SEATTLE — In 2019, the Pike Place Market Historic Fee gave the inexperienced mild to renovate Victor Steinbrueck Park — the grassy overlook space on the north finish of the Market. The park wanted a whole overhaul to restore a degrading membrane between its grass hills and the parking storage under.
5 and a half years later, the work is completed and but the park stays shuttered. Whilst new additions to the Market and the waterfront under have come to life, the famed Seattle overlook stays caught in a standoff between Seattle Parks and Recreation and the historic fee.
At difficulty: the state of the park’s totem poles.
The poles have been eliminated for the renovation and wanted their very own restoration. They’re presently saved by the Parks Division at Fort Lawton, close to Discovery Park. The fee, which evaluations almost each change made to Pike Place Market, has insisted from day one which the park can’t reopen with out them.
However over the course of the park’s renovations, the 2 sides fell right into a struggle, first, over whether or not the poles is likely to be changed and, second, over the right approach to restore them.
The backwards and forwards has develop into heated at occasions, at one level going earlier than Seattle’s listening to examiner. Commissioners have accused the town of mishandling the poles and permitting them to degrade, whereas Seattle Parks insists it’s taking the required steps to chart a path ahead.
All of the whereas, the park has stayed fenced to the general public, properly past the town’s unique April 2024 goal.
As close by companies have grown annoyed with the standoff, Mayor Bruce Harrell is now saying he’ll reopen the park in March, earlier than the poles have been absolutely refurbished. The park’s continued closure has been a hiccup within the metropolis’s grand plans for a linked waterfront and Market, and Harrell stated the poles would return after it has reopened. The choice is finally that of Seattle Parks and Recreation, stated Harrell spokesperson Callie Craighead.
“While we appreciate the input of the Historical Commission and believe we have worked with them in good faith to show that we will restore and reinstall the poles, it’s approaching time to reopen this public park,” she stated. “We will submit another request to the commission while the pole restoration work is underway, but, ultimately, the City’s Parks Department retains the authority to reopen the park.”
Harrell’s plan may arrange one more struggle. The fee, which takes its job of Market preservation extraordinarily severely, has claimed authority over the park’s opening and says it gained’t budge till it’s satisfied there’s a binding plan for the poles’ restoration and return. To do in any other case could be, of their view, an abrogation of their obligation to guard the Market.
Seattle Parks and Recreation and the mayor know what they should do to win approval to open the park, stated Commissioner Sam Farrazaino, pointing to the town code regulating the fee. “If our Mayor and City Departments do not follow the law, I am not sure why anyone else would,” he stated.
Debate over authenticity
The park’s two poles — the Farmer’s Pole and the Untitled Totem Pole — have been put in in 1984, when it was identified simply as Market Park.
Designed by Marvin Oliver of the Quinault tribe, they have been carved with the assistance of a white man, James Bender. Within the years since they have been erected, the park was renamed after Victor Steinbrueck, who’s credited with saving the market from redevelopment. Till their elimination in 2023, the poles marked the northern finish of Pike Place Market — their again to Puget Sound, sentinels over the patrons under.
In 2018, a number of outstanding Native voices in Seattle — Colleen Echohawk and former Seattle Metropolis Councilmember Debora Juarez — started questioning the poles’ place within the park. They stated they didn’t characterize the extra native Native artwork kinds and argued that “welcome poles” — single figures with their arms stretched out — have been extra typical wooden sculptures within the space.
The historic fee, nonetheless, held agency that the park ought to reopen precisely because it was earlier than the renovations. On this context, they drafted their coverage stating the park may solely open upon the unique poles’ return.
“It’s the job of the commission to protect the authenticity of the use of the market and also the design,” stated Christine Vaughan, a former member of the fee. “These poles are representative of a particular time of Seattle’s history.”
The park’s restoration was delayed for a number of years by the COVID pandemic. Building started in late 2022.
As crews lastly took down the poles, they discovered them to have degraded round their base. Rotting wooden flaked off in giant chunks and the underside ends have been pulpy.
The parks division moved them to Fort Lawton. There, they have been laid down, outdoors. Seattle Parks noticed no downside with this, contemplating they’d been outdoors for 40 years prior, however the storage however annoyed the fee.
“If you walked in there you would think they were in a morgue,” David Steinbrueck, Victor Steinbrueck’s son, stated of their storage.
Craighead from the mayor’s workplace stated, “The city has taken careful steps to ensure the poles are restored properly, while completing all the other renovations of this special park.”
In 2024, the town instructed the fee they have been fascinated with changing the poles with a unique, unspecified piece of Native artwork — reigniting the controversy over authenticity that had died down within the years earlier than.
The fee stated no, pointing to their unique edict. Town took the query to a listening to examiner, who dismissed the attraction.
Because the struggle dragged on, so too did the park’s closure.
Restoration or rework
With it clear that the poles would certainly return, the subsequent struggle started: how they need to be restored and by whom.
Hanging over the method is the query of what constitutes upkeep to the poles and what’s a wholesale change. Seattle Parks, for instance, needed to fill a crack in one of many poles with epoxy. For the fee, this was an excessive amount of of a change with out in search of their approval.
“If the totem poles were still in place and they were just repainting some dulled color this would be different,” stated Heather Pihl, president of Pals of the Market.
In flip, the fee wrote a letter to the town, demanding that Seattle Parks stop any work on the poles till submitting correct paperwork with the fee.
“No physical alteration, reconstruction or restoration of the Poles shall be done until you receive a Certificate of Approval from the Commission,” learn the December letter.
Spokesperson Rachel Schulkin stated the division has fielded 4 proposals from Native woodcarvers to revive the poles. As soon as somebody is chosen, they are going to be transported to the workshop of the profitable bidder.
“Ultimately the carver will determine the needs and which restoration activities are needed,” she stated.
Closed for enterprise
For companies close to the park, its closure has develop into achingly irritating. Summer time got here and went and one of the best hours for consuming and consuming market-bought items on the park’s slopes handed by.
“I hear a lot of tourists being like, ‘We want to go eat in that area. Is there a way to access it?’” stated Grace Johnson, a shift lead on the close by Kitchen and Market retailer. “And it’s like, ‘Well, no.’ They’re not giving us a plan. It’s just waiting.”
Michael Teer has owned the Pike and Western wine store for 45 years and has been following the struggle intently. He finds himself extra sympathetic to the fee’s arguments and annoyed by the town’s actions, however assigns blame to each side.
“It’s a standoff that I don’t think should be happening for the greater good, because that park is important to a lot of people down here,” he stated. “And the fact that they are unwilling to budge, I think it’s on both sides … for me, it’s just a classic bad example of Seattle bureaucracy.”