I’m not saying Speaker of the House Frank Chopp (D-43, Seattle) is mentally ill. I think he’s a cogent, straight-shooting guy. However, he is a little crazy when it comes to the viaduct. Pop psychologists say insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. That does sound a bit like Chopp. A couple of times now, engineers and architects have tried to mock up Chopp’s plan for a rebuilt viaduct. And each time Chopp’s disavowed the result.
Speaker Chopp has his own very special idea, you see. He wants to build an above-grade freeway enclosed in concrete (an above-ground tunnel) with a park on top. Seattle City Council Member Peter Steinbrueck, who has toured the waterfront with Chopp to discuss Chopp’s plan, says the design would be 100 feet wide—two times the width of the current viaduct.
Steinbrueck, no fan of a rebuild but sincerely interested in giving Chopp’s idea a “fair shake,” organized a weekend powwow of local architects. The meeting was set for February 17, but was cancelled. Sources say Steinbrueck’s advance criticism of Chopp’s plan (Steinbrueck says it would create a “hostile and barren wasteland”) caused Chopp to back out. Chopp says Steinbrueck’s comments never came to his attention. He says the meeting was cancelled at Governor Gregoire’s request because the process for designing the rebuild hasn’t been set yet.
Either way, it wouldn’t be the first time Chopp’s viaduct specifications caused a stir.
A source who saw a set of color drawings of Chopp’s plan two weeks ago—a cross section and an aerial view done by international engineering and construction firm CH2M Hill after they heard from Chopp in December—called the mockup “hilarious” and “ginormous.” The source says it featured three lanes in each direction in a tube with a 20-foot-wide crossbeam dividing the two sides. “The aerial view looked like an elongated Central Library,” the source laughed. CH2M Hill’s renderings showed the big box design “buttressed up against Western Avenue and stretching to the pier.”
Chopp says there was “a guy from CH2M Hill” at a meeting where Chopp talked about the rebuild, but that Chopp never asked CH2M Hill to do any work for him. CH2M Hill, however, started work on it according to another source familiar with the renderings—and called Chopp with troubling questions about design and price (over $5 billion when you factor in risk and inflation). Chopp did not talk to them, he says, and has not seen their drawings. CH2M Hill did not return my calls.
The source says CH2M Hill’s mockup was “eerily similar to drawings done last summer—same Chopp instruction, same Chopp design.”
Indeed, last Spring, Chopp got the Washington State Department of Transportation to try designing his rebuild. While not complete with CH2M Hill’s Pixar-like images of people strolling about, WSDOT’s rendering featured a similar giant concrete box that obliterated the waterfront. Chopp disavowed the work. “They did not represent any of the ideas I shared with them,” Chopp told me. 
