City acquires land for South Waterfront Greenway Trail

Title should really be: “City Acquires Land for Another Very Small Piece of South Waterfront Greenway Trail”.

At this pace, it will take forever to complete…

In any project it’s that last details that take the most time & effort.

It’s the 8 million dollar trail to nowhere. There’s a perfectly fine bike lane on Moody.

The trail will never extended further north as it crosses the ship yard’s launching dock and never further south as long as the Spaghetti Factory exists.
I really don’t see the point.

It’s a bit more than just a bike trail for $8 million. That includes all of the environmental cleanup of that area which is heavily polluted from past industrial use. Overall, it seems like a pretty good deal. The city gets the land, cleans it up and opens it to public use. In time, it will hopefully be linked to other parts of the bike/walking infrastructure to make it more accessible.

I thought the barge fabrication plant was planning to move? Which would free up the dock and allow the trail to continue (eventually) to Riverside Place. Ditto with the southern end.

What is the cost of this project in absence of the bike and pedestrian trail?

The environmental rehabilitation of this parcel is undoubtedly part of the requirements of the original development deal for this neighborhood.
Rather than simply cleaning up the area and planting grass they want to put in trails: good.

The true cost of these trails is the difference between the cost of planning, man and materials needed to install trails vs the cost of just planting grass.

This whole “$500,000; $1,000,000; $8,000,000” talk only serves to confuse the public and fuels the haters of public projects and anti-cycle activists.

Who said it was for us cyclists and not a private exercise path for the residents of southwaterfront. Tram.

@ #5: Homer Williams is getting the best deal here. He sold the land to the city for $1, the city pays $8 mill to remediate while he only has to chip in $200K, and in the end he gets a fantastic amenity for his contiguous development for almost nothing.

Sadly, this little piece of trail will mainly only serve well serve those buying (or not buying) buying Condo’s from Homer and Friends.

And further more, this little piece of property should have been deeded and cleaned up for this purpose before, or during, the clean up done for the rest of the area.

The city should not be paying for this now.
I bet the taxes we did NOT charge these builders would nicely pay for this project.

Oh yeah, too late.

One more thing, if Homer cruises anywhere near me again on his Segway while in the bike lane, I am gonna check him.

That trail actualley already passes on the riverside of the Spaghetti Factory.

@ Burr 9
Rage. You nailed it. Facts, commentary and all.

Jeff #4: As michael downes (#6) said, the city is planning to do a landswap with the shipbuilding facility some time in the next ten years, once they execute that, that land will be freed up for residential use and the city can (if it so chooses) send the waterfront trail further north.

IMO any additional trail building is a good thing.

Dillon has it right a path to no where or the comments about private exercise trail for South Waterfront. I will still be commuting along moody and bond with traffic. Millions wasted!

btw, since the ped path is outboard of the bike path, all those peds will be crossing the bike path twice to get there and back, probably not the best design…

BURR, calm down. All of the new waterfront developments around False Creek in Vancouver BC Canada have separated bike/ped paths, with the peds closer to the water. Works just fine IMHO.

Separate bike/ped paths were part of the greenway concept developed almost a decade ago when the City was negotiating with the landowners. Why wasn’t this connection and the obligation to complete the paths outlined in the developer agreements? The towers have been up for a while, but the extensive greenway used to sell SoWa to the public has yet to materialize.

I’m super excited for the separated paths — I love to bike and I love to walk, but I don’t love having bikes zipping past me when I’m walking. (On the other hand, I’m usually just fine zipping past pedestrians when I’m biking, so I try to keep that in mind when I’m getting freaked out by the bikes. Oh yeah, and slow down when I’m on my bike on a shared use path).

To recap: I’m excited about separate paths!

jeff
The trail will never extended further north as it crosses the ship yard’s launching dock and never further south as long as the Spaghetti Factory exists.
I really don’t see the point.

I worked next to the Spaghetti Factory for 5 years and rode my bike from Beaverton for that entire time. Spaghetti factory and the building next door (with Entercom and Clear Wireless in it) has a beautiful bike lane next to the river. The problem is the spring factory that causes the path to route around it’s building (nothing between it’s building and the river BTW). After Spaghetti Factory there is a sigh that indicates the bike lane is under construction.

Splitting hairs, i know, but the fault is with that spring company.

~n