Another Tale Of Two Cities

No, that is not the stunning skyline of beautiful downtown Fort Worth you are looking at here, or a completed section of Fort Worth's imaginary waterfront on its imaginary lake or imaginary island.

Speaking of Fort Worth, last week Elsie Hotpepper Took Us Back To America's Biggest Boondoggle where we learned that the pseudo public works project known as the Trinity River Central City Uptown Panther Island Vision, a vision Fort Worth has been trying to see for this entire century, now estimates it will take another decade to manage to dig a cement lined ditch, to add Trinity River water to, flowing under three little bridges, which took seven years to build, over dry land.

Seven years to build three little bridges. Over dry land.

About the same time Fort Worth began trying to build those three little bridges, another American town, Seattle, being boring a tunnel under its downtown, so that the earthquake damaged Alaskan Way Viaduct, which had long been a blight on Seattle's waterfront, could be removed.

That tunnel has been completed for three years. The Alaskan Way Viaduct is long gone. And the re-build of the Seattle waterfront is well underway, to be competed in 2025.

That photo at the top is from an article in today's Seattle Times titled Seattle Aquarium’s Ocean Pavilion will transform its focus and the waterfront.  

That photo is the first good look I have had of what a section of the Seattle waterfront looks like without the Alaskan Way Viaduct.

How is it one town in America can get big things done, whilst another town in America gets little done, in slow motion?

An excerpt from today's Seattle Times article shows a stark contrast between this ongoing project in Seattle, and what you might read in Fort Worth print media about its decades long project and its slow fruition...

YOU HAVE TO squint and use your imagination to visualize the finished product, but a transformation is underway on Seattle’s central waterfront. Where the Alaskan Way Viaduct once loomed, a walkway connecting Pike Place Market to Puget Sound is taking shape. The outlines of parks, playgrounds, bike lanes and a broad pedestrian promenade are beginning to emerge. One pier already has been rebuilt to welcome the public, and another is in the works.

Civic leaders say Seattle hasn’t experienced such a profound makeover since 1962, when the World’s Fair reshaped public infrastructure and propelled the city into the future. When the work is completed in 2025, foot traffic along Elliott Bay is expected to triple.

“This landscape that was dominated by a big, honking, gray, rumbling freeway will now be a massive public park for the people,” says Seattle City Councilmember Andrew Lewis, whose district includes the waterfront.

At the center of it all will be the Seattle Aquarium’s new Ocean Pavilion: a 50,000-square-foot exhibit space featuring sharks, rays and other animals and ecosystems from the tropical Pacific. Integrated with the city’s elevated walkway, the structure’s roof will be a public plaza with unimpeded views of the sunset and Mount Rainier. At ground level, a circular port called an oculus will allow passersby to peer into a 325,000-gallon coral canyon teeming with thousands of fish and invertebrates.

Projected to be done in mid-2024, the expansion is Seattle Aquarium’s most ambitious and costly undertaking since it opened 45 years ago in a wooden building at Pier 59. It’s a natural fit to anchor the waterfront redevelopment, Lewis says. The aquarium is already hugely popular, he points out, and the new building will enhance its ability to attract and educate new generations of visitors.

You reading this in the DFW zone, can you imagine reading an article in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram about such a project underway in Fort Worth? 

No. A town that takes seven years to build three little bridges over dry land, has some serious issues in dire need of being addressed...