Concrete Jungle

The entire overpass shakes when freight trucks rumble across an
elevated strip of Edgar Martinez Drive South, over the train tracks
next to Safeco Field. Tractor-trailers billow diesel soot as they
approach the freeway on-ramp, while charging trains wail under the
steel-and-concrete span. It’s too loud to hear people speak. And
although most people would consider this a freight thoroughfare, the
Mariners and the public authority that runs Safeco Field have another
way to describe this and three other nearby places: a park and open
space.

In a lawsuit that will be heard in King County Superior Court on May
11, the Mariners will argue that a proposed Déjà Vu strip
club shouldn’t be allowed near the stadium under a 2007 city law that
prohibits adult cabarets within 800 feet of schools, community centers,
and parks and open space. The club, which the city permitted in
December, would be about 400 feet from Safeco Field. Although the
Mariners have argued that’s too close for the kids who attend baseball
games and other functions, the city council rejected that argument in
2007, when it declined to include a special buffer zone around Safeco
Field in the strip-club legislation.

Having never thought of Safeco Field nor anything near it as
parklike, I asked Mariners spokeswoman Rebecca Hale to give me a tour
of these four “parks.”

Wearing a blue parka and a dour face, Hale first took me to “Safeco
Plaza,” a 60-foot-wide sidewalk south of Safeco Field. A man sat on a
bench, wolfing down a sandwich, and Hale pointed out he was using the
area like a park. However, during the team’s 81 annual home games, this
“park and open space” fills up with buses, which use the plaza for
overflow parking.

The stadium itself, the lawsuit argues, also constitutes nine acres
of open space. But unlike most comparably sized open spaces, it’s only
open to those who pay to enter. Inside, the rules are also quite
different than a public park or community center: People can drink
beer, for example, but they can’t legally panhandle or circulate
petitions—activities protected as free speech in public
parks.

“Edgar Martinez Plaza,” an asphalt lot surrounded by a chain-link
fence, is the third “open space.” Its three gates are padlocked shut.
The expanse is “attuned to passive recreation, such as people watching,
sightseeing, and photography,” the Mariners’ lawsuit says. Hale
mentioned that in years past, Ivar’s sold fried fish under a canopy in
the corner of the lot, but this year the parking lot will remain locked
because the state has a lien on the property.

The final “park” is the aforementioned overpass, which is
technically a portion of the Mountains to Sound Greenway (MSG), a
patchwork of trails running from the Cascades to Elliott Bay. Even MSG
spokeswoman Amy Brockhaus could not say conclusively whether the entire
trail, which includes the bike lane across the I-90 floating bridge,
was a park or open space. “I’m going to get myself in trouble either
way I answer,” she said. “I think it’s a street.” And Brockhaus says
technically she considers “all of Seattle to be part of the
Greenway.”

Of course, the Mariners aren’t pushing this lawsuit because they
love parks (or asphalt). The team is trying to claim the moral high
ground in its battle against Déjà Vu. In the petition
filed in December, the Mariners said strip clubs have “adverse impacts
repugnant to a family entertainment environment.” However, the lawsuit
never explains how legal activities inside a building a half block away
from the stadium would negatively impact kids, nor does it convincingly
argue that an asphalt lot, a busy street, a sidewalk, or a private ball
field are actually parks.

“We think we can make a pretty compelling case that [these sites]
are not… parks,” Peter Buck, the attorney representing
Déjà Vu, said.