MUKILTEO — Big changes are coming to the waterfront, starting next year.
An $11.7 million project to remove a 1,360-foot pier at the former tank farm site is to get under way in the spring. The project will bring construction trucks to a part of the waterfront that already is often snarled with traffic.
An open house is scheduled from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Rosehill Community Center so the public to get questions answered and to give the Washington State Ferries suggestions on how the effects of traffic can be reduced during construction.
“If they can take 15 minutes out of their day, they will get a lot of information,” said Nicole McIntosh, a design engineering manager for Washington State Ferries.
The pier removal will involve a barge at the site and construction traffic through Front Street and the Mukilteo Speedway.
One of the steps under consideration to reduce traffic is limiting construction trucks to 7 a.m. to 2:45 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Friday. Ferry traffic starts to build after those hours, McIntosh said. Some 3.5 million people use the Mukilteo-Clinton ferry each year.
“We’ve been operating down there for more than 60 years,” McIntosh said. “We want to continue to be a good neighbor.”
Pier removal will occur in 2015 and 2016. Work in the water can only occur for three to four months at a time, with a pause from mid-February to mid-July. The pier will be demolished in phases due to salmon migration, said Marko Liias, a policy analyst for the city. “In the short term, what residents will notice is most of the pier will go away, but some will remain,” he said. “That’s by design.”
The pier’s supports are coated with creosote. It was applied to the pilings to protect them from sea organisms. But cresote is toxic. The pilings represent 4 percent of the cresote in all of Puget Sound, McIntosh said. “It’s extraordinary what we’re taking out,” she said.
The pier removal is the first step in a $129 million project that will also see the terminal for the Mukilteo-Clinton ferry moved about a third of a mile east. The new terminal will include a pedestrian loading bridge, a six-bay bus center, loading space for 266 cars and improved connections to Sound Transit commuter rail.
Work on the new ferry terminal is to begin in early 2017 and be completed in 2019.
Open house
A meeting to discuss the Mukilteo ferry terminal project, which begins with the removal of an old pier at the Mukilteo tank farm, is scheduled from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Rosehill Community Center, 304 Lincoln Ave. in Mukilteo.
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