Xinghai Park (Photo by Han Bui)
Size matters – especially in Seattle’s Chinatown International District (CID).
Especially now that the community is under threat again – this time through the expansion of the transit hub through the Sound Transit project and the potential closure of parts of the CID for up to ten years.
With two options, community advocates worry that if Sound Transit chooses the Fifth Avenue route, the CID will fail again.
The construction of I-5 in the 1960s took up a large chunk of CID, literally and figuratively divided the community in two, and destroyed many Chinese and Japanese-owned businesses and homes.
In 1941, part of the CID was demolished to create the Yesler Terrace community.
In 1886, Seattleites came to the neighborhood with guns to drive away residents
External forces continue to shrink the size of the CID again and again.
A smaller CID means fewer people and residents, fewer businesses, fewer voters, and therefore less political power and less money.
Yes, size matters in CID.
On top of that, this latest Sound Transit project poses a threat to the overall health of residents, especially seniors.
The CID has an average life expectancy of 79 years, seven years less than the longest life expectancy elsewhere in King County, according to Public Health-Seattle and King County.
The project will bring more noise. Sound Transit told Northwest Asia Weekly that noise levels from station construction are expected to be between 84 and 88 decibels within a distance of 50 feet. The American Academy of Audiology states that prolonged exposure above 85 decibels can lead to permanent hearing loss.
Not to mention pollution.
The CID, located along Yesler Terrace, is in the top 1% of the worst affected areas in the region, with high traffic volume, air pollution-related hospitalizations (asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, heart disease related) more according to the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency.
This new construction project means that dump trucks run every 10 to 15 minutes, 21 hours a day, into the CID to multiple staging areas, where they extract and load tunnel soil. That would mean a line of trucks waiting on Sixth Avenue, with their engines likely idling almost all of the time of the day — creating more air pollution in a neighborhood with one of the city’s most vulnerable people.
For generations, CID has been bearing the brunt of major urban changes.
When will the pain end, or at least, shared by other (richer? whiter?) communities?
