The section of Ninth Avenue between Pine Street and Pike Street, near the Seattle Convention Center, reopened to traffic after an unusually long closure: the temporary mural left over from the August Market at the Marquee turned out to be much harder to remove than organizers had expected. On Wednesday, Sept. 23, workers painted over the artwork to restore the usual road markings and reopen an important approach to the I-5 express lanes.
The story of this block began as an attempt to give downtown a touch of summertime ease. In late July, Ninth Avenue was closed for Market at the Marquee, a series of Thursday events featuring food, music and local vendors. A pedestrian plaza appeared between the convention center buildings, while nearly 40 brightly colored circles and five broad white lines covered the roadway.
The plan was temporary. Under the terms of the permit, the street was supposed to be restored and reopened by Sept. 4. But after the August events ended, it became clear that the paint was holding much more firmly than expected. Attempts to remove it with graffiti-removal products and hot-water pressure washers produced inadequate results; in addition, the work began affecting the road surface itself.
For drivers, this was more than a harmless urban oddity. The short stretch of Ninth Avenue leads to Pike Street and provides a direct approach to the Interstate 5 express lanes. During the prolonged closure, drivers were redirected via Seventh Avenue. The Seattle Department of Transportation acknowledged that traffic could return only after the pavement was once again clear and safe for drivers.
By the end of last week, SDOT and the convention center had chosen a practical solution: rather than continue trying to remove the artwork completely, they would cover it with a new layer of paint, apply road markings over it and reopen the street. In a photograph from Sept. 23, Voltaire Valdez and Vaughn Fasavath are seen doing exactly that — a final, almost theatrical gesture in the brief life of the urban installation.
The decision to paint over the mural does not mean the pavement issue is permanently resolved, however. The long-term plan, previously reported by the transportation department, calls for grinding away the remaining paint, repairing the surface and then repainting the markings. The timing and cost of that work have not been publicly specified.
There is a small Seattle moral to this story: a street can become an open-air living room for a month, but it remains a street — with routes, highway ramps and an obligation to be legible to people moving through it. The bright circles on Ninth Avenue were intended as an invitation to linger; in the end, they had to give way to the white lines that keep the city moving.
Based on: Ninth Avenue in downtown Seattle reopens after street mural is covered up