a formation protest.

They would also waive the right to a legal challenge.

We'll talk about this a little later.

There's actually a couple of steps.

There's the formal protest, and then there's actually the opportunity for legal appeal of the LID.

And so we would have certainty that they would not advance either, you know, a protest or a legal challenge.

And then it would also designate a waterfront conservancy to be an agent in this agreement with the city.

And this is a little technical, but it's important.

So when we're entering into this agreement, we have 6,100 property owners in the downtown.

The city needs to know who is sitting at the table with us, both when we execute the agreement, but also You know, over 20 years, we're almost certain to at some point need to amend something or make an adjustment.

This conservancy is essentially a legal agent.

The property owners work with us on this agreement and it has a board.

That's the Oversight Committee.

This is actually different than the Oversight Committee.

I'm sorry.

Yes, this is a nonprofit that the property owner community would form.

OK.

And it would have a board.

And if we come 10 years in and we need to modify an aspect of this, we know we can go to that conservancy and speak to the property owner community as a whole.

Is that in the operation and maintenance agreement?

No, this is in the protest waiver agreement.

Oh, I'm sorry.

It's right in here.

That's the one I didn't get to.

It's a legal aspect, but we just wanted to call it out.

The city's commitments in this agreement, we talked about the revised LID amount of 160. That's a 20% change from where we were initially.

We would also waive the option for a supplemental assessment.

Under state law, cities have 10 years once the lid is formed to advance a supplemental assessment.

They're rare.

They're very rare.

We have never anticipated pursuing a supplemental assessment of property owners.

We've been clear from day one we do not intend to do that.

This would make that a contractual commitment that we would not do that.

And then lastly, but very importantly, is the city will implement this O&M ordinance.

And what that essentially means is we're going to live up to the commitments we've made for years about the quality of the maintenance of this park.

Okay.

All right, so next steps on the kind of LID process.

And again, most of these are prescribed under state law.

We would have a second discussion here at the committee on the 24th.

That could be a possible vote.

There could be council action on the 28th.

If that happens, once the mayor has signed the ordinance, we'd have a 30-day protest period.

Again, prescribed by state law, that process would play out.

Then also in February, we would advance a budget amendment.

This would be independent legislation that would make the modifications that Dory described around the CPT and the REIT and the MPD, those different fund sources.

We would make those changes.

Once we get through the formal protest period in February, in March, there's another legal appeal period, another 30-day period once the protest has concluded.

That would play out over the month of March.

And then you see there in the fall of this year, we would be completing that final special benefit study that Joshua described with the appraiser coming back in to do one final review, and then the council would take up the final set of actions, which is the confirmation of the assessment role.

And that's where the question of the lid is, that's no longer a question, it's been formed, we're talking about the actual assessment.

And that's where we would be capped at the 160, but we'd be working with more up-to-date appraisal information at that time.

And then lastly, property owners would have another public hearing process to consider any individual appeals on their assessment.

If an individual property owner wants to come forward and say, hey, you know, we don't think your appraiser considered my view correctly, they didn't consider the size of my unit correctly, they over appraised, that's where we would work through those issues.

But not council.

Likely another hearing examiner driven process.

It will be another hearing examiner driven, not us.

Yes, and yes Thank you on page Without page numbers number to the protest waiver agreement ordinance page You talk about 15 15 that we can't The property owners may waive their protests through an agreement with the city, but then on the next page you say the formation protest period ends 30 days after the ordinance action.

What is the timing on these two things?

We're talking about the same thing, essentially.

We still would have the protest period, it would still advance.

We would have agreement amongst 51% of the assessed property that they're not, they're essentially not going to protest.

Or for those who have protested already, they would essentially withdraw their protests.

Okay, but let's just...

We still have the process, though.

The 49% of, and that's the assessed valuation, the property owners, they still could come in and protest, but the fact that you've got 51% signed or willing to sign a waiver agreement, does that make it, I don't want to call it a waste of time for the individuals that come, but the 49% of the people still can come and file their protests?

But there wouldn't be a path to 60%.

And one point that reminds me of, I just want to make quickly, is the benefits to property owners of the waiver agreement, the lid amount, the commitments to O&M, no supplemental assessments, every property owner gets the benefit of that, whether or not they've signed on to that agreement.

So everyone in the proposed assessment area.

They all benefit.

They all benefit.

And they have a certainty for 20 years.

Correct.

Even if they weren't at the table, they disagreed.

And last thing is we would look at in 2020, once the final assessment role is completed, assessments beginning that year.

So people would start to see this in their mailbox.

And then the city would, in all likelihood, be issuing bonds against the LID revenue so that we can build the improvements at that point.

So I'm going to just quickly introduce the third piece of the package, which is the Funding Operations and Maintenance Ordinance.

I have a technical question.

So on the timeline, it lists that budget amendments would need to be submitted to the city council.

Is it your expectation that the city council would act on those submissions or are you just submitting the ordinances?

We would assume yeah, you would act on them.

So that and why are we acting on budget amendment ordinances before?

The conclusion of the protest period and before the conclusion of legal appeal period That's a fair question I think the goal here is to ensure that we've moved the funds and we know that those funds will be available to advance the construction because we are entering into construction contracts knowing that we have a, you know, we're essentially out to bid right now on the majority of the waterfront construction, and that does include funding from the local improvement district and CPT and all these other sources that would be addressed in that budget action.

So we want to make sure those funds are established as we go out and award a contract.

The other thing is if we have the protest waiver agreement, I mean, again, we're going through those steps, and I don't want to diminish the importance of those steps, but we will have a a lot of certainty in terms of our ability to withstand the protest period and withstand the legal appeal period.

I also just want to say we will introduce the legislation in February.

I'm not anticipating council would act before the protest period is over and we have, you know, we would have time.

We, you know, we'll have to introduce the legislation.

There'll be a conversation with the finance committee.

It's not, we're going to submit it in February.

It's going to be passed in February.

There's going to be a time.

you know, a timeframe for consideration and conversations at committee and in front of the full council.

So the plan is that we would introduce the budget legislation in February.

It probably would be March or April before council would finally pass the legislation, but we want to get the legislation passed before we finalize our construction notice to proceed.

So that's, which happens in 2019, so these would need to be 2019 budget changes.

I'm sorry, go ahead.

I appreciate the intent to eventually get there.

I just, I'm not seeing what you just described, Dory, as being reflected in this timeline per se.

And so it was alarming to me that this document seems to signal that we would be amending our budget before or during the protest period.

And I just think we need to be much more judicious about how we are and accurate about how we are communicating to the general public about what this process is and what it is not.

And so I'd appreciate making sure that this gets clarified so that we have a better sense of what the next steps will be in terms of proposed amendments to the budget moving forward.

And then lastly, I would just, I know that we're going to have more conversations about this in executive session and otherwise, and we'll reserve some of those questions for a different appropriate venue, particularly around the protest waiver agreement.

But again, I think that I get a little nervous about anticipating that the ink is dry on a document before it's actually dry, and this timeline clearly is messaging and signaling the best case scenario as opposed to what happens if what we expect and hope to happen doesn't actually occur.

And so I just want us to be very careful about making sure that we have a timeline that is reflective of potential speed bumps that we may not have anticipated.

Okay, that's fair.

We'll make sure we get that clarified that that's submitting for council and you know, there's as Dory described a process that we'll go through on that.

And lastly, is the budget ordinance, Chair Juarez, is it your expectation that the budget ordinance would be considered in your committee or would that go to the Finance and Neighborhoods Committee?

I'm not sure.

I hadn't considered that yet, but thank you for raising that, but I'm guessing

You're on both of them.

I'm on both.

I'm not going to get away from it no matter what.

Not that I want to, but I just wanted to, again, I think these are all things that need to be taken into consideration when we're looking at a timeline because it's two different committees chaired by two different folks with two different work plans for 2019. And I just want to make sure that we are keeping our sights on any possible procedural issues that could impede our ability to continue moving this legislation forward.

Nice.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you for that.

I think just to follow up on your January 28th where we have full council possible vote, making it really clear what we're voting on as contrasted to what Councilmember Gonzalez was just bringing up, which is we'll be voting on something different and that'll come in later in the spring.

But if we could just clarify what those are for this timeline, then I think people will be feeling good.

We can definitely do that.

Yeah, that vote would be on this package that's in front of you.

And then the subsequent would be on the budget amendments.

And I know that this is very granular detail that we're discussing here in terms of the process and the procedure, but this is a really significant long-term investment in a major part of our city that has had a tremendous amount of hours and years invested in getting us to this point and there's a lot of folks paying attention to it and there are a lot of people who continue to have concerns and express those concerns very vocally and so I think we at the city have an obligation to make sure that we're communicating the most effective detailed information we can to establish an appropriate legislative record to substantiate the decisions and the choices that we as council members are being asked to make in that environment and in that context.

That's a great point.

Thank you for that.

We'll make sure we'll prepare a revised version of this slide that incorporates those things.

Thank you.

So the third package, the third ordinance in the package, funding operations and maintenance, just some high points, outlines that philanthropic commitment, contributions.

We're going to dive into this in a little more detail.

Formalizes the long-term partnership between Friends and Parks to maintain the entirety of that 20-acre waterfront park and public spaces.

It authorizes a two-year pilot agreement for us to move ahead with the partnership with Friends and Parks at Pier 62, which will open later this year, and directs us to bring back to you legislation that would create a park boulevard.

And we'll talk about what that does, but essentially that's a critical element to establish this as park space and to allow the use of the MPD funds and to allow the operating and maintenance regime that we're trying to put in place here.

commits us to the $4.8 million annual O&M budget starting in 2023. We'll talk about the dollars of that in more detail.

And creates the Central Waterfront Oversight Committee, which would be the next iteration of this long partnership in terms of governance and oversight of the waterfront.

Before we slide into the oversight committee on the 4.8 million, can we just have some clarification?

Because I know I needed clarification with everybody else and you and I want to thank you.

What we, and Tracy will correct me if I'm wrong, that the 4.8 is just based on an amount of inflation from the 2016 numbers of the 3.5 million, which was already anticipated, right?

Correct?

Yes, and we're going to have a whole slide on this coming up.

It's actually, there's 4.2 of the 4.8 that's from the MPD, and that is escalated from the original commitment when we started the MPD in the Legacy Committee's recommendations for a total of $3.5 million for the waterfront.

So we're being consistent with what has always been planned for the allocation of MPD monies for waterfront maintenance.

And we're going to go through the dollars and cents of that in just a minute.

Again, it's another one of those clarifications that we're not taking from the MPD, that the future city financing for this management agreement was already allocated for that.

That's correct.

Yes, thank you for that.

So I know you want to talk about the oversight committee.

And we're going to get to that in just a moment.

And I'm going to hand this over to Maggie here in just a moment.

But the key thing you heard, $110 million overall commitment from Friends of Waterfront Seattle building on this partnership, we're hugely appreciative of all of their work on this and their willingness to step up and go just a little bit further with us.

Maggie?

Maggie.

So, thank you, Marshall.

So, the one thing that's been consistent throughout the 10 years, and I think Charlie can attest to this, is that whenever we've talked about this to the public and, frankly, to the donor community, there is extraordinary excitement about this possibility.

I mean, people love this.

So from the beginning, we have had confidence that we could raise a significant amount of private support for this, a public asset, which is actually pretty unusual.

You have to have something that deeply resonates with a community for you to be able to generate that.

So we went out in response to the request from the city to show that we could have $25 million in hand when we asked you all to form the LID as sort of proof of concept here.

We went out and we were able to raise 32 million dollars in fact over the last couple of years.

These are of course mostly contingent on the formation of the LID because without the LID there is no project and people are not going to give the city philanthropic dollars out of the goodness of their heart.

So we have agreed to a timeline for these funds to come in.

As you probably know, philanthropic giving is a little hard to predict.

It's not regular.

You have to work to go get it, and people have their own idea about when it's going to come.

So we have agreed to finance, if necessary, to even out the cash flow to meet the needs of the city's construction.

Let's see what else.

We will provide the city with a fundraising plan by March 31st of this year that will lay out the whole program and how we intend to go about doing this.

And I think that sounds simple, but it's not.

But we're happy to commit to it because we believe as an organization, as a board, and we believe in this project.

We think it's going to be fabulous, and thank you for all your work on it.

Two things, Maggie.

First of all, thank you, and thank Mayor Royer for all your hard work in the last decade.

But for the viewing public and for our colleagues and some folks who are knee-deep in this like we are, in the operation and management ordinance, it's attachment A and B, which outlines your contribution schedule.

And what was the other piece?

Oh, the reporting schedule.

So that's attachment A and B.

And thank you for committing to that.

You are actually raising $110 million for the city of Seattle.

And we've talked about this before in this committee about a public asset that secures public access.

And so thank you very much for stepping up.

And thank you, Mayor Roy, for stepping up in the last decade.

actually coming to all the hearings and all the meetings and all the work sessions to make sure that we get this right.

So thank you.

Great.

So we're going to get into the fundamentals of O&M, but prior to that, I'm sorry, I'm going to add something.

I keep, I'm like on a delay because I just got back from a Mexican beach vacation and I'm like, That's OK.

Any margaritas today, which is sad, but also probably a good thing.

I wanted to, Maggie, something you mentioned struck me and I just wanted to give you an opportunity to perhaps elaborate a little bit more.

And one of the things that you mentioned in your remarks is that as you are doing this philanthropic work and asking people to give money, something that I've had to do before as a board member of nonprofits, I cherish and love as well.

I know it's always really hard to ask for those donations, but maybe you can talk a little bit about why you believe this really speaks to the folks that you're talking to in terms of an investment that they want to make.

I just think that's an important part of the conversation that we're having here today since this is such a significant project.

So I don't think that we get opportunities like this very often.

And for my generation, This is probably their iconic opportunity to say, we helped make this happen.

We compare it, and often people compare it to the Space Needle.

That was that last generation's iconic, the creation of Seattle Center and the Space Needle.

And I think people immediately get it.

It represents who we are as a city now.

We're not just a bunch of cranes.

We're not just a bunch of tall buildings.

We need a heart, and this is a heart, and it represents us really well.

It's green, it's sustainable, it's accessible, it's beautiful, and it gives people access to big nature in a way that, you know, blows people away when they come to visit this city.

The views that you have on that waterfront are priceless.

It is one of the most beautiful harbors in the world.

And people don't even see it because there's no way to see it, really.

So I've been, and I know Charlie can attest to this from the very beginning, people got it.

And people would come up to me and ask me to come ask them.

And you know that you've got the thing by the horns when people do things like that.

You don't have to.

You don't have to beg, they want to be there.

So it's really important that the city deliver its piece because people want to see certainty, just as you want to see certainty.

So we've got to build that in.

And we've always conceived of this project as this leveraging of private support, public support, and property owner support.

Those pieces that create great value for the community and everybody who's benefiting gets to contribute a bit.

But we also, in the philanthropic community, we want to believe that we're part of the community as well, and we want to build community.

I've been surprised, and I think it's a moment in our history when we can all come together, and I'd love to see more of that.

Thank you for sharing.

Thank you.

Can Seattle just have one day where we're all in the end zone?

Just one day.

I was asking for one day.

Sports analogy.

Yes, I just used one.

I stole it from somebody, but I just thought to myself, just one little end zone dance, just all of us, just one day.

End zone dance.

I'll let you go ahead.

So Friends is going to play two critical roles.

You know, the fundraising to build a public asset on this waterfront that'll be available to the public, and then to help animate and breathe life into that space and make it accessible to every corner of the city.

And so Heidi has been doing remarkable work to demonstrate that and is going to tell us a little bit about the work that they've been doing to bring people into the space.

And then we'll talk about the details of how we expand that partnership.

Okay.

You bet.

I think we'll be in the end zone together yelling, go salmon, because we don't talk enough about how this waterfront, the beautiful flowers are actually filtrating all this water and improving our nearshore ecosystem.

So like Maggie says, this project has so much.

And when you think about the fact she's a little modest that we raised the bulk of the 28.8 million that we reported to you in May 18 in about six months.

And that's when the LID was still a question mark, which meant the project was a question mark.

Just echo the real strong support around that.

And then Marshall bringing up the public process in the beginning caused me to reflect a little bit, because that's actually how I came to the project.

I went to one of these public meetings where the concept design was rolled out, and there were thousand people there and it was a public meeting and no one was scowling.

They were all happy.

They all could see where their input had been incorporated in the design.

They were all walks of life.

Some people were on skateboards and then you had people in the city that were really showing leadership and forward thinking with this project and then the committee and just the partnerships and I thought to myself when this little slide popped up and the friends group and how we were all going to come together and and deliver public benefit together greater than any of us could do individually, I thought, I'm in.

And that's what we've been doing on the waterfront since we opened waterfront space because at that point we knew what the park was going to look like.

So we started thinking about what are people going to do in this park?

What do you want to do there?

And the opportunity is the park is this canvas where the entire community, No matter your zip code, walk of life, where you live in the city, what you do can come and bring its palette and do its thing.

So Friends has been working on the existing waterfront programming in the summer now since 2015. And our goal in all of this is to provide public benefit.

So we raise private money that we then partner with community organization, cultural organizations, everybody from 206 Zulu to the Vera Project to AU Collective to help make possible things they want to do, which has the effect of building capacity in community and cultural organizations throughout the city.

And that's what we will scale up in the park beginning with Pier 62 in 2019. So when that pier opens in 2019, it will not have been our first rodeo.

We will have been out there for five years.

And when the complete park opens, we will have been at it for nine years.

Of course, important partnership with the Parks Department, which I think has been harmonious and very productive, very impressed with the work of Seattle Parks and Recreation on the waterfront.

And it's really about reconnecting people not only physically through all these things we're building, but psychically to put the waterfront back on people's maps.

because they just kind of erased it while the Viaduct was there.

The thing is 90 decibels.

Our team out there that staffed in the summer had to wear earplugs because your ears rang like you had been in a rock concert.

And just the deafening silence that we have right now is already a welcome change.

And when we get to a park, we're also thinking about the ecosystem to make it truly a waterfront for all.

So when Friends started programming on the waterfront, we realized that there was a lot of people in need.

And there were a lot of people that were in situations that didn't make everybody feel welcome and comfortable.

So we started a partnership with Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion, LEAD.

So that we have social workers going out with the bike officers and really creating a place to meet people where they are, which is an important piece of our future operations and management.

Because it's about creating a way where everybody can use the waterfront.

And also providing economic opportunities.

for underserved communities.

So those kiosks that we were talking about, we will still have a presence along the waterfront for these what we would call user amenities concessions.

And we've been working with organizations like Ventures to bring aspiring entrepreneurs from underserved communities in so that everybody participates in the economic vitality and the benefits of the waterfront.

So that is Friends Focus that we have been employing on the existing waterfront.

We have seen a 30% decrease in arrest and citations and a 40% increase in attendance at events.

So the model's already working and we look forward to scaling it up and raising a bunch of money with our terrific board to create this great public benefit and so we can all get in the end zone together.

and cheer the park.

Thank you.

So are we going to move to slide 20?

Or was that slide 20?

That was slide 19.

That was slide 19.

OK, I got that, but I'm 20. Because a lot of what you said is in 20. So I just want to, I know when Heidi gets going.

Let me just cover the basic elements of the O&M framework.

We actually worked on these last week, I'm sorry, last year with friends with parks, also last week.

And, of course, also our labor partners.

We brought this to you last fall as part of Resolution 31768. Just quickly, parks will create a dedicated Team that would be located on the waterfront.

It would provide a high quality of maintenance.

So think about things like gardening pressure washing cleaning off of graffiti intern friends as Heidi so well described there would be providing the cultural the educational the recreational programming so music and concerts Managing a safety and outreach program doing all of this through community partnerships and In order to do that the city then would delegate any non first amendment related permitting and vending opportunities there would likely be some ticketed events down on the waterfront all of the revenue generated by any of these would be reinvested and Underwriting friends ability to provide all of the free great programming there would also be annual reporting We'll talk about that on the next slide so As Marshall and both, I think everybody has conveyed this, but the partnership with Friends in and of itself will provide a tremendous amount of public benefit to the entire city.

Requirements that we will be bringing into both our pilot agreement and then in the longer term agreement would include that cultural, educational, and recreational programming that is free and open to the public.

There would be an engagement and inclusion plan, which would include things like intended WIMBY targets and outcomes, outreach to and inclusion of underserved communities, and then those outreach services to people experiencing crisis on the waterfront.

There would also be publicly accessible bathrooms, both temporary in the short term and permanent in the long term.

blessings on you for that.

I think we've been working on this for all the 10 years that I have been on City Council now.

Are you envisioning something like Bryant Park in New York or the Portland Loo model?

for bathrooms.

Yeah.

I think both.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We love bathrooms.

So we have one major.

They're free.

Super free.

There'll be actually both.

Literally.

There's one major bathroom that's centrally located on the new waterfront that will actually be staffed.

And that's where we learned from the Bryant Park experience.

So the model there is that that is an extremely high quality experience and there's someone on hand who is ensuring that it's that way.

And we're also deploying a set of these, what are called the Portland Loo, which has been a very successful, essentially a public restroom that's standalone in a few locations along the rest of the waterfront.

The public will also be able to continue to use the bathrooms at Coleman Dock, which is an important public restroom that already exists and will be improved in the new Coleman Dock once it's open, as well as Pike Place Market.

Great.

So how many bathrooms in total?

Oh, jeez.

Let's see, I think we have three of the Portland Loos along the historic pier zone.

We have the staffed restroom is in the Overlook Walk Aquarium building.

So that's four, but that one has, you know, in terms of the numbers of stalls, it's quite a large restroom.

It's designed for a lot of use, right adjacent to our major family oriented pier.

So there'll be a lot of access for families there and the Coleman Dock location.

So let's say five, not including the market.

not to get into too granular a detail, but what kind of hours are you expecting?

Are we locking them up at sunset?

During park hours.

Okay.

So this, you know, again, this is part of the whole approach is this will be designated a park boulevard.

This will operate like a park.

There are critical elements that will remain open 24-7, the street and the sidewalk elements, but we will maintain and operate those like you'd find a bathroom in a public park.

Thank you.

And remind me what those park hours are.

So, yeah, actually, Chris, you're the expert.

Park hours are from 10 p.m.

until 6 a.m.

Closed.

Closed.

Closed.

I'm sorry.

That's what it feels like Thank you so much madam chair As we think about this park connecting the waterfront to the city and our community to the waterfront I imagine people are gonna come from the new waterfront park through the sculpture park through Myrtle Edwards and I just want to put a plug in for this and We haven't had a chance to talk about it formally, but there was a staffed restroom that was on Port of Seattle property towards the end there where Expedia, I believe, is going in now, and it's no longer open.

And so from the Sam, it used to be a fishing venue.

Yes, they sold items to put on hooks for fish.

And that is why I just called that.

Oh, okay.

Well, Councilman Gonzales and I had a different idea.

And the individual who ran it, his name was Ron, and he was incredible.

And he'd been there for a number of years and the Port of Seattle rented it to him.

Unfortunately, I think there was a number of problems with the current lease and they didn't continue it.

But when he left and Expedia came in and the fencing went up around that fishing pier, so went the bathroom.

And so I would very much like us to follow up on that because I think of this as a continuum throughout that waterfront and it's a huge missed opportunity not to have a restroom down there.

And I'd love to open up that fishing dock again.

I want to get Ron back.

I loved him.

I love him too.

I've got his card so we can call him.

We'll talk to the port about that.

See where they're at.

All right, so we talked about the Park Boulevard.

This map actually conveys a couple of things.

The first is the phasing of the management approach to the waterfront.

That, of course, begins with the pilot agreement in Pier 62 this year, and then that would continue on into a management agreement for the rest of the waterfront.

That would be brought back to Council for its review and approval.

And then I also want to note that, as the gentleman who was making public comments earlier pointed out, We are still working with Pike Place Market and also Friends to identify a management approach to the Overlook Walk.

It'll likely be very similar, but that will also be coming back to council for its review and approval.

And just to refresh everyone's memory, it's in the Operation and Maintenance Ordinance Attachment C where what we're talking about, where we will find where the meat of all this is what we're talking about right now, which is attachment C, which outlines the two-year, the term sheet, and all the things that we're talking about right now.

That's exactly right.

Which is kind of awkward, but you made it an attachment within an ordinance for a term sheet, but that's just me.

Yeah, and the reason that we have the term sheet, thank you for noting that, the reason we have a term sheet in that, I've got one more point here, is that this legislation is authorizing both parks and our office to enter into an agreement.

We will bring it back for this committee's review, but we wanted to have a term sheet that really spells out what the terms are, so council felt comfortable allowing us to move forward.

Again, the management agreement will come back for your review.

Yeah, yeah.

Approval.

Yep.

Okay.

So the second thing conveyed here are the boundaries of those Park Boulevard.

The Park Boulevard would be created by legislation that SDOT and Parks brings back to council.

That would be prior to the execution of the management agreement.

It is not unusual for the city to partially designate jurisdictional boundaries along boulevards that have higher needs for maintenance.

Lake Washington Boulevard is a really good example of that.

We have a couple of incentives here.

One is that we need to facilitate the use of Seattle Park District funding, and the Park Boulevard would do that for the rest of the non-park elements of the waterfront.

We also want to make sure that there is a clear and consistent code of conduct and that park rules apply equally both to the peer parks, and also to the rest of the waterfront.

So there's no questions about jurisdiction and what rules apply.

So the two-year pilot, I'll just quickly go over this.

So this is projected to start by the end of the year.

It will, of course, be informed by that term sheet that we talked about.

We will be bringing it back for your review, likely later on in the summer.

This really lays the groundwork for the partnership between Friends and Parks in our office, and all of the lessons learned will help inform that longer-term management agreement.

So let's talk about budget.

Dory, you wanna?

Sure.

So as we've talked about several times, the Metropolitan Park District formation, the legacy committee set aside as part of the plan, $3.5 million for maintenance of waterfront park facilities.

And that was $3.5 million.

The plan included an inflationary factor over time.

And we've already used some of those funds to help construct the plan.

And we've identified ongoing funding for the term of this pilot agreement for parks maintenance and operations of Pier 62 and Waterfront Park.

and that's that's the first bullet here.

We also are anticipating that that will be the major portion of funding for the Park Boulevard maintenance ongoing.

By 2023 we anticipate there will be about 4.2 million dollars a year in MPD O&M funding for the for the maintenance of the park facilities and that will be the bulk of the maintenance.

There's also some baseline funding that Parks has had dedicated for Pier 62 and Waterfront Park maintenance that will go into that and will be set aside for ongoing maintenance.

And then because the Park Boulevard will include some transportation facilities, we'll be assigning part of that commercial parking tax revenue that we talked about from the 2.5% parking tax that's been that was set up by council to pay for waterfront improvements.

We'll be setting aside a portion of that parking tax to help pay for maintenance of the park boulevard and the park amenities along the waterfront.

It's anticipated in 2023 that that'll total 4.8 million, the mix of revenues.

And to that, Friends will bring to the mix an additional 1 to 1.5 million dollars for programming and activation along the waterfront so that it really is a partnership of the public and private making the waterfront work over the long term.

I do want, I did want to mention, we talked about the Park Boulevard and the Overlook Walk, wanted to make sure that we commented that.

That $4.8 million includes operations and maintenance of Overlook Walk and the Aquarium Plaza.

while it says TBD on the map, that's really about how is the maintenance and operations going to work along that area, not the funding.

The funding is part of this funding plan that we just talked about.

Thank you for clarifying that.

Great.

Okay, so lastly, what this ordinance does is it creates the Central Waterfront Oversight Committee.

In addition to four ex officio city-appointed members, there would be 19 committee members.

14 of those would be mayor, council appointed.

There would be six at-large members, which would be comprised of individuals representing expertise and perspective from the labor and environmental communities, as well as the broader Seattle community.

There would be eight members that would be comprised of tenant and owners located within the local improvement district itself.

And then we would have five dedicated member seats for nonprofits with public space management expertise.

And do you expect that timing?

That would come later this year.

Yes.

Essentially, this is a committee that would ensure that the partnership is delivering a very well-maintained waterfront.

One of the tools that they will use to do this is the development of a performance standard, which essentially would be a benchmark informed by a lot of the work that we've already done with analysis, but also by national best practices.

That would become the benchmark upon which our performance, the city's performance, Friends' performance is judged and would be an integral part of their reporting back annually to both city council and the mayor.

So let me just point out one thing on the Oversight Committee.

Within the Operation and Maintenance Agreement on section five, page 15, it kind of lays out, it states what establishing the Central Waterfront Oversight Committee and what they actually will be doing, what their duties are.

Just moving forward, operations, maintenance, safety, security of the waterfront park, public spaces shall include maintenance, public safety, outreach, communications, partnerships and programming and activation.

And you guys can, it's online and you can also read it for yourselves.

But the thing I want to point out here is that this isn't like the Seattle Center when we had the giving council or some other agreements where you have a volunteer group where they are actually handing out money or handing out programming.

This is basically the oversight committee in which the city still maintains a majority to make sure that these basic things get done on the waterfront.

And so sometimes I'm, you know me about district representation.

But you sometimes, you don't want district representation just for district representation because these are voluntary committees.

And some of these people who, like the tenant owner, there's eight folks.

I understand why that makes sense and why they wanted that, because they want to ensure that parks and the city and everybody else lives up to keeping it clean, keeping it safe, maintaining, programming, working with friends.

I get that.

But some of the discussions I want to also thank Council Member Mosqueda, because her and I have had a few discussions about this, is that we want to make sure that those mayoral and those council appointments reflect not just a district, but actually reflect huge swaths of people from besides the five dedicated nonprofits that are already listed, which are, can you reel them off for me real quick?

It's the zoo, the aquarium.

No, so it's the Seattle Aquarium, Pike Place Market, the Downtown Seattle Association slash Metropolitan Improvement District, Seattle Historic Waterfront Association, and the Alliance for Pioneer Square.

So it makes sense why you want those nonprofit with, as you say, public space management, expertise management in nonprofits.

I get that.

But what I'm going to be pushing for and looking for on those other slots for the mayor and the council appointments are leaders in the community that represent all of Seattle.

So I'm going to throw a name out there, and I hope she's listening.

Maybe she's not.

But a good example would be like Estella.

Estella.

I can think of groups of people who have been there representing all kinds of groups and all kinds of people citywide.

If I were hard-pressed to find somebody up in District 5 that wanted to serve on the oversight committee to do the things that are outlined, on pages 15 and 16, I think I'd have a hard time getting that.

But I think if I pluck somebody from any district that represents this huge swath of other nonprofits that own the waterfront that reconnect us to the Salish Sea, I have a better shot at it.

And I think that that's my intent, that's my sensibility on that.

So I just want to share that.

I don't know if any of my colleagues want to comment on that.

Okay.

I mean, I would agree with you.

I think this is, as the moniker indicates, is a waterfront for all.

And that includes folks who are outside of the geographic area that is covered by the lid.

And so I do think it's really important to bring in some of those other perspectives.

particularly as we think about some of the art and cultural uses and making sure that that is representative of the diversity that is in our city and also in terms of economic development opportunities through the kiosk and otherwise, making sure that we're connecting with micro enterprise type of supporting organizations that are really gonna help us live our values around I think it's important to make sure that there's inclusion as it relates to this very significant investment and ensuring that it's accessible.

So, you know, making sure that a waterfront that is accessible to all also would in my mind also includes making sure that there's from community organizations that represent people who don't have full mobility, for example, or who don't have access to language.

That's something that I bring up all the time is, you know, how do we make information available to communities who speak a language other than English?

And I think that that's an important part of making a space feel truly welcome to everybody who goes there.

And one other piece we've been talking about, we've talked about it in this committee, we've talked about it offline, we've talked about it everywhere, we've also been talking to the tribes.

And not only urban Indian organizations and non-profits and for-profits, but tribes that are interested because one of the things that I think, one of the premier, well, one of the most sublime sentences I had with Chairman Forsman at Suquamish was, Seattle is finally reconnecting with the Salish Sea.

It's been 100 years and we're starting to do it.

So having that tribal perspective on every aspect, not just cultural, not just art, not just having a little, you know, a little kiosk or a gift shop, but other bigger opportunities have a bigger footprint and a bigger voice.

So thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I look forward to working with you on this.

I think you and Council Member Gonzalez have articulated well the conversations we've had and the interest in my office is really in making sure that people do feel like this is truly a park for all of Seattle.

I know that I'm lucky to live around the corner in Queen Anne, Inner Bay area, and it's pretty accessible for me.

I will have to move one day as we try to find additional stable housing.

And I think that I'm going to come back and I'm going to use that park no matter where I live.

So I want people to...

But not if you move to D5.

Oh, hey.

By the way, plug for D5.

I'll be there in a few Fridays.

So I want to make sure that folks do feel like they have representation both on the board, and I think that in doing so, we are always striving for greater racial and ethnic diversity and honoring government-to-government relations and making sure people's voices are truly heard in those fields, whether or not they're doling out grants or they're making key decisions for the sustainability of the waterfront.

So look forward to working with you to make sure we get that language right in terms of geographic representation.

But I think it's a goal that we all share.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you for that.

Those additions were really valuable.

I think they made the work of this committee richer and it brings more perspective that needs to be at that table.

So we appreciate it.

I just want to also acknowledge friends.

I think this is a really core part of their DNA as well as Stella's actually on their board, a number of other folks.

And just on a personal note, I just want to recognize that this committee, the step we're taking right now is the passing of a baton.

with the leadership that Maggie and Charlie, which has been recognized here today, but I just want to do it one more time.

I've had the benefit of working with them for 10 years on this through three iterations of this committee and their steadfast leadership and persistence and doggedness is a core reason that we're here working through six administrations, depending on how you want to do the math.

That's the full list.

I think it's six with Bruce.

I'm going to be inclusive on that one.

So I just want to take a moment and recognize them because this is a big passing of the baton to the next group.

Before we leave this point, and Council Member Gonzalez brought this up, as we're trying to be as inclusive as possible, I really want us to remember the age-friendly Seattle.

So it's really important for all ages and abilities that we be inclusive, but be thinking about people with different abilities as well.

Mayor Royer?

I'll say one thing, Madam Chair.

I really appreciate the time that you're all putting into this, and I know something from the inside of City Hall about how we've worked on these things for a long, long time.

But one thing that I wanted to say is that And Maggie has been an extraordinary leader for this effort.

There are some people we wouldn't be here without their contributions.

And it's a long list.

I won't go into it at all, but except to say that Marshall came out of the bowels of city government.

Wow.

Very graphic.

And evolved into the leader that we always needed on the staff through I have to say through some elected officials who didn't quite believe in this from the start, some of whom were mayor.

And the staff has done just an incredible job of dealing with this project, with all kinds of integrity and all kinds of loyalties to their elected officials.

We wouldn't be here without that staff work and without Maggie's tenacious leadership.

And she can, Maggie can be a little hard sometimes.

I know, I know.

I, yeah.

I do whatever Maggie says, so.

But I did want to just say one constant to add on to what Maggie said about why people seem to love this thing.

And I think it has to do with something that comes up in every conversation I have about the viaduct.

And that is people, mainly old timers, saying that, you know what I loved about the viaduct is the view.

And so the thing they love about it, they love because they're in a car while they were supposed to be driving, and they're looking at the view.

And you know, that's a signal to us that this is something really critical to bring back and to pass on to future generations.

And the spiritual mother of the market, of the waterfront is really the market.

And that's the one place in town today you can go and you don't have, you have dominion over the car.

You walk on Pike Place, people walk in the street.

And they say, to heck with the cars.

I don't have to be in a car to enjoy this place.

And that's what you don't have to be old timers in Seattle.

You don't have to be in a car to enjoy this place.

In fact, it's much better if you're not.

So it's a step, I think, for us in the direction that the new generation of Seattle people is going.

And then I was looking out in the audience.

I see Tom Byers.

There he is.

Everybody's here.

Who wrote more than a few of my best words when I was in office.

And he always had a song.

And the song that came to mind to me when I was thinking about what Maggie said and what I just said about the market and people places, it's the song, Joni Mitchell's song.

I don't know who wrote it, but Big Yellow Taxi.

And she said, don't it always seemed to go that you don't know what you got till it's gone.

They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.

That's the old that's the old school.

The new school is this project.

And it's really been a pleasure for me to be part of it is 50 years I've lived in the city now.

And it's just remarkable to go down to the waterfront and watch him tear that piece out of the viaduct.

And you can actually, as James Corner told us at the first meeting, you can actually see the sky from where you're standing.

And I just I almost teared up at that moment when this big thing came crashing down at my feet.

That's true.

That's what it's all about.

Right.

Thank you, Mayor.

And Councilor Mesquite, I got to enjoy going up on the viaduct after all it started.

Some people snuck up there and she was one of them.

The fireworks?

I did.

I really appreciate our Seattle Police Department who talked to me on the way up and did that.

I didn't have to not go up, but they weren't condoning it.

And I said, great.

Well, I think I wanted to thank you for making people feel safe.

There was families up there.

People were riding bikes.

They had line bikes.

They were taking in the view.

It was a beautiful sunset.

And talking to the chief, we understand that there is a need to make sure that The state patrol provides the security.

But in the meantime, I could resist.

We really think I would love to continue to work with all of you and the chair specifically to talk about how we can in the next few weeks really encourage people to be able to see this as a makeshift park.

It really felt like an impromptu road diet where people just took over and they truly were enjoying it.

So I too drive by and don't look at the road and I look at the view.

So to the extent that we still have that and it's a safe place for folks to go, I'm excited to work with the chair and her interest in seeing how we can turn it into a short-term makeshift park in the next few weeks if possible.

Thank you, so I'll let you just make a quick pitch and then we'll go to page 26 and we'll get we'll get moving again We got to see how squeeze going on so to your to your idea there council member on Saturday February 2nd We've been we've worked with the state.

I'm glad you're signed up.

Hello waterfront.

Goodbye viaduct we'll be having people up on the waterfront from 1230 to 630 and Excuse me up on the viaduct.

Yeah That's going to be a critical moment for people to have that experience.

And if you're watching at home, 99stepforward.org, I believe, is the website where you can sign up to RSVP if you want to come out for that.

And we're promoting it and making sure people know about that.

All right.

So one more slide.

I was going to say, maybe with little fundraisers, you can start selling pieces of the viaduct.

Oh, yes.

Good idea.

They're actually going to hand them out, I think.

The Berlin Wall.

Then you talk to WSDOT, because they're talking about handing them out at the closing ceremony.

Okay, so just to finish this off, I know we've been here for a while, there are some next steps here.

So later on this year, Pier 62 will open and we'll have our pilot agreement that goes into place.

Full waterfront construction will be underway at that point.

So our office will be fully occupying the waterfront and building it.

In 2021, as Marshall mentioned earlier, the surface street opens to traffic later in the year.

And then we will also be bringing that Park Boulevard designation and the full management agreement to Council for its review and approval.

And then in 2023, we get underway.

Okay.

So we'll just finish it off with that.

We just wanted to close by showing you again what we're getting.

There's no Ferris wheel.

Yeah, this is an older photo.

This is what Seattle has known for a long, long time now with the viaduct.

And I think to Mayor Royer's comments, we've all suddenly had this moment where we can see the future of what we're going to have.

And this is what we will see come to shape, come into fruition here over the next couple of years, which is the 20-acre public park, waterfront park, which will reconnect all these downtown districts, Pike Place Market, back to the waterfront and breathe new life into this place where our city started.

So it's just a great privilege to bring this legislation forward to you, and we look forward to working with you to, we hope, get this completed over the next few weeks.

Okay, I'm gonna let my my colleagues wrap up a few comments and then I'm gonna before I adjourn I have a few things to say but I'm gonna see if there's any I think customer was scared I had something Committee I feel bad for going first.

I'll be very short.

I just want to say thank you to the chair Thank you to the mayor's office and all of you at the table for your work with our office to include additional language around labor standards We know that that's the goal.

It's really critical to have it codified in statute and in these documents I see Saul in the audience.

Thanks to our friends not only who are going to be creating the parks and building and doing the construction, but also providing performance at the park to make sure that there are good living wage jobs there.

So shout out to IOTSE and the stagehands who are here in the audience and to all of our labor friends and working families who will be enjoying this park.

I really appreciate working with you on that.

Childcare, your childcare.

Yes, and we are really excited that we are including language that will encourage those who are serving on this board to be able to have access to childcare and transportation needs.

a great way to ensure that representation we talked about.

Thank you, Councilor Mosqueda.

That's great.

There have been many opportunities to say thanks to each other, but around this table, I've been working with many of you since 2004 on this.

And those in the audience, I appreciate Angie and Estad and the work you did on the seawall.

Without that seawall, we wouldn't have the park.

But there's been lots of hundreds, thousands of people that have been putting your hearts in this and it matters so much.

And for me, the waterfront was why I actually ran for office.

So major thanks and I appreciate all the money that will be forthcoming thanks to the work philanthropy is doing and Heidi.

what you have done with Friends of the Waterfront is nothing less than stunning.

So thanks to all of you.

I know we'll have, you know, many, many more years to say thank you, but I just want you to know from Parks with Christopher working with you and the MPD that it just has mattered.

And I don't think that you've gotten enough joy out of working on the LID, but Joshua.

I spent a couple of evenings with you and having to face down some of our homeowners association that just didn't feel that they should have to pay any more.

And I recognize how hard that's been.

Hence the hearing examiner.

So smart, so smart.

Did you want to say something?

Just echoing thanks.

I know this has been a lot of work and I know that we are not done.

But do appreciate the spirit with which folks showed up at the table and have continued to show up at council hearings to have a very transparent, accountable conversation about the options that are before us and the choices that we have to make as elected representatives of the city, both our respective districts for some folks, but of course, as a city, as a whole, it's important for us to make sure that we listen and that we understand people's concerns with major capital projects like this one that really do have the profound possibility of leaving behind the legacy that was described by Mayor Royer.

And so I think, I know this has not always been joyful, but I think we're at a place that feels really critical, like a turning point for us now at this point in terms of this effort.

So I just really wanna appreciate all your work today.

I know that there's going to be much more to come, and that I'm sure many of us on the council will continue to have a lot of opinions about how to hopefully make it even better.

Thank you, Council Member Gonzalez.

I'm just going to say a few words quickly.

I want to thank Council Member Gonzalez and Council Member Mosqueda for being here.

As you know, they represent our city citywide.

And I always appreciate their input, having them in citywide.

Well, we all represent the city of Seattle, but we all honor the needs of our district.

But these particular individuals, these two wonderful women to my right, have always been really good about the bigger picture, the bigger narrative.

And I appreciate you coming and showing up.

Making the comments in the additions and the things that we need because we can't think of everything and of course counselor Bagshaw Who is my my wing?

I would say wing person She's been right here with me since the day.

I got elected on this project has been since the day I got elected That's all I've been doing this in Seattle Center.

Not that I don't like seeing you people, but dang I'm tired.

It's one over but anyway So with that, it's a $712 million project.

It's been going on for at least for Amino, so it'll be taking over three years of my life.

But it is a public asset, and we are going to ensure public access.

We have great opportunity.

We are working with great people.

And so with that, let me just state that our next meeting of the Civic Development, Public Asset, and Native Communities will be a special meeting, Thursday, January 24th at 10 a.m.

And you will incorporate everybody's concerns and comments today, the ones that Council Member Gonzalez also asked to be incorporated, which is a great idea.

And with that, we stand adjourned.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor Royer.