There is an ironic situation on the Seattle waterfront: the Port of Seattle has become the kind of obstacle to economic development it was created to overcome.
About 100 years ago, the railroads had a lock on the waterfront. Their arrival had connected Seattle to the rest of the continent, but they were strangling waterborne trade. In 1911, the community formed the Port, which went on to build new docks at Salmon Bay, Smith Cove, Bell St., and south between the railroad tracks and Elliott Bay.
Today, however, about 250 acres of that land, stretching from Interbay on the north to the mouth of the Duwamish on the south, sits vacant, paved over, and locked behind high fences. There is enough land here to build three Seattle Centers, and if just one of these properties, Terminal 46, were overlaid on downtown, it would stretch from First Ave. on the west to I-5 on the east, and from Pine St. on the north to James St. on the south.
Mandated to serve as the lead economic developer for Seattle and the surrounding areas, the Port could reuse that land to attract new investment to the region. But, rather like the railroads, the Port is now an impediment to commerce, because it is sitting on its holdings while doing nothing to redevelop them…