Seattle Sustainability and Transportation Committee approves Occidental Avenue vacation

UPDATE: Instead of just the three members of the Sustainability and Transportation Committee, five Council Members actually voted. Mike O'Brien, Tim Burgess, Rob Johnson, Bruce Harrell, and Sally Bagshaw all sat through nearly two hours of presentations and amendments before finally tallying four in favor and one against. The lone defector was Sally Bagshaw, to the surprise of no one. It will now go to a full Council vote, needing just one more in favor, on May 2nd.

The original story continues below.

---

The Seattle City Council's Sustainability and Transportation Committee will once again meet today and, according to Chairman Mike O'Brien, they are "tentatively scheduled" to vote on the vacation of a one-block strip of Occidental Avenue to make way for Chris Hansen and company's multi-use arena.

The petition is the last item on the agenda, after a long list of appointments of new members to the Levy to Move Seattle Oversight Committee. They will then view presentations from the Seattle Department of Transportation's Beverly Barnett, John Shaw of the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections, Hansen's attorney Jack McCullough, Mark Brands of Site Workshop, and Council Central Staff member Lish Whitson. Whitson will present the Central Staff memo that lays out the proposed amendments to the petition.

If S&T Committee members O'Brien, Rob Johnson, and Kshama Sawant vote unanimously in favor of the vacation, the petition will then be passed on to the full council to make a final vote on next Monday, April 25. If it passes in a split vote, the full council will vote on May 2. If it fails, then we, as well as Hansen and his group, re-evaluate our options.

If no vote is taken today, the next available meeting to do so (barring a special session) would take place on May 3rd, pushing the full council vote out to May 9th (if unanimous) or May 16 (if split).