missing title

All right, good morning.

Second time's a charm.

The March 5th, 2026 meeting of the Safety, Transportation, Engineering, Project, Sports and Experiences Committee will come to order.

It is 9.32 a.m.

I am Rob Saka, chair of the committee.

Will the committee clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember Foster.

Here.

Councilmember Kettle.

Here.

Councilmember Lin.

Here.

Vice Chair Rink.

Present.

Chair Saka.

Here.

Chair, there are five members present.

Excellent.

If there is no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing and seeing no objection, the agenda is hereby adopted.

All right, colleagues, members of the public, welcome.

I want to start off by noting that on February 6th, 16th rather, just days before last steps committee meeting, a 27 year old female pedestrian was tragically killed in a vehicle collision on Capitol Hill.

as we noted during our last Steps Committee meeting.

This tragedy was the only fatality that has occurred in the City of Seattle in 2026 so far.

Our total number of serious injuries is a little more difficult.

There's some latency with reporting of that data, so it's a little more difficult to track in between our various meetings, but so far we're at one fatality this year.

One is too many.

My office is closely monitoring these numbers, but I want to be clear that the victims of these incidents are not simply statistics.

There are people who deserve a better outcome.

That's why this committee's highest priority is and will remain traffic safety.

And I will never lose sight of the reasons why.

I know it is a high priority for a number of my colleagues on this committee as well.

We need to do better.

I appreciate the department's efforts to help us make better progress on our Vision Zero goals, appreciate their presentation, overview of the scope of the challenges, some of the impediments to success during our very first STEPS meeting earlier this year.

But because it is such a high priority for this committee, we're gonna be inviting our partners at SDOT to present to the committee on traffic safety related matters.

We'll work out specifics and scope of those various presentations later, but on a quarterly basis, so we can up level this issue and treat it with the priority it deserves in this council.

This committee has continuously discussed policy solutions to keep our roads safer.

Again, in January, During a presentation from SDOT about Vision Zero, we heard a recommendation to lower the legal blood alcohol limit for driving from 0.8 or 0.08 rather to 0.05 in line with a standard currently in place in other jurisdictions like Utah.

Unfortunately, last week, Senate Bill 5067, which would have done exactly that, stalled in the House Community Safety Committee.

The blood alcohol limit will remain at .08 for at least another year.

I was disappointed by this news.

According to the Washington Traffic Safety Commission, between 2020 and 2024, 936 people across our state died in car crashes involving a driver who had been drinking or impaired.

Approximately 156 of these victims were in crashes involving an impaired driver with the blood alcohol concentration less than 0.08.

Simply put, Impairment can occur before someone's blood alcohol level reaches the current legal threshold.

In 2018, the state of Utah became the very first pioneer in this nation and the only state to date to drop the legal threshold for DUIs from 0.08 to 0.05.

Results and impacts were immediate.

A National Highway Traffic Safety Administration evaluation found that in 2019, the first full year under the 0.05 blood alcohol law, the new revised standard, Utah's fatal crash rate dropped approximately 19.8 percent and the fatality rate declined approximately 18.3 percent compared with 2017, which was the last full year before the law.

the notable decline in fatal crashes and fatality rates was larger than the national average over the same reporting period, where reductions were only about 5% to 6%.

So it is my hope, and I think we'll definitely need to add this, colleagues, to our next year's legislative agenda, But Washington will soon adopt this common sense policy that will keep our roads safer and protect human lives.

It's not the only thing we can and must do, but it is a key element of a broader set of strategies and solutions to keep people safe on our roads.

All right.

At our last meeting, our partners from SDOT and central staff provided an update on the Transportation Funding Task Force.

This task force is a critical component of the 2024 transportation levy.

Looking forward to receiving nomination slates for this task force very soon.

We also heard an overview from Seattle Center Leadership Basically just an overview about the scope and remit of the department.

It's critical work.

Today, we will receive a briefing from Seattle Center about the vitally important Memorial Stadium renovation project.

Agenda item number one.

That project is operated under a not-for-profit model managed through a partnership between Seattle Public Schools, the City of Seattle, and One Roof Stadium Partnership.

It will create a state-of-the-art multipurpose stadium for student athletics, education, arts, culture, entertainment, and community events.

It will also serve as a memorial to our veterans of the U.S.

Air Force veteran is very meaningful to me personally and as another veteran on this committee and on the council, Navy veteran, Councilmember Kettle, I know it's a priority for him as well.

We'll learn a little bit more about the status of all those renovations and repairs momentarily.

From then we will move on to a couple of presentations about FIFA readiness.

That's really the name of the game for today's meeting.

We're gonna talk about our readiness posture from a transportation perspective for, primarily through a transportation perspective for FIFA readiness.

We'll hear from Seattle Center about their, more broadly, about their planning efforts for World Cup fan celebrations, and I'm super excited to hear about how our city will be welcoming and entertaining guests from across the globe during this exciting moment in history as we welcome between 500,000 to 750,000 new people to the city.

Great time for our city, great moment.

After that, we have representatives from our partners at SDOT, Sound Transit, King County Metro, the Seattle 2026 World Cup Local Organizing Committee.

We have representative from WSDOT as well, present how our city and our region are prepared to meet the increased demand for public transit, public transit during the World Cup this summer.

All right.

Thank you.

We will now open the hybrid public comment period.

Public comments should relate to items on today's agenda and within the purview of this committee.

Clerk, how many speakers are signed up today?

Chair, we currently have zero in-person speakers signed up and there's one remote speaker.

All right.

Well, each speaker will have two minutes.

We will start with whoever's here first.

Sounds like remote.

Clerk, will you please read the public comment instructions?

The public comment period will be moderated in the following manner.

Speakers will be called in the order in which they registered.

Speakers will alternate between sets of in-person and remote speakers until the public comment period has ended.

Speakers will hear a chime when 10 seconds are left of their time.

Speakers mics will be muted if they do not end their comments within the allotted time to allow us to call on the next speaker.

The public comment period is now open and we will begin with the first speaker on the list, which is Shelly Morrison.

Ms. Morrison, whenever you're ready.

Ms. Morrison, you may need to hit star six.

Okay, sorry.

I thought you had to unmute me.

So am I being heard now?

Yes.

Okay, excellent, thank you.

With FIFA coming, which is why you're here, one of the reasons Seattle will face enormous transportation pressure, and that makes it urgent to confront the transportation policies already harming residents.

I'm Shelley Morrison.

I'm speaking for Coexist Lake Washington, a group of over 1,000 residents and businesses who rely on Lake Washington Boulevard and all the District 2 roads.

We're concerned that misleading data and imbalanced outreach are used to push plans driven by well-funded advocacy groups, but not the broader community.

Facts from SDOT's own traffic report tells a troubling story.

Since 2019, fewer cars on the road, yet congestion is worse.

Transit ridership down by one-third, despite miles of expanded bustling.

Millions spent on safety, and yet serious injury crashes are up 60%.

Miles of new bike lanes, yet volumes have fallen 30% and the share of bike commuters is stuck at just 3%.

Barely used bike lanes have choked key arterials and created gridlock for tens of thousands every day, but significant costs remain largely unmeasured.

Those are health impacts, chronic stress, lost time, pollution, and financial strain.

Our hills, rain, and distances make biking an unrealistic option most, especially for working families, seniors, and disabled residents.

And our transit system does not meet the needs of most daily trips.

So we urge the Council to slow down before converting more lanes, require a full cost-benefit analysis of existing and proposed projects and demand honest data and broad community outreach to those most affected, not just the groups with political influence.

South Seattle deserves equity and accountability from SDOT.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

Looks like there are no additional registered speakers.

Our clerk just confirmed.

So we will now proceed to our items of business.

Which clerk, can you please read item one into the record?

Agenda item one, briefing and discussion, Memorial Stadium renovation project status update presented by Seattle Center.

Thank you.

Well, our presenters, looks like they're joining us at the table now.

When ready, please introduce yourselves and begin your presentations.

Welcome.

All right, good morning, committee.

Appreciate the opportunity to be here for the record of Dematris Winston, Interim Director at Seattle Center.

Today, we're happy to be here to share two updates, some exciting updates about things that align really well with our mission of inspiring the human spirit and being a vibrant gathering place and creating exceptional experiences.

First up, we will give you an update on Memorial Stadium, and then secondly, in a separate presentation will give you an update on Seattle Center's planning around World Cup.

I will turn it over to David for the Memorial Stadium update.

Good morning, council members.

David Kunselman, and I'm the director of planning and capital development at Seattle Center.

So I will be sharing the report with you this morning.

And again, this is a status update on our construction progress currently underway at Memorial Stadium.

I wanted to first highlight the partnership, the important partnership that's involved in this project.

We went out with an RFP to select a private partner.

This is a public-private partnership that includes the school district as the property owner, Seattle Center, and the city as the owner of the 74-acre campus, and now the One Roof Stadium partnership which is a consortium of some of the organizations that you can see on the screen there as our private partner.

It's important to highlight that in addition to asking One Roof Stadium Partnership to be the developer of the project, design and construction, they will also be the operator of the facility.

So for the first five years, they are signed up to be our non-profit operator.

So that's an important development as we look forward to the use of the facility once it's constructed.

A highlight of some of the design features of the new stadium, for those of you who may not be familiar, we are looking at a total project cost of approximately $150 million.

The facility, unlike the previous one, where it had very large grandstands on the north and south, This one will have the seating that goes right down to the bowl in a more modern kind of approach to the pitch or the football field that's there and we'll have seating on three sides with covered canopy up above and we have 6,500 seats and then a number of places where we can have sort of a picnic hill if you will on the west as well as a lot of standing room on the corners of the facility that gets us to 8,000 guests.

I want to note that Generator Studio out of Kansas City are the designers and we're working with our local company, Cell and Construction, which has also been a great partner with us.

Just a couple notes in the previous image.

I've already mentioned that the site is owned by Seattle School District and that will remain.

But a couple of key elements for the city that we asked for in the design and that are receiving, in addition to the seating that approaches the bowl, that allows us to take down the very large concrete walls that were there previously that really walled off the site from Seattle Center and you will be seeing that the new design is much more transparent and that's both to be able to be a pedestrian on campus and look and see what's happening there as well as a patron of an event there and have these incredible views of the Space Needle and Mopop in the background.

and one more thing to point out in this slide.

Where the walls were previously, which came right up to the property lines, the new fence line on the west and on the south actually sets back.

So the effect of that is that we will have just shy of an acre of property that will actually be, if you will, on the Seattle Center side of the fence.

that allows that property to be enjoyed not only for stadium events, for people who are passing through Seattle Center and other events that we may be hosting on the campus.

This is a good view of that transparency we talked about.

This is Harrison Street, which is a major pedestrian entrance into the stadium.

So you get a sense of what that canopy structure will look like on your right, and that is the armory that you're seeing appearing on the left.

We've got some very sexy demolition shots to share with you.

This is a great aerial view of when demolition started and we started to take down the stands.

The stands were tall, as you may recall, very heavy with concrete.

And this is where we've started to eat away at the structure on the south side of the site.

In this image, we're looking west, and so the south stands have already been taken down on your left.

On the right, you're seeing the last elements coming down from the structures that held up the stands.

Important to note there is that the previous stands on the north side were adjacent and touching to Macaw Hall.

So this was taken down.

This image is from the fall.

This is taken down at a time when McCaw Hall is very busy with productions for the ballet, opera, and other events.

And pleased to report that there were no incidents or interruptions with what was going on in there.

And again, the construction crews did a great job.

I also want to note in this image, just in the foreground, you're seeing the memorial wall, which is being braced there.

And we'll be talking about that shortly.

I did want to highlight there's a number of sustainability elements that are underway as part of this project in the design and construction.

Here we were able to set up a concrete processing plant and really reuse almost all of the concrete that was on site and all those various structures.

So here we were able to crush it and reuse it as structural fill on the site.

Obviously that saves a lot of cost, that saves a lot of trucking, movement out on the streets, and eventually just leads to a better project all the way around.

As mentioned, the memorial wall is an important feature of the new design.

This is an image prior to construction.

It's a helpful image to understand how close the cars actually parked to the wall, leaving no real forecourt or ability for pedestrians to experience the wall other than walking among the cars in the parking lot.

The school district was gracious to allow us to enlarge the site of the stadium a bit and take a slice out of this parking lot.

And you will be seeing that in a future slide for the design work that's planned, but I did want to note a little bit of history of the wall.

Importantly, this wall was designed by a student.

Marian Hanson is noted here, and the stadium itself was constructed late 40s, but the wall was dedicated in 51. It's a very impressive memorial.

It's now landmarked appropriately and it really honors the 762 students from the area that lost their lives in World War II.

Here you're seeing the care that's taken to brace the wall during construction.

and here's what you will see when we are done.

So the wall will really regain a place of prominence, if you will.

I think what's helpful is that we no longer have the concrete, other concrete walls beside it, so it will really stand out against the transparent structure around it.

It will have space in front for events or viewing of the wall.

and it'll get a lot of attention because the new entry gates for the stadium flank the memorial wall on both sides.

Just want to highlight a couple key elements of the project.

This is a sewer that is now finished, a sewer main replacement that we accomplished for SPU.

The old sewer ran underneath the north stands at its deepest, 40 feet deep, built in 1897 with one row of brick.

that served a large swath of Lower Queen Anne.

I'm pleased to report that that very risky and difficult project is now done and sharing with you some of the pits to get a sense of how deep this was and where the boring machine that we used was launched there on the right.

This next image is showing some of the progress of the stadium structure itself on the south side.

These are the very large grade beams that are going to support those large canopy elements that you saw in the previous slide.

Construction schedule of note.

Although we're not the developer, we have all the city's important construction equity programs, construction CWA community workforce agreements, which include all our prevailing wage requirements.

All of that is baked in here.

We started construction last July, and we are on track to finish for the start of school for the sports season in September of 27. And this image is sharing the makeup of the funding of the project.

So Seattle Public Schools is the larger funder, primarily with a levy that was passed a number of years ago.

The city followed with a contribution of $40 million.

and we're lucky enough to receive a King County Parks Levy, also a grant from the state.

And the One Roof Stadium Partnership has donated $5 million for the project in addition to their time and effort in developing it and have raised philanthropic funds and we're just over $30 million at this point.

And with that, I would be happy to entertain any questions you may have.

Excellent.

Thank you so much.

Really appreciate the presentation here.

I will open the floor to my colleagues for any questions, comments, feedback, any or all of you may have.

Right of first refusal, always going to our Vice Chair.

Do you have anything?

The floor is yours.

Thank you, Chair.

I don't have any questions today, but I want to express again my appreciation for coming to committee to provide this update.

Thank you.

All right, thank you, Vice Chair.

Councilmember Kettle, four is yours.

Thank you, Chair.

I just wanna thank everyone for being here, Acting Director Winston, Mr. Councilman, and of course, our own SDOT's Bill LaBoard.

Mr. LaBoard, thank you for being here.

Colleagues, for particularly those that are new, I've said this before, I've been engaged on this since the school levy in my time as the Queen Anne Community Council, but also PFW Post 3063, because of the state of the stadium, but really the state of the memorial wall at that point.

And as I said before, I really appreciate the school district and what they did initially, and now what the combination the team is doing in terms of the project overall, and it's fantastic.

Since this is in my district, I take considerable interest, and I really appreciate the design, and obviously I've seen like a dozen versions of the design.

But this design integration to Seattle Center is so important, both on Harrison, but also towards the fountain, actually all sides.

It's fantastic in terms of its integration.

And it's similar to current efforts like Pacific Science Center, which is technically outside of Seattle Center, but those pieces are really important.

And I've noted before that I really appreciate the design of the stadium because it does evoke certain elements of the Pacific Science Center, the white, the braces, and the different design elements.

So I really like how that brings everything together.

I think it's going to be fantastic.

I believe I was there the day on slide six that shot was taken because the Seattle Torrent had a naming event at MOPOP and I take opportunities to walk by, drive by, look to the best of my ability and literally the day that we were there for the Seattle Torrent naming event, that last piece of the stand was what I saw.

and so it's either that day or the next day this picture was taken.

And it shows, you know, the amount of work to that point is pretty quick.

And I really appreciate all the work that's being done by the teams with Sellen, with all the various labor groups that are involved, in addition to the big three that we keep talking about, the school district, the city, and the One Roof Foundation, and all those that are a part of that.

And lastly, I just want to say, Thank you on the memorial wall in terms of protection and obviously with the VFW post there's a lot of engagement in terms of design features and really highlighting what this is so that people know what this is because so often, in fact I was talking to Mr. Lewicki once and he was out there and he talked to a person on the street, a woman who had walked past this place a million times and Todd Lewicki said to me, he goes, engaging with her and she had no clue what was right there before her.

And so I think it's really important to raise the memorial wall and really bring it forward and those pieces that the VFW was engaging on so that everybody moving forward does know what this is all about.

So anyways, thank you for the update and I really appreciate it and the work to come.

Some point I'd like to get down there just to maybe, instead of peeking over the side or whatever, to actually get down there and see how things are coming along.

So if there's a good point for that, please let me know.

Maybe when it's not downpour rain, I'd like to do that.

You're all invited to put on your boots and come for a hard hat tour whenever you like.

Happy to do that.

All right.

Thank you, Councilmember Kettle.

I, too, want to thank Director Winston, Mr. Kunzelman, Mr. Laborde for being here for this presentation.

It's great to hear more about this important projects, taxpayer funded projects, and check in about the status, ensuring we're on time and on target and on budget delivering this project.

and sounds like we are.

Just curious about on your slide number three here, some of the slide data or the important data about the new stadium.

Looks like there's a total capacity of 8,000 and there are 6,500 seats, so is the idea that there'll be a certain amount of standing room only, 2500 or 1500, whatever standing room only?

Yeah, and the seating capacity that's listed there would be for a sporting event.

An event like a concert or a graduation where you might have a stage on the field, you can add additional seating by putting that seating at field level.

And as you mentioned, there are a number of places where Um, standing room or tables and chairs can be added, particularly in the corners of this concourse.

So the concourse, unlike the current facility or previous facility, this concourse lets you go the whole way around the field.

And so there are food and beverage options at each of the corners where a number of these standing room places are.

And then I'll just note on the west in this image you can see a grassy area that's basically a slightly sloped hillside that also allows seating.

Awesome, thank you.

And so 8,000 total capacity.

What's the delta between that, the remodel, and what was most recently the total capacity?

Yeah, the previous stadium though questionable, the number that was used was 12,000.

That would take some very narrow, hipped students to get to that number.

And those, of course, for those of you who knew that facility knew that those were, it was a very steep rake of the stands up to the highest level.

Though we have a smaller number here, we can get closer to that number when we use the field level, but the seats here, we will have bench seating like the previous facility, but with backs, and in the center where the 50-yard lines will be, we will actually have seats with backs and armrests, and so we have you'll be a little more comfortable using this facility for both the students and the public.

Got it, thank you.

And it looks like there were, you're right, the old stadium was, the stairs were fairly steep, but it was also one of the best stadiums around to run stairs, do stadium, and because of the steep incline, great workout.

All right, well, can you move on to slide 13, please?

there that construction schedule looks noting that opening intended to open right before the start of the 2027-28 school year.

Is that correct?

Yeah, for the 27 school year.

So, uh, uh, or September 27, as you mentioned for 27, 28 school year, um, we are, um, right on track and, um, we'll have a, a period actually prior to that to kick the tires and do all the things that one needs to do and close out to make sure that we're able to close things up, get that landscaping in toward the end.

give it some time to grow before we pull the fences back.

So we are on track.

For those of you who have seen the site recently, we are doing all of the subsurface concrete footings and utility work.

But in the beginning of summer, you'll start to see the steel start to rise and some of the stands, the precast concrete stands, start to rise.

So we'll really be going vertical.

as is noted here under superstructure when we get into the summer.

Great, thank you.

So we're on track, great to hear.

Final question is, from my perspective is, in the time that this project has been under construction, what was the biggest sort of unanticipated hurdle or impediment that wasn't necessarily contemplated at the start of the project?

How'd you overcome that?

And then do you foresee any other kind of major challenges going forward?

Yeah, thank you.

That is a great question.

You know, the sewer was probably our biggest hurdle.

It came very late in the permit process, so was not designed into the project, was raised by SPU that this was the time and no one could argue, given the age of that facility and the risk and the amount of and the community that serves that it was the time to do it whenever we took that grain stand down.

So we have had a great partnership with SPU.

We are executing it on their behalf.

And again, the contractor actually is and has been ahead of schedule on that.

So that was a big adjustment to the project, including how we access the site and a number of things, trying to deal with that fragile sewer that was right below our demolition site.

That was a major risk element that we've passed.

The other, as I mentioned, was the stadium walls touching the back of McCaw Hall.

What was a surprise there, to answer your question, is that the back of McCaw Hall wasn't finished as we were expecting it to be, so it was actually We're going to be building some additional fire separation between our facility and some additional enclosures and we were expecting to then cover it with metal cladding that matches the building and we will be doing that.

Other than that, no major, knocking on your wood table, no major surprises.

Some contaminated soils, which is not uncommon these days, but nothing remarkable when we were in the excavation phase.

All right.

Thank you very much.

And I note that there will eventually be a ribbon cutting and love for all of our committee members that are available and want to attend to attend that.

And council member Kettle and I, we might do a special one for the memorial wall aspect as that is finally restored to its original pristine shape.

All right, looks like we have a question from council member Lynn.

Go ahead, floor is yours.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you for this presentation and just want to also say I'm so excited to see the memorial wall preserved in the access and accessibility and highlighting of it improved by what you're doing here.

Pretty unbelievable to imagine, you know, 760 Seattle Public School students who lost their lives during World War II, including Japanese students whose families were interned, including tribal students.

And so very, very excited to see this get the recognition.

it well deserves.

One thing I'd like to ask is, so I believe this project includes a community workforce agreement, including Seattle Public Schools has some special provisions around prioritizing Seattle Public Schools like students, families, alumni.

Could you talk a little bit about the community workforce agreement, how that's going and any sort of reporting back that we'll get or that will occur as part of that?

Yeah, absolutely.

As I mentioned, although this is a public-private partnership, important to the city and to the school district was to incorporate our construction standards as it relates to union workforce and other equity goals as part of the program.

So the city's long used the community workforce agreement.

And in fact, we worked with the school district when they started to implement it as well.

You know, we've had a very good partnership with labor on this project, and the team, Selen, and subcontractors have been working hard to reach, you know, a number of goals there.

And as was mentioned, a council member that, in addition to the things that the city usually tracks, the school district very much is looking for school district graduates who might be moving on in trades and also wage earners from the district itself and so we are tracking all of those were early as you can see in the construction so we haven't bought out all the particular packages but we work very closely with the school district representative who tracks those of course labor and of course in FAS we have the staff that's on top of that so that That partnership has been really helpful to help our contractors be successful to both see the goals we're headed toward and be on track.

It's also led to some good opportunities with some school district students now and some recent graduates getting them on site, getting them to see what the trades can offer.

So I think it's been helpful also from a promotional perspective to really benefit some of the students who've been a part of this and will be a part of this as the project goes on.

We do expect, you know, the finished facility will also be an opportunity for students to engage in various ways, whether that's interest in lighting or sound or the technical aspects of actually running the stadium.

Great, thank you so much.

And I just wanna provide a little bit of commentary that, you know, super excited to see the community workforce agreement include, be used on a public private partnership.

You know, a lot of that community workforce agreement that Seattle Public Schools adopted came out of a lot of advocacy around Rainier Beach High School, around the Rainier Beach rebuild.

And I know that Virginia, and Pathea has been critical in implementing that.

And we have billions of public works projects and really wanna see that those jobs going back into our community, going back into our Seattle Public Schools workforce, alumni.

Sadly, hearing from one of our community violence intervention to talk about listening to kids who are saying it's easier to get a gun than a job.

And so it's so critical that we provide great, good wage jobs to our youth and support these opportunities.

So glad and excited to learn more about the report back once the project's finished.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Lin.

All right.

Any final comments, questions from any of my colleagues?

Looks like there are none.

So we will thank you again.

Really appreciate you.

I think you're gonna hang tight or some of you are gonna hang tight here for our next agenda item.

So we'll now move on to our second item of business.

Will the clerk please read item two and to the record.

Agenda item two, briefing and discussion.

All right, thank you.

Will our latest presenters please join us at the table?

And when ready, share your presentations.

Introduce yourselves, of course.

And let me share that, kind of orient the conversation here so we can do FIFA readiness and planning from a city of Seattle perspective is such a very broad and expansive scope of things that we could potentially talk about.

There's any number of rabbit holes, but in order to avoid boiling the ocean and talking about it all, today we're confining it to two things here.

the fan experience and Seattle Center's plans for that.

And then the second one is a deeper dive on transit expansion, expanded transit service during the time.

So there may be other, we'll reserve the right to add other readiness subtopics, if you will, but I think this is a good starting point for this committee.

If I may- Chair, can I ask for a moment to have scarves up?

Scarves up?

Okay.

I was just going to do that.

I was actually just going to do that.

Let's go together.

United.

Okay.

United.

We gotta get our new colleagues some of these as well, but in any event- We'll get the community sorted.

Not only scarves up, but have here a City of Seattle commemorative soccer ball.

It's a bit flat, but let's see.

Breaking stuff all over.

I blame it on the shoes.

I blame it on the shoes.

Bukayo soccer is my nickname on the pitch.

who is the greatest winger, soccer player, if you know football.

Cristiano Ronaldo?

No, Bukayo Saka from Arsenal.

Not an Arsenal fan, by the way, I'm a Bukayo fan.

In any event, welcome!

Glad I didn't break anything.

I didn't break anything, right?

All right, cool.

Welcome, everyone.

Please introduce yourselves, and when ready, begin your presentations.

Chair Saka, thank you for the opportunity to join you today.

April Putney, I'm here as the Chief Strategy Officer for the Seattle FIFA World Cup Local Organizing Committee.

Good morning.

My name is Chelsea Riddick-Most.

I'm here on behalf of Seattle Center, Director of Programs and Events.

And good morning.

I am Gretchen Lenahan.

I am Seattle Center's lead on fan celebration activities.

Dematris Winston, interim director at Seattle Center.

And billboard AV guy.

And SDOT partner extraordinaire as well.

So cool.

Thank you.

Go ahead.

It's a pleasure to join you today, and well done on bringing more props than I did.

I will be better next time, I promise.

But we are 98 days away from the start of the tournament, 102 days away from the first Seattle match.

We hope you are as excited as us in preparing to welcome the world to our amazing city.

and region.

We all know already, but I'll just remind us all to get us oriented, that this is the largest sporting event ever held in the world.

For the first time ever, it's connecting our entire continent, three countries, Mexico, United States, and Canada, and 16 host cities dotting across the country and continent, as I mentioned.

We are particularly excited to be in this endeavor with our neighbors to the north in Vancouver and really helping to showcase our Cascadia region to the world as folks show up.

We can move on to the next slide.

This shows the teams that we have playing here and the schedules that we have.

As a reminder, we are excited to welcome Belgium and Egypt, Australia, Qatar, Iran, and, of course, the home team, the United States.

We are also very excited to learn at the end of this month which is the fourth team or the final team that's going to be playing here in group stage, Northern Ireland, Wales, Bosnia and Herzegovina, or Italy.

So we will learn that on March 31st, which team is going to be playing Qatar.

And then we do have two knockout rounds games as well, and we'll learn who is in those as we progress through the tournament to see who's going to be in.

But as a shameless plug, we are very excited that the possibility of hosting Team US on our final match as well, if they make it through their group stage too.

And then, of course, I do want to point out that we are hosting the U.S. and Australia on Juneteenth and really have a tremendous sense of honor and responsibility in how we can make sure that we are educating folks about that holiday as well as driving economic benefit towards our black community here.

And then we are also hosting Egypt and Iran on the Friday that kicks off Pride Weekend here in Seattle.

and very excited about that as well.

Can move on to the next slide.

Just to make sure we're all tracking, our organization is the local organizing committee.

We are the local nonprofit who is really working to ensure that we have everything we need to be ready as a region.

We sort of think of ourselves as a traffic cop in a lot of ways with all of the other players and partners.

FIFA itself is responsible for hosting the tournament.

and I should have actually paused.

Apologies, I should have said at the very beginning.

These slides were added to the top of the Seattle Center presentation.

They were sent over after the publishing deadline, so there are copies on the dais available.

Apologies, I forgot to mention that at the beginning.

but FIFA itself is responsible for everything that's happening inside the stadium, the matches themselves, our organization helping to sort of quarterback all of our partners and making sure they get what they need from FIFA or vice versa, and then our governmental partners like the city, the county, Sound Transit, the state, the federal government, all sort of doing their typical roles, though a bit enhanced given the number of people we're expecting.

And then we have tremendous partners like Visit Seattle, the stadium, University of Washington, Sports Commission, all helping to make sure that our region is ready.

A couple weeks ago at this point, we made an important announcement about the exciting evolution of our planning and preparations.

We announced that instead of having a singular location for Seattle fans to go to that we wanted to instead move to a distributed model.

We think this model helps really make sure that we are showcasing more of the city and making sure that the city is the star of our tournament, not just the games themselves happening inside the stadium.

This will help improve access opportunities for businesses around each of the areas.

Each of the four sites led the Let's Play C26 World Soccer Celebration, led by our amazing partners at Seattle Center.

The Seattle Soccer House will be at Pacific Place.

Seattle Match Day Live at Victory Hall, led by the Seattle Mariners, and then Meet Me at Waterfront Park, led by Friends of Waterfront Park, as well as the Seattle Sounders and Rain and Ray Foundation.

Each of them will be open for a minimum of the six Seattle Match Days, most planning to be open far more.

and I know Seattle Center will get into more details as to what their specific plans are, but Pacific Place will be open every day until our last match here in Seattle and then Victory Hall is intending to be open every single match day.

The waterfront is still working out their exact operational plans, but there will certainly be fun, amazing activations throughout the waterfront park area.

but at a minimum matches will be shown on the six Seattle match days.

All of these places will be open and free to the public and the capacity remains roughly the same as what was originally planned at Seattle Center across the various venues.

And you can use the QR code to learn more about each of the different locations and as each of our operational partners finalize their details, we'll continue to keep that website up to date.

Those are the sort of official activations that we have planned.

We know that there are going to be a lot of parties and events happening across the city, and so one of the things that we are also doing to help prepare our community and help spread the economic benefit and help make sure that people are visiting and get to see more of the city is the creation of a community calendar.

So that QR code is a place where people can upload whatever events they have going on during this time that they want help to be amplified.

We're really excited about that as an opportunity to just really show people all of the amazing things happening in all parts of the city, the region, and the state.

and then above that is another code we recognize with an influx of tourists already in our tourist season that we have a lot of responsibility and need to make sure that we are ready.

And so we are really grateful for our partnerships with organizations that are already prioritized experts on hospitality, on ways to prevent and mitigate human trafficking, on how to hold inclusive events and making sure that it's something that everyone feels welcome at.

And then also, small businesses.

What are the sorts of things you should be thinking about to get ready for mega events like this?

And then also just how do you have a watch party?

What are the best practices for having watch parties?

How can you brand and show that you are a welcoming business without getting into sort of trouble with intellectual property rights?

And so each of our partners have put together an amazing playbook and have training materials.

And there are also workshops available by following that QR code on the top.

And then the last slide that I have before handing it off to our partners is the other things we're sort of doing, the fun things that we're doing to help move people around the city.

And so next week, we are very excited to be launching our See and Win app.

This is a local app created to sort of gamify tourism and really encourage people to go around and visit small businesses, to go around the city, to go around the state.

The businesses are all throughout the Unity loop as well as in other areas of the state, but really just sort of fun Pokemon Go style game where people who participate can win points that they can then trade in for prizes, whether it's swag, scarves like you have, pins, stickers, things like that, balls, or the grand prize of actually joining us at some of the matches at the World Cup.

So we are really excited to be launching that next week, like I said.

And then, as I mentioned, it sort of goes around the unity loop.

which is our attempt at sort of really just showing people here's a curated path of where many of our major art and cultural institutions live and wanting to help make it easier for people to get around.

We had to eventually draw a boundary to what was in or what was out because we were very, very close to just having the entire map of Seattle on that map and thought that that wouldn't quite be as practical for fans, so did have to draw a line at some point.

But I think there's lots of amazing places for people to be able to go and walk around instead of just showing up to the stadium.

We've heard loudly and clearly that it's really important to help get people visiting other areas.

And then the sea beacons on the end are just a fun sort of portion, a take on the poster designed by Shogo Oda, a local artist with the fluke there of just something we're offering to small businesses around the region, really wanting to make sure that they're sending a signal as well, that they are open for business and excited for fans to join them.

So I'll just do a quick introduction here.

So we're happy to be here to talk to you about our plans for FanFest and the collaborative efforts that Seattle Center has been engaged with and for probably a year or more.

And just, first of all, we usually see about 5% international visitors every year.

We expect a peak, a spike this year, which is very exciting for us.

and so just to say that Seattle Center has the infrastructure, the space, and the experience to hold these events, and so we're really excited to be part of this distributive model, and I'll pass it on to Chelsea and Gretchen to give you an overview.

All right, so as As April mentioned, we've been planning for a long time and we've been working actually with the local organizing committee since July of 2024 to plan fan celebration activities related to the World Cup.

Because it remains essential for us to provide a free and accessible public experience of the World Cup, Seattle Center has been moving forward with some self-produced viewing party experiences as we lean into this distributed model to make sure we get people all around the city.

and we're very excited to continue working with April and the team at the LOC as one of the four sanctioned sites and kind of be part and parcel of this distributed model with our other partners.

I think we each have our own unique sort of style and personality to these venues and we're gonna each be able to provide a unique experience to visitors and residents of our city.

The reason why the fan celebration at Seattle Center is so essential is that we are part of how we're gonna manage large volumes of humans in the city during this very concentrated timeframe.

From a crowd management perspective, a large overflow venue is really important to relieve pressure on the streets that surround the stadium and provide predictable and easily controlled gathering points.

I was privileged to join many of my city and agency colleagues at a information share session with the leadership from Qatar who were involved in the last FIFA World Cup.

And one of the big lessons learned from that event was that fan groups are gonna look for a place to gather during times when they don't have tickets.

They're going to find places to be in community when the time isn't already programmed.

So one of the gifts that we can provide our residents and also these guests is to make sure that we just have something going all the time so that they know, oh, we're going to go down to the Space Needle.

We're going to see that anyway.

It's the day before or after the game.

Let's lean into that.

So we are part of existing public safety strategies that have been put together with the LOC, Police and Fire, Office of Emergency Management, and our transit partners that kind of routes fans through the downtown core and around that unity loop and can get them to Seattle Center when they don't have a ticket.

Luckily, Seattle Center, like large groups of people, that's what we do on a regular basis.

Whether it is a major festival or a No Kings rally, we're pretty good at accommodating large groups in a safe way in collaboration with our partners.

We've got open space, we've got lawns, we've got lots of public restrooms and food and beverage and playgrounds and all of the awesome entertainment and attractions that are provided by our 30 plus resident and partner organizations.

So we've got a lot of stuff already there.

We've got customer service so that guests can talk to actual humans when they need help.

And that's why we're leaning into this fan celebration and that's why we feel our role is so essential to the city as we're welcoming these large groups of fans and guests.

And then lastly, focusing gatherings at the Seattle Center is gonna support the safety and stability of our downtown business core because we're minimizing, again, those impacts on the right-of-way, and we're also reducing subsequent demand on city-wide public safety resources.

It's a lot easier for SPD and FIRE to support a safe gathering at Seattle Center out of the public right-of-way than it is to try to manage the middle of a street in the middle of downtown.

The other thing that we're really good at is family-friendly experiences.

And so that is the identity that you'll see that we are leaning into at Seattle Center as Chelsea tells us more.

Thank you, Gretchen.

So you've heard a lot about how we're preparing and we are thrilled to be able to do what Seattle Center does best.

and that is develop and curate programming.

The wonderful thing is that we have an indoor and an exterior viewing screen that will be available to all visitors.

Inside the armory, we can hold approximately a thousand plus people.

In addition to that, when we have our high surge game days, we are developing and curating a secondary viewing site, which is outside at the Mural Amphitheater.

And that site holds approximately 3,500 to 5,000 people.

so we're thrilled about that.

This is, as I mentioned, watch party activities will be subject to license approval and we are working alongside the LOC to ensure that we have the appropriate broadcast license to host the games on site at our campus.

In terms of the events and programs, our focus is to engage local businesses.

Our focus is to provide a location and a site for local artists, whether they be visual, digital artists, performing artists, is to make sure that we are providing an opportunity for them to be showcased and seen on the highest level.

That includes being able to not only be seen by their local community partners, but to also be seen on a national and an international level.

And to that, we are starting to reach out to small businesses, We are focused on collaborating with some of our current artists that perform on our campus.

We are also working with nonprofit organizations that are centered on on youth and we are really excited about the ability to also engage some of our current programming that includes, as April mentioned, Juneteenth, that includes part of our Festall series, which is the Indigenous Peoples Festival, and also Pride.

So we're really centered on uplifting activities that we currently do.

In addition, we will have continued programming that is current, which includes our summer fitness programs, which also includes our artists at the center programming.

And we are in conversation with our partner organizations, which we have 30 plus organizations on our campus that will also be able to participate in the activity.

Our goal is to make sure that we have an inclusive and accessible space for visitors.

Any questions?

You wanna talk about Myles?

All right.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I did.

I had one more slide, but I just wanted to...

This last slide is really just where we are right now in terms of our deliverables.

We're ensuring that we are following through on all our applications and our permitting to ensure that we are solid on closing the gap.

All right.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate this presentation.

Colleagues, I will open it up to any of you all.

If you have any comments, questions, starting first, customary rights of first refusal to Vice Chair Wink, if you have any.

Thank you, Chair Saka, and thank you all for this presentation.

I know we'll be getting to some of the next presentation on transit and access, but I know this presentation is really about how do we really create spaces for funds so everyone can tap into the fun related to FIFA.

So in the spirit of that, I'm gonna ask a very not fun question related to this, which is about bathroom access and how you all are thinking about bathroom access throughout the city.

We know we have a shortage of public restrooms and it's my understanding during the Super Bowl Champions Parade, there were also some issues around bathroom access around the city, and so would love if you can provide some insight how we can make, how you all are thinking about, we make sure that folks are able to use the restroom where needed.

I'll take that if you guys don't mind.

Yeah, so one of the things that's so fantastic about Seattle Center being this spot is that we have the hard infrastructure to support very large groups of people.

You'll notice that even though we've talked about just the armory and the mural in terms of viewing experiences, we have public restrooms across the campus.

Up by the North Fountain Lawn, there's an entire outdoor restroom facility.

The Fisher Pavilion has restrooms.

If the Fisher is not getting used for other event activation, that will be an asset for us.

But we tend to not need to bring in a lot of additional restrooms for large scale activations because of the amount of infrastructure we already have.

So the big deal for us is staffing and ensuring that we have sufficient staffing to keep those restrooms cleaned and stocked during high demand periods so that we don't have some of those operational situations that might arise from an unmaintained site.

So our focus is on making sure that our staff is sufficient and prepared for these high volume time periods.

But the infrastructure, we're pretty good.

And I'm happy to speak to other parts of the city.

Our organization is working in partnership with a number of community groups and the city and county on identifying where is the gap in particular outside of the stadium area and the greater sort of Pioneer Square waterfront area.

So working to identify where those needs are going to be and we'll make sure that we bring in some temporary restrooms for folks.

Okay, good to hear.

And building on this point, you know, we just had a huge march through downtown.

I think a good test run to see how we can handle a very large amount of people.

Are there some recent learnings from that activation that you are applying to these final steps of preparation for FIFA?

Absolutely.

Speaking for our organization, there were a ton of lessons learned.

I think first and foremost, great news, we can do this.

We're going to have a lot of people in town visiting.

There's not going to ever be at one time as many people that were down celebrating our Super Bowl champion Seahawks.

So great news about that.

I think also one of the key learnings was that people adapted very quickly.

I think there was a tremendous amount of information sharing and public know before you go that the agencies did, and we will just continue to build off of all of those.

for next year.

I do think one of the key lessons was around restrooms, as you mentioned.

So I think that was definitely a space where we saw a need for some greater access there.

But yeah, I think the biggest takeaway for us is that that was a really great test run for us because everything we do is going to be smaller on a daily basis as to what we see there.

I can just add from a Seattle Center standpoint that one of the things we did really well with the Seahawks parade was interdepartmental communication.

And I have to say that our colleagues from Office of Emergency Management and police and fire and special events and transportation have been absolutely on point.

And we do have a really strong working team with our city team.

And so making sure that we continue that strong communication making sure that we're utilizing that Office of Emergency Management and the Emergency Operations Center the best way we know how, and then really communicating clearly with the LOC and other agencies that we'll be working with during this time frame.

It's just sort of like leaning into the systems that we have and making sure we're just staying on point with them.

Gretchen, I'll just add that the No Kings marches, we had a couple of those on campus last year.

The interdepartmental collaboration helps a lot.

those marches went well and so we wouldn't necessarily expect that many people on campus at one time because of the games but we're prepared and I think we'll continue to do the exercises before the games to be prepared for anything that could happen.

And I'll just also add that Seattle Center is also the main site for the end of the Pride Parade.

So we are certainly accustomed to, and in addition to that, to the walks and runs.

So we're accustomed to people gathering before they leave to go to a large parade or a large event.

And we're also prepared for when when things end, typically they tend to gather on our campus.

So it is, to Gretchen's point and to Dematris, it's really about making sure that we're looking at the peak events and making sure that we are properly staffed.

Great, thank you for that.

And my final question for today is just related to small business outreach.

I know you mentioned small business outreach, but I'm wondering if you can expand on that, what that's looking like you're partnering with and how you're making sure you're reaching immigrant-owned businesses.

We have a series of festivals called Festall, and each of those festivals are specific to various cultural communities.

And so we've started to engage with those festival partners to specifically look at small-owned businesses that would not typically get the visibility in some of these large-scale events.

So we're being very careful and mindful about which vendors and food vendors, merchants, that we engage.

And that includes, when we talk about small businesses, not only are we talking about restaurants and merchants, but we're also talking about entertainers who are entrepreneurs and we believe that entrepreneurs and small businesses are really the heartbeat of Seattle Center.

So it's important that they have the opportunity to participate and we take priority with them.

And Chelsea, I'd just add that, you know, Seattle Center is usually really intentional about its partnerships and support of small business and, you know, Gretchen and Chelsea do that on a daily basis.

And we mentioned a little bit about uplifting the artists and our Festall partners, and then the nonprofit partners and our campus partners.

And so people are coming to us, but we're also being intentional about going out and finding those partners for this to uplift everyone.

The last note that I'll also make is that one of the things that we have discussed in our meetings and our ideation about what the programming looks like on the campus, it's really important that our artists, that our food, that our entertainment represents kind of a global aspect of what we do.

So again, as we have curated installations on our campus, we're making sure that those installations are representative of the people that are in our community and that we'll also be visiting our campus.

I'd say that's one of the unique things too about Seattle Center is you have the BITE, you have the Festals, you have all these partners you already have.

We're just trying to help them leverage the opportunity.

All right.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Chair.

All right.

Thank you, Vice Chair.

Colleagues, I note that it is 10.45 a.m., and we still have another important FIFA-related presentation on transit, and let's, as best as possible, try to get through our questions and comments in the next 10, 15 minutes.

And for the people at the table, when you invite all the specialists and all the cooks in the kitchen, not everyone, that necessarily needs to chime in on a particular comment or question, so keep that in mind as well.

Thank you.

Councilmember Kettle.

Thank you, Chair.

Ms. Putney, thank you so much for being here along with Ms. Linehan and Riddick-Mose and back with Mr. Winston and Laborde.

First thing I have to say, it's very brave for our chair to use a ball as a prop based on recent Seattle political experience.

Thank you, Chair, for that.

So I wanted to thank the LOC to start.

One of the things I want to start with is the idea of respect to culture.

I think that's really important.

I think that's important for Seattle.

I don't think people necessarily understand that and that concept, which has come out of the last World Cup.

which is now coming back to play here, funny enough.

And so I just thank you for your commitment to Seattle in that respect.

Also thank you for your poster, which apparently is one of the favorites of all, number one.

And it's being rippling out because it was the best artistically done.

So thank you for that.

Also, thank you, Dylan's gone, but thank you for the LLC meeting with our District 7 Neighborhood Council.

This kind of goes to the small business piece and the community neighborhoods.

It's really important to help them.

I know the Metro Chamber's doing a lot, I know DSA's doing a lot, but the small businesses in the neighborhoods throughout the city is so important, so thank you for meeting with our District 7 Neighborhood Council.

One question I had was, my understanding was Lake Union Park was going to be a piece of this.

Can you speak to that?

So we're expecting more parties to be finalized and excited to add to our community calendar, but as of right now, these are the only four locations that we're ready to commit to being announced.

Okay.

Lake Union's beautiful.

Both outside of my district up at Gasworks, but particularly with Lake Union Park.

My favorite park in the city.

Excellent.

I also want to thank the Seattle Center for all the work that you're doing.

In the interest of time, to the Chair's point, I did want to say one thing and ask one last question, and Dylan's gone, but I did want Seattle to know that each of us have our responsibilities.

I've had discussions with the Mayor's team, Deputy Mayor and Ms. Holcomb, the Mayor's public safety lead, So we're going to have just before in public safety committee review of those that one slide that one bullet talking like OEM and the various departments from a public safety perspective And so she welcomed that and then my last question really quick is this this comes from being a fan of Cristiano Ronaldo in terms of wingers and and Is the training center.

I know some training centers I understand have been named, like countries have gotten there.

Seattle is one of the big prizes.

And I've not heard anything.

Have I just missed it?

Or is there a nation that has Seattle as their training center?

We have not yet announced what a country will be in Seattle.

You are totally right that the Sounders Clubhouse in Renton is the absolute top location in the tournament from our perspective, very objective.

There will also be a team in Gonzaga in Spokane.

We are working with the locations and the national teams and FIFA to be ready to announce that, but we're not able to break the news here.

Here.

Noted.

I'll follow up later.

Sure.

Thank you, council member Kettle.

Thank you for your flag and heads up that in your committee and your public safety committee, you're gonna deep dive on a specific topic pertaining to public safety.

That is absolutely encouraged and recommended.

Although this committee assumes responsibility for big events major civic experiences and explicitly calls out World Cup readiness as part of the newly revised scope of this expanded committee that we all approved in that language when we did committee assignments this year.

It's not intended to cover every single policy area topic at all.

And so to be honest, any one of us in our own respective committees could potentially to host organized conversations around human services, the arts, small business activations, whatever it is, do deeper dives on any of this.

But this is just kind of a general overview on the fan experience standpoint.

In any event, thank you, Council Member Foster.

You have not chimed in yet.

Thank you, Chair.

I really appreciate the presentation.

It's really exciting.

And it was lovely to hear about the integration of small businesses at Seattle Center.

You all do such a fantastic job of that.

One thing I wanted to come back to is you talked about the Unity Loop and I think you said the app that was going to be available for folks who are here to sort of identify businesses they might want to visit within the unity loop.

I'm wondering what we're doing to help uplift small businesses in other areas of the city.

I totally understand you had to draw the line somewhere.

And we also know there's going to be visitors staying everywhere across our city and our region.

So I'd love to hear more about how we're helping them find some of our favorite locations and neighborhoods.

Yeah, thank you, Councilmember.

I think that's where we really see the community calendar being such an integral tool for folks.

First of all, all of the toolkits and playbooks that our partners have put together are, of course, available for anyone, but the community calendar is really a space where any business anywhere in the state, really, will be able to tell us what great things do they have planned so that that can be amplified to fans.

It is housed on our website, but it will also be linked to in the FIFA app, which is the required app for anyone who has a ticket.

So there will be pages for each of the individual host cities, and our calendar will be linked to there.

So that's really the best avenue, I think, to be able to help direct people to the amazing things happening throughout the city.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Fosser.

Councilmember Lin, floor is yours.

Thank you.

Just on that small business and these playbooks or guidebooks, are they produced in different languages?

Yes, they are.

I think several of them are already translated into multiple languages, and I know a few of the other ones that aren't yet are in the process of getting translated into more languages.

Wonderful.

And just on the youth engagement, anything that you're doing to partner with Seattle Public Schools to provide jobs for youth or just engage with our youth community?

Our organization, we are a small and nimble group, so we are not doing a lot of hiring ourselves, so there's no partnership there.

We are working with a number of organizations to try to better understand, is there an opportunity to help facilitate access, both to the fan celebrations ideally to the matches themselves, but nothing to report yet.

But know that it's certainly something that we're prioritizing.

And then, of course, our partners, the RAVE Foundation, and us have that joint goal of creating 52 new play fields by the end of the year.

Originally seeking to build 26 by 2026, but the RAVE Foundation nailed that by the end of 24, so doubled the goal.

And I think they are currently at 42 fields across the state.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you.

Looks like Vice Chair Rink, is that a new hand?

It is.

Or yours?

Thank you, Chair.

Since I didn't have a fun question earlier, I'm gonna maybe end this on a fun question.

You mentioned that there's gonna be an app where you can collect points and get prizes, but you didn't mention what kind of prizes.

Is there anything you can share with the committee today?

Absolutely.

And we will be sending out a toolkit to all of the council members and the city as a whole to be able to share in your newsletters and things like that to just help make it available as possible or as quickly as possible.

But the types of prizes will be like swag, right?

So like the scarves, pins, stickers, soccer balls, as well as the grand prize being tickets to join us at the games.

That's a great prize.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Love swag.

Love swag.

All right.

Final question from my perspective, turning back to slide 11, that has that sort of map with the loop of the distributed model, the main non-exclusive, as we've learned, you know, set of activations in the distributed model.

Can you talk more about some and was noted by my colleague, Councilmember Kettle, and you all talked about the small business engagement that you all have been undertaking.

So this is, again, a non-exclusive list of potential meeting areas under this distributive model.

And even if an area isn't explicitly called out in a map as a designated sort of area, we know that neighborhoods are still going to to experience the impacts of World Cup when we welcome 400,000 to 800,000 people.

And in my own Council District 1, for example, Elki.

Elki is a premier, Beach destination, best beach in the city in my view, but not only that, it's the best beach in our region.

A lot of people come to Elkai and enjoy, it's beautiful.

You get iconic views, check it out if you haven't already.

But I do know some of the residents there and some of the small businesses there, they're concerned about the impact of FIFA and specifically on things like sanitation services.

And they're asking for, amongst other things, additional sanitation services, trash pickup, that kind of thing.

And so what kind of supports and engagement are you offering for just neighborhoods generally that aren't specifically parted or listed as this, you know, distributed model and then what about for Elkai?

Thank you, Chair.

I want to first clarify, apologies for the confusion from my earlier testimony, but the map that we're looking at right now is the map of the unity loop.

It's not the map of the distributive model.

The distributive model is, if you go back earlier to my slide that has the Seattle fan celebration, keep going, right here.

So these four places are the official locations for the Seattle for the fan celebrations in Seattle.

So these are the places that we'll have and be encouraging folks to go.

We are expecting, as we discussed, a ton of other unofficial places, and that's what our community calendar is going to be for.

and helping to show people where are all of the places in the city, in the region, in the state that they can be going to experience either viewing parties or exhibits or whatever fun sales are happening at businesses across the region.

So did want to just confirm that this is the map of the distributive model.

The map on slide 11 is the unity loop, or a sort of loose outline of the unity loop.

And that's really the curated, I think it's four-ish mile walking area where it's trying to connect some of the city's major art and cultural institutions.

And really sort of saying like, hey, here, if you want to see Seattle, make sure at a minimum you're seeing these areas.

and again, and those will be places that have small businesses identified all across the app as well.

So did wanna just clarify there.

As it relates to small businesses outside of that loop or this one or neighborhoods outside of those areas, again, really just encourage folks to fully utilize that community calendar as a way for us to help encourage folks to visit them across the city.

And as it relates to Alki specifically, I agree it is an amazing location, one of the best views in the city certainly, and know that it is a high point for many tourists all of the time, let alone during FIFA World Cup.

We are happy to continue to have conversations with you or your council office and the neighborhood about the things that they want.

But it sounds like the things that are in particular interested are city services.

So we're also happy to sort of continue to work with the mayor's office on that too.

Thank you.

All right.

Colleagues, any final questions, comments on this topic?

All right.

Let us move on to the next agenda item, second item or third item of business.

Clerk, will you please item three into the record?

Briefing and discussion, FIFA readiness, expanded transit access for the 2026 World Cup.

All right, thank you.

Will our latest presenters please join us at the table?

and when ready, introduce yourselves and begin your presentation.

Looks like it is 11 o'clock on the dot.

We have a excellent group of colleagues and partners internally within the city of Seattle and externally at our other government agency partners.

Ask that you try your best to confine the presentation to 15 to 20 minutes and then leaving room for our own comments and questions.

All right, take it away.

All right, thank you, Council Chair, or Company Chair Saka, and Council Members.

I am Liz Sheldon, Deputy Director at SDOT.

I'll run down the table for introductions.

April Putney with the Local Organizing Committee.

Jonathan Rose with King County Metro.

Travis Phillips with Washington State Department of Transportation.

Juaniguerra Sound Transit.

Go next slide.

All right, so we're here to continue the FIFA planning conversation.

This one is specifically focused on transportation and transit with our transit partners and the local organizing committee.

I'll just skip this slide and then turn it over to April.

Thanks again for the opportunity to stick with you all today.

On World Cup planning, one of the things that we wanted to make sure we are all aligned with are what are our overall goals for mobility.

And so you see them there, but really it's just to ensure that we're doing what we can to have a safe, inclusive, and welcoming atmosphere and environment, wanting to really broaden the benefit and in facilitating movements to other parts of the city, not just in the stadium area.

wanting to make sure that we are limiting traffic impacts to the shortest period as possible, maintaining community mobility and access to essential services for folks who aren't a part of the Games or don't want to be a part of the Games, and then also really wanting to just maximize public transit use and active transportation.

Compared to other events that we have at the stadium, we really want to just call out some of the things that make this event different.

First and foremost, as you saw from the schedule on the previous presentation, all of our matches are on weekdays, not on weekends.

We have three matches at 12 p.m., 1 p.m., one at 1, one at 5, and one at 8. So really sort of right smack in the middle of the workday for many people.

We are planning for a lot more out of area visitors than typical events that we have.

They also stay longer.

So World Cup, unlike other sporting events where you sort of come in the day before, leave the day after, or the morning after, World Cup travelers usually stay on average about nine days.

And that may not mean that they stay in the city for nine days, but their trip is usually about that long because they've waited four years to come and visit and watch their team.

So they're really here for a longer period of time.

We have more dignitaries, right?

It's national teams that are playing.

So we have the possibility of multiple heads of state.

The practical impacts of that are many, but one as it relates to transportation is there's not going to be any on-site publicly available parking at the stadium.

We are really lucky to have our stadium where it is. thanks to decisions made decades ago of having our stadiums in the heart of our downtown.

So they are really well served by transit already.

We also will have more group travel.

So typically there's not a lot of charter buses for most of our events, but there is going to be a lot of charter buses and private shuttles, fans traveling in groups rather than just as individual families or friends.

And then because of the games also happening up in Vancouver, we are expecting a lot of cross-border traffic, particularly because we have four countries that are playing in both of our cities, just a couple of days apart from each other.

And then we do also get to take advantage of some unique communication channels.

Our public agencies do a tremendous job getting the word out about what to expect to folks through their current channels.

But because the FIFA app is a required download for anyone who has a ticket, that will be a new tool that we will be able to utilize to help make sure folks know exactly what to expect and how they should be entering and exiting.

And then we are super grateful for the support that we've gotten from Congress and the state legislature on funding, particularly for transit.

Just yesterday it was announced that Congress had allocated $8.4 million to our region for transit service for the World Cup games, and that's on top of $9 million that the legislature appropriated last year as well.

So through that, the agencies are doing tremendous work to increase service, have more sort of resources available, better communications or enhanced communications, and enhance safety and security.

This is a map right here of the traffic intensity that we are expecting.

Our matches, unlike typical ones again, span four weeks.

So over that period, this is just giving us a forecast of what we can expect.

And as with most stoplights, red means we're not really expecting a lot of movement.

on those days.

So as you can expect, that really is the first match, but then also, you know, when we've got the US in town on Juneteenth, and then the following week, because we've got two games back-to-back, expecting a lot of traffic then.

Alright, so to pick up with what SDOT is doing as far as planning, I just wanted to set the stage a little bit and build on April's earlier comments of what we're looking at.

The chart on the lower right-hand side shows not only what we're expecting for FIFA, but also what we're expecting for some other significant events throughout the region.

It is summer season, right?

So we are expecting the FIFA events to be overlaid with the Mariners games.

and we have the Pride March, we have Fourth of July is gonna be right in the middle of that.

So we're expecting a significant amount of additional traffic on top of what we would see for FIFA.

And because of that, kind of looking at developing different responses and looking at different impacts based on kind of where in the city people are at.

Really knowing that zone one of what we defined is really around the stadium area.

So we're going to be looking at really intense pedestrian traffic, getting on those last mile connections from the transit stations into the stadium on game days.

So we're going to be looking at some pretty significant street closures in the area to really facilitate non-vehicle operations getting in and out.

A little bit further abroad, looking at downtown and Soto.

assuming that both on game days and non-game days we'll have a lot of tourists in the area and really looking at how we prioritize, again, kind of the pedestrians, bike, scooters, as well as continuing transit access to and from Seattle Center and other locations.

And then finally, acknowledging that there is gonna be a lot of traffic movement, again, kind of beyond Seattle as people are visiting Vancouver and other destination spots throughout the region.

People like to remind me there are, you know, There are other places throughout the state that people will probably want to visit as tourist destinations.

So really supporting, again, both freight and transit access on our key corridors citywide, knowing that that will have an impact as well.

Next slide.

So speaking, walking through a little bit of what we're looking at, again, looking at some significant street closures in the stadium area on game days.

Looking at being able to set up about four hours before the game and then depending on how traffic kind of leaves the area that'll be a little bit dependent on the time of the games as well as you know just how sticky the crowd is looking at opening up streets again two to three hours post game.

Really working on focusing closely with our friends at Metro and Sound Transit on wayfinding and queuing to be able to get to those last mile station access locations.

and then knowing that TNC and taxi circulation and strategy will be really important to support.

And finally, micromobility zones, we're designating some valley areas and some staging areas specifically for micromobility.

Next slide.

A little bit further out, really prioritize downtown, looking at how we prioritize and have pre-work on projects that support, again, pedestrian bikes and transit downtown and looking at really identifying some key corridors as you would expect, right?

So really leaning on the protective bike lanes on second and fourth to be able and the waterfront to be able to support bike access and then looking at pedestrian access on, again, the waterfront first and fifth and then really leaning on our key transit corridors, Third Avenue.

and then south of the stadium, really looking at getting traffic kind of out and around the stadium before they get in.

Finally, citywide strategies, we are looking at implementing a construction moratorium or pause that will go into effect pre-FIFA and stay in effect till the last game here.

It'll affect about 15% of our streets, but really looking at dialing back construction on those key corridors so that we can really promote mainly keeping transit service and freight on time as they run through the city.

And then we have our own kind of operations that we look at.

Some of the key strategies citywide are really leaning into our transportation operation center and being able to adjust signal timing and also as well as making sure that we're adjusting staff timing and availability for our Seattle response team, the SRT, and our maintenance and operations Next slide.

We were lucky in that we had a Seattle transportation levy that was passed in 2024, right?

And so we were able to front load a series of projects that really supported public realm, wayfinding and transit projects in advance of FIFA.

So we've been out delivering projects.

There are a lot of projects in construction and we're working on finishing those up pre-FIFA.

Also looking at investing in biking and micro-mobility and some accessibility improvements that are in process and wrapping up like really close to the stadium.

Again, to support that pedestrian access to and from the transit stations.

Finally, we have a five pillars approach.

We've used this for other events and has been pretty successful.

We really looked at dialing it up as part of Revive I-5.

and basically we have a series of strategies and tactics underneath each of these pillars that we can kind of dial up or down the lever depending on the type of event that we're seeing.

So really looking at leaning into that and identifying which of those like suite of strategies is really effective for an event of this type.

All right, I'll pass it over to Travis.

All right, just to talk a little bit about some of the construction work that I'm sure folks here have experienced or seen just around the region.

Actually, I thought we were, let's keep going, actually, past a few of these slides.

I think they're, we slimmed them down just a little bit.

Nope, go back up to 23, please.

I think this is perfect.

So we're treating World Cup as a statewide event because it is.

We've got numerous fan sites, and we expect a lot of travelers to be coming both north and south on our primary quarters, as well as east and west.

We also have a lot of work in Washington State that requires warm, dry weather to actually happen, and summertime is the time where it typically happens.

Upon getting notified that World Cup was coming to Seattle, we worked with a lot of contracts around the state to make sure we had some World Cup restrictions put into place.

This is basically saying, hey, we all rely on a lot of these weekend major closures to get our work done.

We've got to rip the bandit off fast approach at WSDOT.

We're dialing that back as well, given that we're expecting a large influx of people to arrive for the event and also stay and visit Washington State during the World Cup matches.

So if you look at the color coding on the map, and it's specifically focused on the blow up here, for the duration of World Cup in Seattle, June 11th through July 6th, we won't have any major weekend work.

We'll still be working overnight, taking care of some of those critical maintenance activities, but even projects like Revive I-5, they'll be buttoned up and out of the way for World Cup.

Now, this starts to get a little less restrictive as you start getting out of the Seattle area.

We treat World Cup match days mostly like our holiday restrictions.

So you won't see major closures happening one day before or after events here in Seattle.

We're also being cognizant of the back to back matches between Seattle and Vancouver.

So you can see that green line there as we have those back to back matches.

Even projects as we approach Bellingham where possible, we'll try to limit a lot of those major closures.

But again, overnight work will still happen.

We'll still have a lot of maintenance work to happen.

That'll be all coordinated with the major special events and with our friends here at the city to make that happen.

Let's jump to the next one.

We'll talk about Revive I-5 specifically here.

We look at 2026. We're all focused on the left two lanes of the northbound Ship Canal Bridge.

We will pick up just before World Cup on June 5th through 8th.

We'll have a full northbound closure.

That's that big black bar that you see right before World Cup.

We'll pick up our concrete barrier, move all our toys out of the way, restripe the roadway, and then I-5 will function as normal.

for the duration of World Cup.

That includes the express lanes.

We'll go back to the reversible pattern that we've all been typically used to over, gosh, forever.

And then as World Cup ends, we will have another full closure July 10th through 13th.

And then we'll be focused this time on the right two lanes of the Ship Canal Bridge.

But we'll have a full northbound closure to make that happen on those dates.

So with that.

and we'll keep them moving.

Where are you, John?

All right, thank you, and apologies.

My voice is quite raspy today.

Let's go to the next slide.

I'm gonna bury the lead and go straight to my key takeaway for the whole presentation.

King County Metro recognizes that when it comes to World Cup, we're operating under a dual mandate to both serve the needs of the event attendees and the hundreds of thousands of visitors in the area, but also mitigate the impacts and disruption to our regular riders, many of whom will not be participating in the event.

So that's kind of the key overarching driver to all of our planning and preparation.

And so as you might imagine, we're gonna be adding a lot of service for World Cup.

On the match days in particular, we're talking about around an additional 60 buses on the road and between 30 and 40 buses on the non-match days.

And that's gonna include a match day shuttle that I'll talk a little bit more about in a second.

a new seasonal waterfront service.

And then we also have a lot of other modes at King County, including contracted services that will all receive service enhancements throughout the tournament.

And that includes our on-demand MetroFlex service, water taxi and access paratransit.

Let's go to the next slide.

All right, so this is our match day shuttle.

And as the name would suggest, it'll operate on the six match days only.

This is something that we brought out originally for MLB All-Star Week in 2023. And then we did it again for Taylor Swift.

And we got a lot of really positive feedback from the public on this service.

For World Cup, it's gonna be massively scaled up.

So this is gonna be 35 to 40 60 foot coaches dedicated to this service with the ability to transport over 2,800 people per hour.

And thanks to close coordination and partnership with SDOT and SPD, we've arranged to have a dedicated staging area on northbound First Avenue South between Dearborn and Edgar Martinez, just to the west of the stadium.

So the service will begin operation three hours before the match begins.

It'll continue operation throughout the match and will continue three hours after the match ends.

So it's ingress and egress.

We can go to the next slide.

and so we've kind of internally organized around these four functional work areas so services is one which I just went through at a high level the next one is passenger experience here and then we'll also talk about safety security and operational readiness the headliner for passenger experience is definitely going to be open payment that went live just about a week ago and so you are now able to pay for the bus with credit or debit card.

You no longer need an ORCA card.

This has obvious relevance for World Cup with all the international visitors coming in.

They will not need to deal with trying to procure an ORCA card if they so choose.

However, we also understand that some significant percentage of visitors will still want to pay with cash, and so we wanted to offer them a solution as well that still limited the number of fare transactions they have to go through in order to ride transit.

So we are also introducing a three-day visitor pass that somebody can pay for with cash, and then if they're just seeing one match, they're good to go for three days.

If they're staying for longer, they might need to purchase a couple of those.

but we have that solution on hand.

And then of course, we're looking at wayfinding and signage enhancements to our trip planner, on the ground support, what we call street teams.

You'll see people out there that are helping to answer questions.

and then various promotions including a welcome video that will be filmed at the airport, sponsorship and the Flip Your Trip incentive campaign in partnership with SDOT that we've been doing for a while now in relation to Revive I-5.

We'll also be doing that for World Cup.

Let's go to the next slide, please.

Okay, safety security.

So just to the east of the stadium, we have no less than three bus bases in that area, just a couple blocks away, and our transit control center, which is kind of the nexus or node of our day-to-day operations.

And so we recognize there's some vulnerability there, so we've conducted a threat and vulnerability analysis to those facilities, and we'll be enacting a number of physical security enhancements, and a lot of this is also about staffing.

Of course, we're working really closely with King County Metro Sheriff's Office, but we also have a lot of contracted security, TSOs, Transit Security Officers.

They will be upstaffed significantly on the match days and we'll be deploying them strategically at the various locations, the fan celebrations, obviously the stadium, and along the route of that match day shuttle that I mentioned.

let's go to the next slide operational readiness so this is our ops team this is all the folks that keep our service running day to day you might see some of these folks out there in uniform in the field in the white pickup trucks or vans they're managing our service they will be out there managing that match day shuttle that I mentioned.

There's also our base operations.

So the bases are responsible for filling all the work on those match days and non-match days.

They will receive additional staffing and expanded dispatch hours.

Vehicle maintenance is gonna be doing everything they can to have all the coaches ready to go and in tip-top shape.

and then we also have a plan if need be to relocate that control center that I mentioned which again is just a couple blocks from the stadium and that plan, contingency plan has been tested.

Let's go to the next slide and that's what I got.

Jonathan, thank you Chair Saka and members of the committee.

Glad to be here and present Sound Transit's plan for the tournament.

So I'll run through this quickly since I know I'm the last one of the deck.

Starting similar to Jonathan and the three main working groups that were structured internally to focus on FIFA, First on the services, a punchline is we're focusing on adding services across all modes that Sound Transit has.

Link Light Rail will open across the lake and make that connection on March 24th.

We're really excited for that.

You already see additional capacity north of the CID all the way up to Linwood.

as part of our simulated service for that connection.

The one and two line will operate every eight minutes up until 1 a.m.

during the tournament on game days for Link.

For Sounder, we will have special event service similar to what we did for the Club World Cup last summer.

We tested that out took the opportunity and we have some good lessons learned that we're implementing for this year, but all six game days will have additional service.

For the T line down in Tacoma, additional service that also matches the sounder times and making sure that folks that are coming from Seattle are able to get home after they land at Tacoma Dome.

For SD Express, we're adding service pre and post game for some key routes connecting downtown and some of the adjacent communities.

And then we also have a pretty robust plan on rail contingency should there be a disruption for light rail or commuter rail getting to Seattle.

Next slide, please.

In terms of passenger experience, similar to Jonathan, we have similar strategies across the board.

The couple things that I want to focus on is our station activation and partnership strategies that we have from a regional perspective.

Given our regional role, we have activations focused on Juneteenth across the three counties and we're also looking at partnerships with the adjacent neighborhoods to the stadium and those connections to the CID and Pioneer Square in particular.

given past community feedback of not being just a pass-through for folks and really focusing on following folks to those communities, similar to what the local organizing committee is focusing on.

And then we will have a significant amount of staff out there supporting riders throughout the tournament.

Westlake and SeaTac stations will have staff pretty much the entire tournament where other stations will focus our staff deployment during game days.

And our communications campaign has officially kicked off.

If you go to soundtransit.org slash soccer tournament, you'll start to get additional information starting to be rolled out in the next few weeks as we launch different initiatives.

And then I think Liz mentioned earlier the partnership with the city and the local organizing committee around wayfinding and signage and that last mile connection between our stations and the stadium itself.

Next slide, please.

In terms of safety and security, prior to the tournament, we're focused on trainings internally for staff and our vendors on the security side, as well as testing our strategies before the tournament, making sure we have all of our ducks in a row.

And then during the tournament, increased security staffing across the system, a pretty heavy presence in the downtown core, helping meter passengers getting into the station pre and post game.

You saw that with the Seahawks parade, we'll intensify that.

even further, and I'll talk a little bit more about that in the next slide.

We will also have an emergency operations center active, and we'll also have liaisons at our regional activation partners facilities as well.

Next slide, please.

I wanna wrap up with this slide that talks about access to Seattle Stadium.

One of the things we learned early on from the local organizing committee in FIFA is that the perimeter around the stadium was actually gonna be significantly different than what we're used to for regular events at Lumen Field.

where folks are able to access the stadium via multiple entrances.

Regular fans for FIFA will not be able to enter via any regular entrance.

They will be designated to go out to the north side of the stadium via the north lot.

So we recognized early on that that would have overwhelmed the International District Station if everybody was getting on and off at that station.

So we have a Most High Station approach in order to distribute the crowds, where if you're coming and going from the south end of the system, you'll be directed to use Stadium Station.

If you're coming and going from the north end of the system, you'll be directed to get on and off at Pioneer Square.

If you're coming from the east side or need mobility assistance, you'll be directed to use the International District Station.

And if you're traveling within downtown, we will be directing you to use the King County Metro Shuttle.

Jonathan talked a little bit about that.

That is an additional capacity onto the system, as well as being able to leverage regular bus routes that are accessible at the International Districts that are other locations near the stadium.

So with that, I think that concludes my slides.

Excellent.

Thank you very much.

We will, we should have quorum until about noon today if we need it.

But one of our colleagues has a hard stop for another meeting.

And so want to yield the floor to Councilmember Foster for any comments or questions you might have.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you for doing that check with us around capacity.

I really appreciate it.

Great presentation.

Good job getting through a lot of stuff in 20 minutes or whatever you did there.

That was fantastic.

I wanted to ask a follow-up question, one serious one and one fun one in the spirit of Councilmember Rank.

Follow-up question around the micromobility and where those additional stops are going.

I think I heard that we're gonna have some corrals that are gonna be near the stadium, and that's fantastic.

I saw on your slides some additional ones near Sound Transit.

I wasn't sure if we're doing them by the, I'm sorry, April, the fan experience zones.

I may not have the right branding there, but I'd love to hear a little bit more about that.

And then my fun question is, should we expect, you know, what should we expect from WSDOT's social media team?

You all are pretty excellent over there in keeping the humor going.

So just a response to the micro mobility question, we are right now installing corrals.

I think you have, if you've been walking around downtown Seattle, you definitely saw them going up.

I think we have 24 installed and quite a bit more scheduled to go in kind of in the downtown area.

area, and then this graphic isn't the greatest, but where those kind of blue dots are on the map, those are areas where we're looking at kind of larger scale funneling people into more staffed corrals to be able to stop people at kind of the, along the perimeter area.

I think those, yeah.

So blue dots are the valet staffed drop-offs?

Yes.

Okay.

with the exception of I think we're still working out the Pier 48 and whether or not that's gonna be a location or not, but the other three are locked in.

Thank you.

All right, just following up on WatchDot's social media team.

This is a once-in-a-lifetime event.

We're not going to take this lightly, and it's going to come with partnership with everybody in this room with our collective agency.

So it's not just one channel that's going to get you there.

We'll be working and echoing a lot of what our partners are talking about.

This is really a twofold.

If you're here in World Cup, how are you getting to the matches?

If you're just going about your day-to-day life, what to expect?

So it's know before you go on a couple of different levels.

Our goal is to Get a lot of attention.

I don't think we have a problem with that, but also get some actionable information in people's hands.

What are you expecting if you're here for the matches?

What are you expecting if you're just traveling through?

What are you expecting if you're here for a wedding?

So all those types of things will start to lay that out.

I know we've got a campaign in the works, probably to target early spring-ish to start getting that word out and also start working in concert with all the folks in this room.

I know we're talking quite a bit from our selective comms teams.

Thank you, look forward to the memes.

Thank you, Chair.

All right, thank you, Councilmember Foster.

Now, as Chair, I'm going to share a few comments and questions to set the, to kind of frame the remaining conversation before I turn the floor over to my colleagues, starting first with Vice Chair Rink, if she has any.

All right, as was noted, the feds, are planning to release $8.4 million solely for transit, solely for transit.

That is on top of the $9 million for transit access and expansion for World Cup from the state.

So $8.4 million that is going to be distributed and doled out by the Puget Sound Regional Council.

And it is worth noting that Three out of four colleagues on this particular committee happen to either sit on, currently sit on either the Puget Sound Regional Council Transportation Policy Board, as do I, and or the Puget Sound Regional Council Executive Board, as do I.

So three out of four current members sitting on those boards and council member Kettle here is a former member of those boards as well.

So directionally, you know, we have a lot of opportunity and to help, you know, so looking, if you all have strong feelings on where those should be ideally distributed, let us know offline, but would love to better understand So we just had this massive Super Bowl victory parade last month.

We talked about that, few instances.

And so the whole primary purpose and goal of this conversation today and you all at the table is to talk about transit planning and access for World Cup.

And it's not a direct sort of apples to apples comparison.

During the Super Bowl victory parade, 750,000 or so people concentrated into a very narrow corridor, you know, a part of the city, and people were gathering there.

as the distributed model makes clear, we're gonna have people all around the city and not concentrated necessarily at any one time.

But that said, there still are some learnings that we could probably gather and compile and leverage for going forward for purposes of FIFA.

But starting with initial data on ridership, we'll go down the line with our partners at SDOT, representing the Seattle monorail and the Seattle streetcar, and go down the line and ask about the ridership data for the Super Bowl parade.

We'll start there.

I know Sound Transit, as previously disclosed from CEO Constantine, they had record ridership and over 200,000 rides.

I don't remember the exact data.

I'll let you speak for yourself if you're here.

But would just love to learn solely on the Super Bowl victory parade, What ridership data did you experience for each of your agencies?

Sure, I can start with SDOT and a little bit for Seattle Center talking about the monorail.

So the monorail had just under 7,000 riders, I think 6,900 and change.

And then the streetcar, we are upgrading our counters right now.

So we have general estimates, not exact numbers, but somewhere in the 8,000 to 9,000 range.

Got it, and my understanding, correct me if I'm wrong, that with respect to the Seattle Monorail, those were not record numbers in large part because The script was flipped, so to speak.

The last Superbowl parade started at the center and ended, I think at the stadium district.

And so we saw a course, like it didn't see the numbers that we saw, but during the 2014 Superbowl parade, is that your understanding?

It was not record?

I believe that is the case.

Okay.

And then, and is the same thing true for streetcar?

The only event that would compare for the South Lake Union would be the prior Seahawks parade, and I don't believe that the first Tulsi car was open at that point.

All right.

Thank you.

Going down the line at King County Metro.

319,000 for the day.

For the day.

Was that a record?

Nope.

It's actually pretty comparable.

So our hypothesis is that a lot of folks stayed home.

And then you mentioned the apples to oranges.

we can't underestimate the disruption of closing 4th Avenue as a north-south thru-fair and it wasn't just that but all the cross streets that cross 4th Avenue impacted us a lot and we actually internally kind of colloquially referred to it as a no-fly zone most of downtown was effectively shut off to bus service so we organized a couple of shuttles custom shuttles to address that but yeah, I think a lot of people use transit to get to the event and then of course other key piece of context is that we've obviously been revamping our service to feed into light rail.

So I think as more data comes out, we're able to get more granular with it.

We will see that a lot of folks were using bus to get to and from the light rail stations and then taking light rail into the downtown core.

Got it.

So no record ridership.

It was roughly on par with a normal day.

I wouldn't be surprised if, as a whole, that was the case, but there were certain lines.

Is it true that there were certain lines or routes that did experience record ridership?

I don't know about record ridership, but there's definitely some variance there, and I can get back to you on that once we start to parse through those specific numbers.

All good, thank you for the initial clarity, appreciate that.

All right, and Sound Transit, we already know, but you could speak for yourself.

Yeah, you mentioned 200,000 for light rail, and then 20,000 or so for commuter rail for sounder, and then for bus, we're still digesting that data.

And as Jonathan mentioned, because of the impacts of the downtown closure, some of that data is still being analyzed.

All right, thank you.

And for, again, for, we'll go down the line, transit area agency partners, what is the additional anticipated capacity that we'll be able to accommodate that you all are planning for during the FIFA period for each of your agencies?

What is the additional capacity you're planning for?

I'll actually let Jonathan start.

I'm not sure of the monorail schedule.

Sure.

So the match days are going to be the high point.

And that's kind of what Juan and I are planning too, because that's going to be the peak.

And it depends on what assumptions you're going to make.

There's different ways of slicing and dicing it.

One of the things, the key drivers of our planning and preparation is that we know transit is expected to transport a higher percentage, a higher mode share of folks to and from the matches and the fan celebrations.

So again, the exact number depends on how exactly you slice and dice it, but we're planning for about 35,000 in terms of how many people we will be able to transport to and from the match, which is about between 50 and 60%.

of the capacity of Lumen Field.

And then of course, again, you have the fan celebrations and the non-ticketed fans that will also be looking to get around.

Thank you for that.

Any initial estimation on how much percentage that is over norms?

Yeah.

So for a typical stadium event, it would be about half of that percentage transit mode share at about 30%.

Okay.

Very helpful context.

Thank you.

All right.

Sound Transit?

Yeah, and for us, the four-minute headways north of the CID is really what allows us to carry the most amount of people to and from the various activities in not only the stadium.

So each train is going to carry between 600 and 800 passengers.

So if you add that up by direction, you're looking at about 8,000 to 10,000 people per direction per hour.

and that'll be throughout the entire day for game days.

For Sounder, depending on the game start time, you will have a special event train coming from the north and a special event train coming from the south, and either leveraging the PM peak service or special event train in the evenings after, for those evening matches.

And then for SE Express, there's a couple of extra trips here and there, so a couple hundred in terms of seating capacity.

Got it, thank you.

And then for the streetcar, I know we are decreasing headways.

I don't have the number off the top of my head, but I can get back to you on that.

And I do also want to call out, as per typical larger events in the stadium, we are going to pull back that last station for the streetcar.

So the terminus will be east of the normal stop.

Got it.

Thank you.

Yes, please do follow up with that information.

Really helpful data point.

All right, I will yield the floor to my colleagues, starting first with Vice Chair Rink, floor is yours.

Thank you Chair Saka and certainly appreciated those questions you had as well.

First and foremost, I want to say congratulations and thank you to whoever made tap to pay possible.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

What an exciting day.

I tapped to pay just for the thrill of it.

I have a City Orca card, but I just was like, I want to experience this.

So thank you to the whole team who made that possible.

It's a really exciting development and of course, right in time for FIFA.

So thank you.

and I appreciate the questions around increasing transportation access during these hours and I wanna dig in further just to make sure I'm also understanding.

I'm thinking about as it relates to Metro, if you can share a little bit, and apologies if I missed this detail, specific bus lines where we might be adding service and thinking about late night service too.

I know right now, The Route 2 stops running around a certain time and so without knowing the full game schedule and when we're thinking about how to line up that timing, I'm thinking about both how we can ensure guests are able to get where they need to go, but also workers who may be working late into the night and if there's consideration for adding additional hours.

So if you can speak to first late night service and any specific lines where we're adding service, that would be great.

Yeah definitely so we are still finalizing the final final list of routes that will receive added service and part of that is by design so we will have a list that we can share but we're also intentionally holding some in reserve so to speak as we get closer because we want to maintain that agility and flexibility so that we can repurpose those resources as we're going through the tournament and getting you know lessons learned day by day but I will mention some of the routes so for example whereas previously when the two line was going to open we were set to stop operating our sound transit express service or our stack service and this is those east side routes 522 545 550 554 in agreement with Sound Transit, we will actually be continuing that service more or less as it is today throughout the tournament, throughout the service change.

In addition to that, we will be adding extra service on 522, 545, 554. We see really high ridership on those routes for special events.

Obviously with the opening of the two line that will change and it'll be really interesting to see how that changes.

but we know those folks on the east side in particular, everybody probably, but the east side in particular, we hear from them about late night events.

This was a big lessons learned from Taylor Swift.

obviously got out pretty late.

We did have service, but folks were really worried.

They wanted to take transit to the event, but obviously they wanted to know they could get home after the event.

And so we do have that one 8 p.m.

match in which we're tracking this really closely, and we will be looking at that span of service on those and other routes.

The other routes are gonna be kind of like the heavy hitters, a lot of them, the really high productivity routes, D-line, E-line, you know, we can add service to that and people use it every time.

On the south end, lines 150 and 101 are really popular.

So I'm confident, comfortable mentioning those routes, but the final, final, final list is TBD.

Fabulous.

Thank you for that.

That's encouraging to hear, and we'll definitely stay tuned.

And then I wanted to go into the street closures component, just talking a little bit about thinking about how we're considering pedestrian safety during those street closures.

Are we thinking about temporary bollards, any type of barriers in place, and just would love if you could expand on that.

Sure.

We're working really closely with SBD on the time, on the installation and the timing, right, so that we get it all dialed in.

They will, for the most part, be using meridian barricades, knowing that it's kind of a quick setup and take down on game days only.

So that's probably the primary kind of measure that you'll be seeing around the perimeter.

And then we've been looking at potentially at some key locations, adding just some concrete barriers that we would set down and leave for a longer time period.

If you notice on the kind of Royal Brougham, we are looking at expanding pedestrian closure for one lane only, so that'll likely be concrete barricades, and that's specifically to support access to sound transit and some queuing.

So where you see the main street closures, meridian barricades, and then some key locations, concrete barricades.

Liz, if I can add, because I think this is a good partnership element that we've been able to work on.

We know from events at T-Mobile for folks accessing stadium station, folks take over the street naturally post game.

And so we recognize that we don't want that to happen for FIFA.

We want a more controlled environment of how people access the station.

And so we've been able to work with Estat to close a couple lanes on Royal Brougham between 4th and 6th.

so that we can have space to cue those folks more appropriately than just letting them kind of free roam the street.

Thank you for that.

That's really helpful to understand.

And pivoting back to something we talked about earlier, bathrooms.

So a question for our soundtrack.

I'm sorry, that's the theme of the day, Chair.

But I saw on the Sound Transit slide a mention of, what is it, Throne Labs?

I did a quick Google search.

That's a new company for me.

Wondering if you can expand on that and let us know, is there an intent to have those at every light rail station?

Is there more that you can share about the deployment of those?

Yeah, we're still in discussions with Thrones.

The partnership to start a market for Thrones is in coordination with the City of Seattle, King County, and Pierce Transit, so they need a minimum of 10 units to start a market, and so we're working on what that looks like.

Definitely not all stations will have bathrooms.

A lot of our stations outside of Seattle do have bathrooms already.

We're trying to identify gaps that we can fill with these units, but we're still in discussions as to what exactly that looks like.

based on the discussions also with the partners.

Great, curious to learn more as it comes.

And my final question is a little bit higher level, because I understand there's so much work that's happening right now to really deploy, use new strategies, make these plans.

And I'm wondering about thinking a little bit ahead about when we are taking time to debrief this whole event.

and how are you all thinking about evaluating our success?

I think this is an exciting opportunity to be deploying a lot of new strategies and future, and I'm hopeful that what we learn from this will inform future planning efforts.

I'm sensing that Council Member Kettle were on the same page, perhaps?

Yes, just don't want to jinx anything.

Okay.

I kind of would.

But I think there's such a great opportunity here to use this as a learning opportunity.

And so I'm wondering how you all are thinking about evaluating our success.

What does a success look like for all of these different measures that we're putting in place?

I can start with that.

So from the City of Seattle perspective, we're obviously gonna lean on Office of Emergency Management and some other key partners that will facilitate kind of city-wide debrief on our effective, like our strategies and whether or not they're effective.

And then we're also from SDOP perspective, we have a couple of pilot projects that we're looking at The street closure is amazing that we're able to pull it off and is it something that we would want to carry forward as a better addressing kind of community needs for large events.

And so we'll take some time after the events to really look through and see what worked and what didn't.

So both kind of tactics level at the emergency response and department level, kind of themes that we want to carry forward.

Yeah, I would say for the organizing committee that we fully, not specific to transportation, but across everything that we're working on, we fully expect to have a debrief at the end and realize that some of the things we tried didn't work.

And if everything we tried worked, I think we would consider that a problem in and of itself because we didn't push ourselves far enough to try new things.

So we are, I think, really prepared for an honest conversation about what went well and what should we do differently.

in particular with an eye towards 2031.

Yeah, the after action is gonna be huge.

Lots of lessons learned and I'm really looking forward to that.

And I think, you know, World Cup is kind of like a capstone project on a continuum of a lot of events.

We've got our annual events that we plan for every year, Pride, Torchlight, each year they're a little bit different, major events like that.

But then we have one-off events that really kicked off in 2023 with MLB All-Star Week.

Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Metallica, all the big concerts.

We had after actions and lessons learned from all of those that are feeding into our World Cup planning and preparation.

And then World Cup itself will come with its own lessons learned.

I really like this phrase actually from the LLC that I'm gonna borrow, legacy impacts.

And we're thinking about that a lot in relation to World Cup.

In some ways, It's like the hidden goal here is to pilot, innovate, and enact these new initiatives with the hope that many of them will actually continue on beyond World Cup and feed into making our regular service safer, more reliable, clean, equitable, all these things that we aspire to.

one just very brief example I didn't get to mention in my presentation but you know when we typically add service for all these events like events I just mentioned the 60 additional buses that we'll have on match days we've been kind of limited this gets a little bit technical but typically that data associated with that added service does not go downstream into trip planners, Google Maps, transit app, or whatever your trip planner is of choice, which results in a poor passenger experience.

So we're looking to change that for World Cup, and we're gonna be loading a significant portion of that service, including that match day shuttle in a different way, so that as somebody is planning their trip to the match, whether it's in Google Maps or another trip planner, the match day shuttle will show up as an option.

So that's just one of many examples, innovations that we're hoping will continue on beyond World Cup.

From the state of Washington's perspective, as I mentioned before, it's a statewide impact.

And one thing that we're going to be really watching for is how is our system actually affected?

How many folks are choosing to drive versus transit?

Not just in the Seattle area, but across the state.

We'll also have our emergency management centers, both here in Seattle.

We have one near Bellingham or excuse me, a traffic management center near Bellingham.

We'll also have our Olympia-focused Emergency Operations Center put together.

We'll have some liaisons with various partners here.

So we'll be participating in a variety of after actions as we go through day to day, and then hopefully as the event wraps up.

But kind of to steal the phrase, this is a really unique event.

We haven't experienced something like this since, well, Taylor Swift or before that, the Olympics up in Vancouver.

So this is, we had a lot of growth since then.

So how does this affect us?

Are there things we could have planned better?

Do we need more resources allocated in certain areas, particularly for things like instant response or other things?

We'll be looking at that full suite of activities we have planned and trying to catalog that so we can be prepared for the next time we have something like this.

Yeah, and I would add like there's three different angles to this question.

In my mind, there's the internal angle that each of our agencies is doing.

There's a regional angle that we need to coordinate on.

What is our lessons learned from a partnership perspective?

And then for Jonathan and I, what does that look like from a host city transit agency perspective?

There's a lot of work that we're doing with host city transit peers in preparation for FIFA, but from the internal perspective, We actually started last year with the Club World Cup.

We tried a bunch of the strategies that I talked about today during the Club World Cup and we learned a lot of lessons.

One of the key ones is the special event service on Sounder on weekdays.

We could have done a lot better in communicating those changes to regular customers that aren't used to service changes.

and so that's something that we're focused on this year.

The Super Bowl parade provides a big opportunity because we also tested some of our strategies there and given the success of that Super Bowl parade, we're comfortable saying, as April put it earlier, we're ready.

As a region, we're ready.

That proved it during the tournament, but we're still preparing for those scenarios where we're gonna have a lot of folks coming in and go from there.

So there's a couple different angles from a lessons learned perspective that we're tracking.

Incredible.

Thank you all.

Looking forward to being beyond this and perhaps having some amazing new learnings to apply to our transportation system.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Vice Chair.

Great questions.

That's why we like to allow our colleagues to speak, because now I don't have to ask as many pesky questions.

Knowing that we do have about eight minutes until noon, Councilmember Kettle.

Thank you, Chair.

Really quick, just as a quick follow-up, Ms. Putney, from earlier, I got a note to me related to Lake Union Park that the deteriorated decking and benches have been removed, being replaced now, grass is receded, planters being replanted, dying trees have been replaced, all these things, all hands on deck with parks.

and with the community.

That's where I'm getting this, all hands on deck with the community.

Truly grateful for the effort to put in today and to be done in time for FIFA.

So, boom, one.

Two, I've been to three matches, one in DC, one in Berlin, Germany, and one in Stuttgart, Germany, and I'm thinking back about Deutsche Bahn and the city's S-Bahn, U-Bahn.

and I note that was across a country, whereas FIFA is across a continent with the three countries involved.

With all that, I've got one question for Mr. Rose.

So I'm going all the way to basically District 7, is I understand the waterfront shuttle, but my understanding was there's gonna be a First Avenue shuttle too.

Is there anything you could speak to that?

No.

I don't think there is.

One of the things, the limitations on First Avenue, as I'm sure you're aware, is the areaway, as it's called, so the underground tunnel.

So we are limited in our ability to operate on the curb lane First Avenue, but the waterfront service, the routing is not finalized.

It is our goal to connect Lumen, the waterfront, Seattle Center, Pioneer Square, and CID, but the specific routing is still TBD.

Okay, First Avenue, just put it in your mind if there's options or abilities, and more generally, long-term, we do need First Avenue bus KC Metro service, so putting that little plug in right now.

Thank you, Chair.

See how quick what that was?

And I only asked one person, one entity.

Thank you.

All right, great work coming from you.

No, Council Member Lynn.

Thank you.

Excited to hear about the looking at thrown bathrooms.

I know that Aaron Goodman from Soto BIA is looking at them as well.

And so I would love to, as we talk about sort of the long-term impacts, if it's a success to have a long-term partnership.

Quick question.

Anything on like parking strategies, enforcement strategies, so that certain neighborhoods near the stadiums or certain areas near light rail or other transit stops don't kind of get treated like parking lots?

Do you want to go further out to start?

As far as enforcement, it's kind of typical enforcement.

We'll be having our PEOs out and I can follow up with SPD.

They're working on strategies as kind of mutual aid and their staffing is happening.

Okay, thank you.

I would say additionally we are just really communicating and pushing for folks to rely on transit and to rely on walking and biking.

Our city and stadium area is very compact, particularly compared to the other 15 cities that are hosting, and so really promoting that as a reason both to select, to visit Seattle, but also as the preferred way to get around.

Thank you.

All right, thank you.

I will finally just note that, well, first off, thank you all for being here today.

Really, really appreciate every last one of you.

Our stalwart partners at SDOT, thank you.

Somewhat of a captive audience, given your internal city, but really do appreciate you for being here and sharing your insights with us.

Of course, our partners with the Levy Oversight Committee, or excuse me, not the Levy Oversight Committee, Local Organizing Committee.

Ms. Putney, thank you.

And from WSDOT to King County Metro to Sound Transit, really grateful for your time and insights today.

To quote Jay-Z, you could have been anywhere in the world.

But you're here with us, and we appreciate that.

So thank you, thank you.

Just on the topic of transit, I'll just note that I keep my ORCA card handy.

and when we're talking about digital access and digital payments, I shared all the resources out in one of my recent newsletters about this cool feature and I tried to upload my Orca card to my iOS device and follow the documentation and still couldn't do it for some reason.

So we'd love to, in the North America market, there's five regions that are listed, Clipper card and Chicago, but the Oracle card is not listed currently.

And so it's either a documentation gap or probably user error.

Would love to connect with you all offline to figure out how I can do that.

Cause I keep losing this pesky thing.

So digital is the way of the future.

Let's go.

All right.

If there are, we have reached the end of today's meeting.

Our next meeting is March 19th, 2026 at 930 AM.

Is there any further business to come before the committee before we adjourn?

Hearing and seeing none, we are adjourned.

It is 1158. AM.

Thank you.