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Who pays for a new Seattle waterfront park?

caption: Seattle's waterfront.
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Seattle's waterfront.
Flickr Photo/Curtis Cronn (CC BY-NC-ND)

In the next couple of years the Alaskan Way Viaduct will be torn down and the Seattle waterfront will open up in a whole new way. Gone will be the elevated highway that separates Pike Place Market from the Ferris wheel and aquarium. In its place will be a new, large, waterfront park. But who should pay for that park? The property owners who live around it? Or all the people who will be benefiting from the new public space?

It's a question KUOW's Region of Boom reporter Carolyn Adolph has been asking. She joined Bill Radke along with Karen Gielen, a retired Boeing employee who lives near the waterfront, and former Seattle mayor Charles Royer. They discussed the Local Improvement District, why the city is considering it and how it will change the Seattle waterfront.

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