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As spring blooms and the days grow longer, there’s no better place to be than Discovery Park. Today, Seattle’s natural sanctuary spans more than 500 acres. But before the park became our city’s largest open space 50 years ago, it was known as Fort Lawton.
While most folks are familiar with this history, few are aware that the federal government still retains ownership of a 34-acre parcel just north of the park’s east entrance. There’s not much to see there on Texas Avenue, except empty military buildings, driveways and parking lots. These are the abandoned remnants of the Fort Lawton Army Reserve Center. This is where, back in 2019, the City of Seattle proposed to build 238 units of affordable housing. More than four years later, it still hasn’t happened.
Why hasn’t the project moved forward? For one, the costs to build at Discovery Park are enormous. In 2019, the total projected budget was $93 million. Now, the city estimates the project will cost $145 million, with more than 70 percent of the total being spent on underground improvements — not housing.
The standard underground infrastructure of the type we all take for granted when building on a typical city lot, like sewer, water and adequate drainage systems are absent from this parcel. The lack of proper drainage is so bad that the parcel’s acres of impervious surfaces cause major rainwater runoff problems for the neighborhoods downhill and just to the north. Not surprisingly, the Army Reserve never built the infrastructure necessary to adequately mitigate this runoff, and the city is stuck with paying for it.
Last fall, torrential rains flowed off the pavement, flooding houses on both sides of West Commodore Way. The stormwater then drained into nearby Salmon Bay, reducing water quality and harming an already stressed salmon population.
But just as alarming, the city’s 2019 plan doesn’t even mention the climate crisis or this project’s irreversible carbon footprint. We believe the city’s outdated plan is bad for Seattle’s climate. It preserves only 13 acres of existing forest and adds zero new forestland. And it would cut down more than 40 significant and exceptional trees currently standing on the parcel, at a time when the city desperately needs more of these large, shade-producing trees, not less of them.
We at Friends of Discovery Park propose a better path for Seattle. Reforest the remaining Fort Lawton parcel to improve our environment and redirect money from the stalled 2019 plan to build more affordable housing elsewhere at less cost, more quickly.
The Fort Lawton parcel is in a critical location, between two of the largest and most biodiverse greenbelts in Seattle: Discovery Park and Kiwanis Ravine. The cost of simple demolition and reforesting would be a tiny fraction of the massive infrastructure costs needed to build housing on the site, and the new greenspace would allow rainwater to percolate, not run off. And it would re-connect the rich, biodiverse ecosystems of Salmon Bay, Commodore Park, Kiwanis Ravine and Discovery Park. Not to mention expand our city’s tree canopy, bringing us closer to Seattle’s 30 percent goal by 2037. We at Friends of Discovery Park are happy to raise the $3 million to $4 million estimated cost for such work.
Redirecting that money could pay for more than double the number of affordable housing units than proposed at Fort Lawton. People experiencing homelessness do not have time to wait — rapid housing acquisition and new construction elsewhere would take months, not years.
Reforesting the Fort Lawton parcel presents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to deliver on what we all want for Seattle: greater climate resiliency, carbon sequestration, more affordable housing and expanded tree canopy. Discovery Park’s open spaces give refuge to people and wildlife alike, and its lush forests protect us all from climate change. Seattle should be expanding that most valuable natural resource, not diminishing it.
Philip Vogelzang is president of Friends of Discovery Park, an all-volunteer nonprofit organization that draws members from across our region.