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Sound Transit plans raise concerns in Chinatown-International District

Final decisions about the project are expected next year. People who live and work in Chinatown-International District say it is all happening too fast.

SEATTLE — On Friday afternoon, a Sound Transit committee held a special workshop to discuss the multi-billion-dollar project that plans to provide light rail connections between West Seattle and Ballard. 

But people who live and work in Seattle's Chinatown-International District, a neighborhood caught in the middle, are raising concerns about how the construction and design could impact them.

Final decisions about the project are expected next year. The people that could be most impacted say it is all happening too fast. Businesses in this neighborhood are sending letters, asking Sound Transit to extend the deadline and take more time to study the impacts in partnership with community stakeholders. If that does not happen, some in the neighborhood fear it will never be the same.

Chinatown-International District is home to so much history. Tour buses drive through the neighborhood. Visitors stop to take pictures. However, it means much more than that for Lydia Lin. The neighborhood is where she makes a living and it is a place that she loves. 

Lin owns Seattle Best Tea Co. and has had a business on South King Street for more than 25 years. But that could soon change.

"This is not good news for us, for Chinatown,” said Lin.

Lin is referring to Sound Transit's plans to expand in the agency’s Draft Environmental Impact Statement. It includes options about where a tunnel could go with construction possibly happening on Fourth Avenue, the neighborhood's edge, or Fifth Avenue.

"If you decide Fifth Avenue, the whole building - flat - no more,” Lin said.

She said the building her business is in would be among the properties demolished to make room for the project.

In a letter to Sound Transit, Uwajimaya, a nearly 100-year-old family business and anchor in the community, describes Fifth Avenue as the neighborhood's cultural heart. In the letter, the business states, "the 5th Avenue alternative options would once again marginalize this important minority community."

A final decision from Sound Transit about which direction to go is not expected until next year. But in the neighborhood, some minds are already made up.

"Fifth Avenue is culture, Chinatown. We don't want to move anything,” said Lin.

According to Sound Transit, there will be opportunities for public comment when this issue comes to the Committee and Board for discussion and action later this summer.

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