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Impasse on Aurora Underpass
By Unknown Writer #1
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"I'm annoyed by the entire thing," he says.
When the City of Seattle's Transportation Department (SEATRAN) acted on recommendations by the Aurora Avenue Merchants Association to retain closure of the underpass, some business owners worried they'd lose customers unable to cross the busy highway.
David Chew, Bridge Maintenance and Operations Manager for SEATRAN, describes the structure as a concrete walkway with tiled walls accessed by entering a staircase from either side of Aurora.
One side opens at the entrance of Chubby and Tubby, who Johnson says favored the closure because "shoplifters would escape [through the tunnel] and they didn't want to pay for added security."
Johnson frets about jaywalkers trying to reach his coffee shop on North 79th Street. "It's inevitable that someone will get hurt or killed," he worries.
He says there's no way to get across Aurora "between 76th and 80th" although patrons "could walk up to 80th and wait ten minutes at the pedestrian cross walk."
The underpass, city property located on state-managed Highway 99, was closed about one and a half years ago by locking both gates.
"It's a perfectly functional public facility," says Johnson. "Their arguments...about...perverts grabbing children on their way to school...are utter rubbish. How many parents let their kids cross Aurora on their own?"
According to Faye M. Garneau, Aurora Avenue Merchants Association Executive Director, the tunnel presented a danger "to the children in the area."
"That underpass became a magnet for drugs and prostitution, of homeless...and...[shoplifters]. The Association was taking out sometimes three bags of garbage every day."
About a year ago, Johnson wrote a letter to SEATRAN requesting the underpass be reopened so SEATRAN asked the Association to investigate.
Garneau "personally" queried businesses in the area and found seven opposed, four in favor and three undecided.
She also met with the Bagley Elementary School principal who promised not to interfere "if the businesses felt they would want it open...but she would instruct her children not use the underpass."
Along with her report to SEATRAN, Garneau included a list of conditions for reopening: installation of fluorescent lighting throughout the tunnel, accessible telephones and locked gates at dusk.
It "seems a little bit selfish to ask SEATRAN to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars...when there's a crosswalk 100 feet from [it]," she says.
"Our biggest fear is that someone will get hurt..." Garneau maintains. "Both [sides] have valid points, but God forbid that someone should be assaulted in that underpass and there is no way to get help."
"We were all happy to get it closed," says Terry Horan, head manager of Chubby and Tubby.
"You would find needles down there...feces...It was just a very unhealthy thing."
For Horan, the problem is not escaping shoplifters but unsanitary conditions.
"People were afraid to go down there...With AIDS and everything, [what] if someone got stuck by [the needles littering the tunnel]?"
"All I'm asking for is a bit of objectivity," complains Johnson. "I personally spent a long time on [the telephone] with a lot bureaucrats trying to get someone to look at it with no success."
"We did a pretty extensive investigation earlier this year after he asked us to open it, " rebuts Chew. "We talked to a lot of people in the area: schools, the Aurora Avenue Merchants Association, Phinney Ridge Community and the Seattle Police Department. The consensus was the people didn't want it reopened so we made that determination."
"For now," he says firmly, "we're going to keep it closed."
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