SEATTLE, Wash — Seattle’s cruise season starts Saturday, and the port estimates roughly 1.4 million people sail out of the Emerald City this season.
To prepare for them, construction workers on Alaskan Way are working around the clock to finish some long-anticipated project elements on the Seattle Waterfront.
“All of the Waterfront has been torn up,” said David Sowers, director of terminal engineering at Washington State Ferries. However, he said the public will soon get to enjoy the finished products.
As KING 5 learned two long-anticipated project elements will soon become open to the public, including an alternative to the steel-plated pathway beneath a makeshift construction tunnel near the Seattle Aquarium on Alaskan Way.
The city's Waterfront Seattle Project team said that drivers through the construction chokepoint near the aquarium will soon get some relief: a team member told KING 5 Tuesday that they, “do expect to open Alaskan Way near the end of the month.”
Iris Picat, a team member with the Waterfront Seattle Project, added, “There will be two vehicle lanes in each direction to support freight movements, finally able to traverse between industrial areas south and north of downtown without getting interrupted by train crossings at Broad Street.”
She said Alaskan Way will also have new sidewalks and protected bike lanes, and more information will be available in the next couple of weeks.
Down the way slightly, construction professionals are also hard at work on the $467 million Colman Dock project, which has been in the works by Washington State Ferries for about six years now.
Before the end of summer, an entry building for pedestrian ferry riders will be opened, as well as an elevated walkway.
“I’d say, optimistically, mid-May,” Sowers said. "This is all sort of that lead-up, that connects that building to Alaskan Way and involves this elevated walkway.
"The public will enjoy it. There’s obviously gonna be a new promenade here that the city’s constructing… you can see where they’re putting sidewalks in. There’s gonna be bicycles, they call them cycle tracks. That sidewalk will widen out, and then there’ll be parking along here.”
He said they will spend the rest of the year finishing up concrete work on the ground level and removing the temporary steel pedestrian bridges.
“And people will kind of start forgetting all this construction that was going on,” Sowers said.
Sowers said he expects the Marion Street pedestrian bridge to be completed by Labor Day. That will provide a direct connection between 1st Avenue and the ferries.