In a box on his desk, Seattle Center director Robert Nellams keeps a map of the completed Mercer Corridor construction routes. “Whenever I have bad days, I go back to this to say...when these things happen, this will be far better than it ever was,” he said.
Last year was one of Seattle Center’s best financial years in recent history, and this year has been “decent” so far, too. As of right now, the construction impacts to Seattle Center aren’t devastating, Nellams said, but it is seeing impacts, particularly with casual patrons.
While regulars and season-ticket holders to sporting events and shows will go back time and time again, others may be deterred by the traffic, Nellams said: “Those numbers might be dwindling a bit, and that affects all of us.”
The financial successes from last year have much more to do with the recovering economy than the nearby construction, Nellams said.
Working with the community
Before the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) started construction on the Mercer Corridor project, it met with local community groups, and as the work began, it began working directly with nearby, impacted businesses, said project manager Eric Tweit.
Both Seattle Center’s staff and SDOT have tried to engage as much as possible, Nellams said. There was a point where SDOT staff and Seattle Center staff were meeting twice a week to communicate.
“SDOT has tried very hard to get out of the box that they’re normally in in terms of a construction project,” Nellams said. “They didn’t always do what we asked them to, but they made, in my mind, a genuine, authentic effort to try to balance that polarity as best they could.”
That sort of outreach is pretty standard for SDOT, Tweit said. The agency began meeting more with Seattle Center officials because the Seattle Center is so big and would be impacted by construction for such a long time, he said: “It was important to keep them informed.”
When it comes to taking input from businesses, SDOT can’t please everyone, Tweit said, so it focus on its bottom line, which is to maintain access.
Impacts on local businesses are always a big priority for SDOT, Tweit said, but figuring out how to balance those needs with construction is not an “easy, formulaic thing,” he said: “We have to look at costs — both in terms of just labor and costs of delays in construction. Most people have been really understanding of the need for the construction and [that] there will be impacts.”
Nellams recognizes that the needs of Seattle Center — accommodating visitors and events — are much different than average residents, who are just looking for relief during rush hour.
People have always called the project the “Mercer Mess,” Nellams said, but before, it was manageable, and they were able to negotiate it. Now, it’s living up to that name even more, he said. With more than 30 organizations on the Seattle Center campus, “the lifeblood of that is folks being able to get here,” he said.
One of the biggest impacts Nellams saw was when Broad Street permanently closed on June 1 from Fifth to Ninth avenues. Before that, people were able to get to Seattle Center on a familiar route. Now, they must take Mercer, and traffic can back up quickly.
Broad Street was a “game-changer,” Nellams said. “I thought we were successfully surviving prior to that, and I think, now, we’re still surviving. But I’m a little bit more worried about it.”
When Broad Street closed, SDOT received complaints that it was taking motorists longer to get through the Mercer corridor, Tweit said. SDOT and Tweit have been trying to change the signals to keep traffic moving and make sure people know about alternative routes. Broad Street was a popular route, but Mercer has replaced that, he said.
Looking to the end
Often, visitors will take the alternative transit methods, like the monorail and Metro bus to Seattle Center to see its iconic sites, Nellams said. When people swarm the campus, for events like the recent four-day international Dota tournament, nearby businesses benefit from the visitors, too.
“We seem to be a hotbed of economic activity,” Nellams said, noting all of the events, businesses and restaurants on campus. “That energy feels really good. You just have to hope that all of those positives will allow us to ride that wave, especially as things get reconnected, [like] across [state Route] 99.”
As Seattle Center gets transportation updates from SDOT, it works with the rest of the campus to communicate any changes. “When things are known, it works really well,” he said.
Seattle Center is also trying to convey to drivers that they can get to the Mercer Street garage on Fourth Avenue, to avoid some of the traffic.
“I’m not going to blow smoke at anybody that we’re going to thrive,” he said. “No, we’re in survival mode.”
To Nellams, the Seattle Center will be in survival mode until the Mercer Street project ends in 2016. “We have to rely on the fact that this is what we’ve been doing for 50 years and we’re still here,” he said.
This November, the project will hit another milestone, Tweit said, when a third lane of eastbound Mercer opens up east of Fifth Avenue.
In the end, Tweit believes the construction will all be worthwhile, too: Once it’s done, it will be even easier to get to Seattle Center, Uptown and Queen Anne from the east, he said. He also predicts traveling east to west will be easier.
Sometimes, the construction impacts give Nellams sleepless nights, especially when the Seattle Center is hosting big, sold-out events, with as many as 20,000 people on campus, and there’s a capacity reduction on the streets. The fear is that it will take them an hour and a half to leave, and they say, “I’m never coming back,” Nellams said.
The important thing to remember, Nellams said, is that “the experience of getting here and leaving here is greatly overshadowed by the experience of being here.”
Seattle Center will have its biannual meeting with neighbors later this year to discuss concerns, including transportation. Stay tuned for more details about that event.
To comment on this story, write to QAMagNews@nwlink.com.