By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor

If you live, work, shop, study, or travel through Fauntleroy, you should be paying attention to the upcoming project to replace and expand the Fauntleroy Creek culvert beneath 45th SW.

So far, the Fauntleroy Community Association fears, not enough people are, despite the inevitability that, as FCA president Frank Immel observed last night, “it’s going to be a real mess in the community.”

Above is our recording of last night’s hour-long meeting with the latest information about the project, presented by Seattle Public Utilities, hosted by the FCA as the first half of its regular monthly board meeting. Anticipating stronger community interest, FCA moved the meeting to a big room at The Hall at Fauntleroy and set out dozens of chairs – but only a handful were filled.

Here’s the slide deck used for the briefing (plus a few pages at the end regarding the California culvert, on which work will start no sooner than 2028, after 45th is complete). Briefing toplines:

SPU hopes to start work next year, after completing design this year. The project will convert a two-foot-wide pipe carrying the creek below 45th north of Wildwood [map], on the north edge of the Endolyne mini-business district, to a 14-foot-wide culvert carrying a “natural stream channel” so that salmon will have “the same view” they have in the open creek. As SPU’s project manager Jonathan Brown observed, the creek has great salmon habitat, but the current culverts – primarily at 45th and at California near the schoolhouse and church – are barriers preventing spawners from going upstream. (The California culvert is also scheduled for expansion/replacement, but not until after the 45th project.)

It’s not just a matter of size, Brown explained – the 45th culvert is almost a century old. So repairing it instead of replacing it is not an option.

Design consultant Tracey Belding spoke too. She said that along with replacing and upsizing the culvert, and improving habitat, the project also will improve maintenance access for SPU crews, and accommodate possible future increases in creek flow resulting from climate change. (The team reminded everyone that this isn’t a project the city is doing because of an idea somebody had – enabling fish passage is a federal mandate.)

The design points shown to the FCA board and attendees also showed restoration of habitat adjacent to the creek, replacing invasive vegetation with native plants. Evaluating the vegetation, including trees, in the area is necessary for “complex decisions” – Belding said they don’t want to do “too much tinkering with the ecosystem” and that they don’t just want plants to “survive” the project, they want them to “thrive.”

So what about those who live, work, study, and travel through the area? How will they not just survive, but thrive? 45th will be closed as a through street for up to two years between Wildwood Place and Director Street, the project team acknowledged. When they do that, they expect one-way Director to temporarily become two-way; they said SDOT wants to install an all-way stop at California/Director, too. (One attendee suggested that would be better as a signal, to reduce the chance of drivers ignoring it.)Back on 45th, they will likely have some kind of pedestrian bridge over the excavation. And the creek will have to have a bypass during construction.

They’ll be working year round rather than just during the “fish window” – otherwise it would take more like three years than two, the project team said. Early work could happen before the end of this year, such as power-line relocation. Also mentioned, they still have a plan for a “gathering spot” along 45th but it’ll be “much smaller than in previous renderings,” featuring specialty pavement with a stream theme, boulders and plantings, educational signage, and a streetlight.

Concerns were raised about other areas – the parking lot behind Fauntleroy Schoolhouse and the possibility this will overlap with Fauntleroy ferry-dock-replacement work (it probably will).

In response to a question, SPU said they would aim for a full community meeting this “July or August.” An attendee voiced concerns that in the meantime, people in the affected area “are not being heard.” Meanwhile, you can check in on the project website here.