Update note: Ron Sterling's comments in response to the county's plan can be found towards the bottom of the story (if you happened to already read the original version).

King County’s plan to install a one million gallon underground storage tank on private property to the east of Lowman Beach Park has been in discussion since 2009, with citizens and the county alternately butting heads and working together on the project intended to reduce combined sewer overflows from the Murray pump station into the Puget Sound.

The most recent outcry comes from a website called “What Now West Seattle?,” focused on issues of recreational access with the county’s (and SDOT's) plan to reduce road width at the popular access point to the Sound and northern Lincoln Park. The website is run by Ron Sterling, a resident living in the direct vicinity of Lowman. The web address is http://whatnowwestseattle.wordpress.com/.

Sterling states his concern as follows on the website:

“You may want to protect your traditional uses of this park and roadway area. Currently, the plans for the roadway fronting Lowman Beach Park are to narrow the street and to provide no safe turn around area other than driveway turn-arounds, which will force drivers to continue to back into busy pedestrian and bicycle traffic. There are no plans to widen the sidewalks in compensation for the narrowed street. There are no plans to make it easier for kayakers and other small craft users to offload equipment easily, without double-parking in the street. In other words, King County is taking but not giving anything much in return. And SDOT and Seattle Parks are right there with them.

“Current plans will compromise access and safety for bicyclists, walkers, runners, kayakers, and other recreational users of the park and Beach Drive, which leads to the north end of Lincoln Park,” Sterling contends.

There have been many meetings, alternative locations proposed (including the county’s initial plan to install the tank at Lowman Park that was not well received by the community), and the formation of a community advisory group to help shape the project.

While members of the resident advisory group have made strides in working with the county (and city) on plans for landscaping, art installations and a stairwell from Lincoln Park Way S.W. to Beach Dr. S.W. (to make the facility more attractive and user friendly), the website “What Now West Seattle?” is going after what Doug Marsano, project manager from King County’s Wastewater Treatment division, calls a request that started with the residents and recreational users of the park.

“By narrowing the street and by adding some curb bulbs at the top of the street, the hope and expectation is that we will be able to drive more traffic up the hill, up Lincoln Park Way S.W., towards the ferry terminal and have less people confused …,” Marsano said, leading to less congestion and, ideally, more space for recreational users of the area.

He said the narrowing of the road from 38 to 25 feet “is basically to respond to an inquiry we had from the community (who) expressed a clear interest in having some traffic calming measures included in this project.”

Marsano said parking and sidewalks on both sides of Beach Drive will be maintained, and that Lowman Beach Park users they have spoken with, both pedestrians entering Lincoln Park and watercraft recreationalists using it as an access point, did not have an issue with the change.

Patrick Gordon, a West Seattle resident living just south of Lowman Beach Park who is a member of the Design Advisory Group on the project, said the “What Now West Seattle?” website is not representative of the vast majority of residents and recreational users of the area.

“I’ve always embraced the idea of the project, and I think that is pretty universally felt around the community,” he said. “Nobody argues with the idea that we need to stop the overflows into the Sound.”

Gordon said he was initially critical of the Murray CSO plan (in terms of location), but has become a “strong supporter of the current design direction and concept,” over the course of two years, donating his personal time to help shape it.

While community advisers on the project universally rejected the idea of placing the facility in Lowman, Gordon said the county ultimately went with one of their proposed alternatives – the patch of land just east of the park between Fauntleroy Way and Beach Drive.

Gordon said he is pleased with the county’s attempts to calm traffic and make the facility jive with the existing area “and ultimately come up with something that was more about pedestrians and park users, more natural than built, and to come up with something that really complimented this pretty important space around Lowman Beach Park.”

Gordon said he is an avid cyclist and kayaker who uses the Lowman access point for those recreational purposes.

“I totally disagree with the statement that it is going to create a safety problem, that it is going to restrict the use of the park,” he said. “This exceedingly wide roadway that is there right now … people walk down the middle of the road, people ride their bikes down the middle of the road, people drive down that and there is no real clear delineation between what’s meant for cars and what’s meant for pedestrians and users.”

He said the changes, which will create parking on both sides of the road and define a clear driving path, will “in fact, expand the pedestrian realm and the recreational part of the park, and it is reducing the amount of the site devoted to vehicular movement.”

Sterling responds (update)
Sterling, the publisher of “What Now West Seattle?,” responded to Marsano and Gordon, saying the need for traffic calming and narrowing of the street along the dead end portion of Beach Drive is misguided and not based off actual research of driver patterns.

Gordon countered Sterling's point on two fronts: "The traffic calming requests were a consistent theme at numerous community forums – including all day workshops where multiple working groups came to the independent conclusions that narrowing the street was desirable. Mr. Sterling’s suggestion that the design is misguided and not backed by accurate driver behavioral research fails to acknowledge that the current design is SDOT’s recommendation based on City of Seattle standards for non-arterial streets in residential zones – of which this is inarguably one. A reasonable person might alternatively conclude that standards have been adopted for multiple reasons including, perhaps, to accommodate and encourage appropriate drive behavior."

Sterling continued: “The need to maintain the road at the current width, or if it is narrowed as drastically as Gordon and Marsano want, there would be two 12-foot wide sidewalks paralleling it,” he said in an email. “The idea that a one lane road running through the middle of parking on each side of it is going to improve and expand access for runners, walkers, recreational equipment off-loading, and bicyclists is, on its face, illogical and ludicrous.

“In fact,” he added, “it is all so wrong-headed that the only conclusion I can come to about such plans is that they are barely-disguised attempts to convert a long-standing recreational use of the street fronting Lowman Beach Park to something that effectively moves the neighborhood towards a more-or-less gated community.”

In response to Sterling's idea of creating a gated community, Gordon said the argument "fails to acknowledge the tremendous work that a broad community has put into creating a set of Guiding Principles and Common Themes that were principally intended to protect the character, recreational and passive uses, pedestrian access and quality of those special places. It was with this in mind that the community came together to shape the project as it has developed to date."

Sterling encouraged interested readers to visit his website and vote on poll questions related to the controversy.

The conversation will undoubtedly continue.

30 people living in two apartment buildings and four houses at the project location have been relocated, the properties have been purchased by King County, and the buildings will be demolished (after salvaging reusable parts) sometime in 2012 to make way for construction in 2013. They county will install the tank, put up a retaining wall, and build odor and electrical control buildings below grade. Construction is expected to be completed sometime in 2015, according to Marsano.

For more information on the Murray CSO storage project from King County, please visit their website.