North SeaTac parking lot proposal removed from consideration by Port of Seattle

The area highlighted in red on this map is what the port referred to as L06. It was considered as a potential 1500 parking lot to be used by North Satellite employees. Now this suggestion has been removed.

The Port of Seattle has “considered” the construction of a 1,500 parking lot that would have been built at North SeaTac Park. Westside Seattle told you first that the proposed parking lot would have displaced well-established BMX bike paths and disrupted wildlife in the park. SeaTac’s Assistant Mayor Peter Kwon and park naturalist Noemie Maxwell were both very vocal against the plan. The port has now decided to look for other alternatives for the parking space requirements for the airport’s planned northern satellite.

In a press release, the port said:

“At the beginning of this year, the port employees submitted the draft Federal Environmental Assessment (EA) for the Sustainable Airport Master Plan (SAMP) to the FAA for review. The EA’s review of the alternatives included the proposed surface parking lot at North SeaTac Park (L06) and considered alternative ways to meet the future parking needs of employees. In this draft document, the Port Environmental Service employees recommended that L06 be removed from further consideration and to investigate different alternatives.

The FAA agreed with our analysis and issued a notice today that L06 will be removed from further consideration.

The port staff made this recommendation based on the following points:

• Environmental concerns identified in public statements during the 2018-2019 scoping process;
• the staff’s finding that L06 was not the best path from an environmental point of view; and,
• the availability of an environmentally friendly alternative, which was identified during the preparation of the draft federal EA.

L06 is one of 30 projects that will be examined during the environmental review for the SAMP. The remainder of the draft EA is pending FAA review and public comment.

Projects identified by the FAA as eligible to meet SAMP requirements continue to be subject to state environmental auditing, FAA approval, public comment, and Port of Seattle Commission approval. Final approval of certain projects will not be given until all environmental assessments have been completed.

We continue to work with the FAA to finalize the federal environmental impact assessment draft. Once published, we encourage the community to provide comments on the federal environmental review of all proposed SAMP projects. The state environmental review will begin shortly after the federal report has been completed. “