520 'ramps to nowhere' to be demolished

The ramps to nowhere – the structures near the Washington Park Arboretum that have been favorites of summertime swimmers for decades – will be torn down by 2016, the state announced Thursday.

Construction on the ramps was done in the 1960s for the proposed R.H. Thomson Expressway, which was to connect the Central District to Interstate 5, according to Historylink. But the ramps sat unused for years amid community protests, and the Thompson Expressway project was scrapped by the City Council in 1971.

Plans for an expressway along the east side of Washington Park to Empire Way – which had its renaming to Martin Luther King Jr. Way completed in early 1984 – began in the 1930s. The Washington Park Arboretum was designed in 1936 and by the 1960s, the Arboretum had lost about 60 acres of land to freeway construction projects, according to Historylink.

Thompson, the expressway namesake who died in 1949, was a city engineer who helped shape the look of Seattle through regrades and other efforts, and also helped created the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks, among other projects.

Here's more on the leadup to the ramps to nowhere by Jennifer Ott of Historylink.org:

The state envisioned a connection between this planned expressway and the Seattle Freeway, as Interstate 5 was then known. To that end, the highway department planned an interchange in the Roanoke neighborhood to connect with a roadway across the shoulder of Capitol Hill and across a bridge over Portage Bay to the Montlake neighborhood. An interchange on the Arboretum land would carry traffic between this new road and the planned expressway and, potentially, a new bridge across Lake Washington.

The federal government, which was funding a significant portion of the construction costs for the new Seattle Freeway, required that the city build a second Lake Washington bridge. The city wanted the bridge built alongside the existing Lake Washington Floating Bridge that crossed the south end of the lake. The state and federal agencies wanted to build the bridge farther north, and the Montlake neighborhood offered an attractive location for it. Unlike at the southern bridge location, the state would not have to tunnel through a hill to reach the lake from the freeway. Also, just south of the Lake Washington Ship Canal, the canal reserve purchased by King County in the late 1890s but unused, offered a relatively undeveloped strip of land across the Montlake Portage area. The federal government owned part of the reserve and the city and county owned most of the rest.

On March 8, 1959, the state legislature passed legislation removing the two blocks from the Washington Park Arboretum it had given to the University of Washington in 1939. The land included the marshy area that contained the Miller Street Landfill site. The Arboretum lost about 60 acres of land due to the project.

Read more of Ott's Historlink essay here.

Seattle Parks and Recreation is receiving $7.8 million from the state to make improvements at the Arboretum as part of the 520 Bridge replacement project, according to the Thursday announcement. The state says that money will be used to remove the ramps to nowhere as well as create a one-mile multi-use trail and area improvements.

The new trail is expected to connect to Arboretum Drive East, creating a two-mile loop within the park for pedestrians and bicyclists. It's also planned to be a link between East Madison Street and the University of Washington and Montlake.

The $7.8 million in funding comes after an agreement between the State Department of Transportation and the Arboretum and Botanical Garden Committee.

"The funding authorized by this groundbreaking agreement is the largest single amount ever dedicated to the Arboretum," Arboretum and Botanical Garden Committee Chair Jack Collins said in a statement. "It is exciting news for anyone who loves and uses our wonderful Arboretum."

Casey McNerthney can be reached at 206-448-8220 or at caseymcnerthney@seattlepi.com. Follow Casey on Twitter at twitter.com/mcnerthney.