MUKILTEO — After dropping plans to move the Mukilteo-Clinton ferry terminal to Edmonds or Everett, state officials have developed three options in Mukilteo that will be the topic of public hearings later this year.
They include:
•Leaving the terminal where it is and adding an ove
rhead ramp for passenger loading, relocating the passenger terminal, adding a new signalized intersection, constructing four toll booths and expanding the vehicle and bus holding area. This option would require moving the existing public fishing pier near the ferry slip.
Removing the terminal and relocating it further north. Highway 525 would be relocated on an extended and realigned First Street. The tank farm pier would be removed. Public parking would be added for 109 vehicles as well as a holding area for 216 vehicles. There would be a new terminal with overhead passenger loading, four toll booths and a maintenance building just south of the Port of Everett Mount Baker terminal. A commuter rail station would be included for Sound Transit.
Removing the terminal and relocating it to the north. The tank farm pier would be removed. This option is similar to the other but is further south of the Mount Baker terminal and doesn’t extend over Japanese Creek. It has less public parking and a shorter ferry landing slip.
David Moseley, assistant secretary for the ferry division, said a fourth option, to do nothing, is unlikely because of the age of the existing Mukilteo ferry landing. “The system is not building new terminals because of the need for vessels, but we have two aging terminals where we have to do something — Mukilteo and Seattle,” he told Port of Everett officials earlier this week.
Nicole McIntosh, a design engineering manager for the ferry system, said the Mukilteo slip was built in the 1950s. She said pedestrians are now forced to walk across a busy intersection and that the slip either needs significant remodeling or a new location for safety reasons.
In previous meetings, there seemed to be little interest in moving the terminal out of Mukilteo, she said.
Remodeling the existing terminal would take out the Ivar’s Restaurant because that’s where the overhead loading for pedestrians would be added. It would also require relocating the public fishing pier nearby.
The state is still trying to determine the cost of a new terminal, but a ballpark estimate puts it at between $100 million and $150 million, McIntosh said.
She said that the state had four public hearings during its last planning session and will likely have meetings in Mukilteo, Clinton and online to gather comments on the latest options.
The idea is to issue a draft environmental impact statement and gather comments later this year and come up with a final decision in the summer of 2012, McIntosh said.
Port officials were briefed this week because the port is trying to get ownership of the Mukilteo Tank Farm now owned by the federal government, something it’s been trying to do for many years. The area is the site of a former fuel depot and is where a new ferry slip would be located.
It also is an important historical site where Puget Sound tribes used to gather shellfish and where they signed the Treaty of Point Elliott in 1855.
In addition to the ferry plans, port officials learned this week that the Port of South Whidbey might get in the Mukilteo parking business.
John Mohr, Everett port director, said south Whidbey commissioners are considering buying land in Mukilteo to build a parking garage because parking near the Clinton terminal was hard to find.
He said the port didn’t have a problem with the Whidbey port buying the land but that he’d suggested they inform Mukilteo officials of their plans.
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