SEATTLE — With their brightly lit elevated platforms and panoramic windows, the Vancouver, B.C., SkyTrain rail stations are just the sort of landmarks monorail planners hope to duplicate here, the Seattle Times reported.
So last night, the Seattle Popular Monorail Authority picked the Vancouver team — VIA Suzuki Architects — to oversee design of the $1.75 billion, 14-mile Green Line connecting Ballard, downtown and West Seattle.
VIA’s lead architect, Alan Hart, also has designed the redevelopment of high-rise housing near the waterfront and parks, and GM Place Stadium, at False Creek in Vancouver. And he participated in designing a cable-stayed SkyTrain bridge across the Fraser River that could be a model for a Ballard monorail bridge.
“What we liked about VIA is they have so much directly relevant experience and they clearly understand exactly what the task is and how to organize it, and they’re clearly ready to go,” said Craig Norsen, a monorail board member. “They know what the issues are going to be in the neighborhoods, they know how to build an elevated guideway.”
However, the SkyTrain columns are as huge as those used in freeway ramps, while the monorail plan calls for a mere 3-foot width. Hart said yesterday that goal is achievable because monorail trains are lighter than SkyTrain’s conventional rail trains.
A prominent Seattle design expert, John Pastier, wonders if monorail planners are moving too hastily after a narrow victory at the polls in November. Design teams were given two weeks notice to submit proposals for a Dec. 9 deadline, and a requirement of local experience excluded creative minds elsewhere in the world.
“Are they the best?” he asks regarding VIA. “Are they in the top 10?”
The monorail group sought a design leader who can thrive under scrutiny from Seattle’s neighborhood activists. “To do a worldwide search doesn’t support that objective,” Norsen said.
Last year Hart’s firm, then called VIA, opened a Seattle office, and later merged with Seattle-based Suzuki Associates Architects. It will coordinate with several architecture firms on various pieces of the monorail project.
The contract will be worth millions of dollars but an amount is yet to be negotiated. If talks break down, the monorail authority could opt for one of two other finalists — NBBJ, which designed Safeco Field and countless other Seattle projects; and Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Partnership, designers for MAX light rail in Portland.