Sound Transit, Broadway Station

Today after work, we (and about 130 other people) headed over to SCCC to listen to Sound Transit talk about the upcoming Broadway Station. This meeting was there to tell the public about the design of the station, it's impact on the neighborhood, the landscaping and the art.

For the most part, the station entrances are glass, green walls (like the Capitol Hill Library) and masonry. Special attention has been paid to provide plenty of light and a clean look. They mentioned the spirit of the neighborhood a lot, but on the walk home, I didn't really see a lot of buildings with enormous windows letting in natural light or big glass walls. Maybe they know more about what's going to happen with the monster condo projects planned in between now and then.

They talked about the truck routes that will be taking away the debris from knocking down 2 blocks worth of buildings, and although efficient (going up Denny and coming back down Olive to the freeway), I'm not looking forward to crossing two lines of dump trucks in a hurry on my way to work. One question from the audience asked about putting in a stoplight crosswalk at Olive and Boylston, and the danger of that particular intersection. I cross that street pretty much every day, and I have to say, that's probably a good idea. I hate that intersection. It's dangerous. In fact, the route crosses two of the most dangerous intersections on the hill. It's going to be an adventure.

They talked a bit about trees, and I mostly blanked out. I don't know what kind of trees the architect was talking about, and it's pretty hard to tell with the artwork (and even worse with my pictures of the slides... sorry). We have lots of trees on the hill, and they're going to keep it that way. At one point, she mentioned that they're going to replace three trees they're knocking out of Cal Anderson with 6 additional trees. They're not knocking down the "important tree" at the entrance, which is good to know.

What got a rise out of pretty much everyone was the art. Mike Ross, the artist who built Big Rig down at Burning Man this year sort of fumbled through his thought process, talking about how Seattleites (he's from Brooklyn) love nature, and how he googled "What I love about Seattle is" and got a lot of hits on rain. He talked about descending into the huge station, and how it was like coming through the clouds. Then he dropped the bomb. He's making his sculpture out of Fighter Jets. He'll be painting them pink and orange, cutting them up, and making natural shapes out of them. He had a picture of a Great Blue Heron (our cities official bird) , and although he said it'd be shaped something like that, I didn't walk away with a feeling that it would be a literal representation. I walked away with the knowledge that the largest and most expensive pieces of public art on Capitol Hill will be pink and orange weapons of war.

Here's my flickr set, which should have most of the slides, but the color is completely out of whack because of their projector. Awful really, but if you want the content, it's there.