At long last, Washington State Ferries' Colman Dock terminal building opens to the public
SEATTLE – The completed main state ferry terminal building at Colman Dock opened to the public Friday morning, and passengers began rolling through the facility. The expansion offers ferry riders more seating and waiting spaces, more turnstiles and additional restrooms just in time for the Thanksgiving travel week.
Plenty of work remains to be completed along the Seattle waterfront as part of the massive rebuild of the state’s flagship ferry terminal, but now the space where passengers will wait for sailings has fully opened.
“It has been years in the making,” said David Sowers, director of terminal engineering for Washington State Ferries. “We’ve been working on this project for over a decade in the planning, permitting, design, redesign and all of that. It’s real exciting for us to finally open the remaining two thirds of the building and celebrate this moment. Our passengers have been waiting for this, our crew that operate this building have been waiting for this. It’s very exciting, obviously it’s a beautiful facility, state of the art in terms of amenities.”
The agency said that the facility now meets current seismic standards. About 7,500 tons of creosote-treated wood were removed from Elliott Bay, and 500 new steel support piles were driven as part of the project.
The new terminal building has a north-south orientation and has large windows that offer sweeping views of Puget Sound and ferries as they sail into and out of the dock. The Bremerton and Bainbridge Island loading areas are located at opposite ends of the building, which will help with congestion, Sowers said.
“The old facility, if you remember, was oriented east-west, it was kind of cramped, it felt like a stockade and everybody was shoulder to shoulder,” he said. “This is obviously larger, more airy. It’s oriented north-south, so it has all these beautiful views of the water and the city skyline.”
Construction on the rebuild of the ferry terminal kicked off in 2017 and is scheduled to wrap up next year. Roughly $467 million in federal, state and local funding has been allocated for the project.
In 2019, the first third of the main building opened and has been in use since then. The full terminal building has about 20,000 square feet of space for passengers and has 362 seats, which Washington State Ferries said was triple the number of seats that were available in the old terminal building.
The remaining elements of the project to be completed include a new entry building on Alaskan Way and an elevated pedestrian connection into the main terminal building. Ten food and retail vendor locations will open at the terminal, and additional elevator access from Alaskan Way will also be added. The rest of the facility is expected to open in spring 2023, Sowers said, noting that eventually the temporary walkway that passengers have used to access the terminal building over the last few years will be taken down once a new, permanent walkway is completed above Marion Street.
Sowers noted a number of hurdles that the project has navigated over the last few years, including the pandemic, supply chain issues, a strike by concrete workers and inflationary pressures. During the early part of the pandemic, construction at the site was shut down completely for six weeks.
“The fact that we’re here today relatively on the original schedule – we’re scheduled to open up the rest of the facility next spring – that’s a huge undertaking for our crew,” Sowers said. “To be relatively on schedule is amazing.”
This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: Seattle's Colman Dock ferry terminal building opens to public
