Seattle neighborhood placed on unfortunate historic places list

Seattle’s Chinatown International District, under pressure by past freeway and stadium projects, the city’s fentanyl crisis, and disputes over future transit stations, has been named to a list of 11 “most endangered” historic places by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

It’s the first neighborhood in Washington to make the list, as well as the only U.S. community settled by Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, African Americans, and Vietnamese people, according to the trust.

More challenges are ahead, as politicians controlling Sound Transit decide next year where to site a future light-rail station. Depending on the location and how it’s built, the project could afflict residents with noise, blocked sidewalks, dust and overflow traffic for a decade.

State and national trust officials will gather at 11:30 a.m. today in Hing Hay Park to announce the bittersweet distinction.

” The Seattle Chinatown-International District is an extraordinary place of cultural exchange and resiliency,” Katherine Malone-France, chief preservation officer for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, said in a statement. “It has rallied to protect its unique cultural identity from large-scale development before, and the community is joining forces once again to urge decision-makers to follow a more transparent, equitable process for transit development in the neighborhood.”

Philadelphia’s historic Chinatown has also been named to the list this year, said Huy Pham, preservation programs director at the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation.

The designation doesn’t come with money, legal clout or political protection. “It is a public advocacy tool,” Pham said.

Out of 83 Chinatowns identified nationwide, fewer than half remain, according to the national trust. Portland’s historic Old Town Chinatown is in decline, but Seattle’s district remains home to and 3,500 residents, for whom 56% speak English as a second language, 72% are people of color, and 20% are older than 65.

Next year, Sound Transit’s governing board is scheduled to make a final decision about where to build the new station in the 2030s, connected by tunnel to Seattle Center and Ballard. A site at Union Station was promised in a 2016 ballot measure as a giant hub where 60,000 people a day come and go between the new trains, the existing light-rail station, bus stops, King Street Station for commuter and interstate rail, and streetcars.

The board in March voted to prefer an alternate vision by King County Executive Dow Constantine and Mayor Bruce Harrell — move the hub north to Pioneer Square while building a high-rise “civic center” there, and another station south of the C-ID. This scenario, Harrell says, will reduce harm to what he often calls “this gem the entire state can be proud of.”

Transit Equity for All, which helped to organize Tuesday’s event, supports a Fourth Avenue South site between Union and King Street stations, after fighting a more-intrusive Fifth Avenue South version. Union Station would offer what member Betty Lau calls “access not only for the C-ID, but for the whole city.” Another faction in the community supports pushing it farther away, to Pioneer Square, saying a project in the C-ID creates risks of displacement.