Megagalleria
I’ve ridden my bike under this thing more than 800 times and somehow have remained lethargically ambivalent about it. Sure is big and fancy all glistening in light and shadow.
When it was completed back in 2001, some folks — most notably Peter Steinbrueck — were not so equivocal. The main gripe was that it blocked the view corridor from Capitol Hill down to Elliott Bay — true enough. And the fallout has made it far more difficult to get new street overpass structures approved in Seattle.
The other major flaw in this “galleria” is that it doesn’t do much other than look interesting. Ideally, the goal of putting up such a structure would to form a comfortable urban room below, where people would gather, out of the weather, to window shop or sit at cafe tables spilling out on to the sidewalk. But this one has an inherent defect — it’s out of human scale — too high and wide to create a cozy sense of enclosure. And besides, there aren’t enough street-oriented businesses along that block of Pike to sufficiently activate the street. The Convention Center is an internally focused use.
It does block the rain. A nice perk for conventioneers walking to a cab, but when it’s raining in Seattle it’s also usually too cold to hang out at a sidewalk table. And when it isn’t raining we crave the sun, but get robbed by overhead structures.
Huh, maybe I don’t like this thing after all.