City of Seattle plans to extend Pike Place market to waterfront

SEATTLE — As Pike Place Market celebrated the grand opening of its $74 million MarketFront expansion on Thursday, June 29, there was talk of extending the market to the waterfront in the near future.

According to the city of Seattle, we could see this happen in 2019.

The Pike Place MarketFront expansion is connecting the existing market with another popular downtown tourist destination — the waterfront.

“Imagine late next year, [or in] early 2019, this viaduct will be removed by the state of Washington,” Marshall Foster, who’s the director of Seattle’s Office of The Waterfront, said. “And we will build an elevated connection to a park that will span – from where I'm standing right now – across and bring you down right in front of the Seattle Aquarium.”

The city of Seattle told KIRO 7 that 10 million poeple visit the Pike Place Market annually, and about 4 million use the waterfront.

"It's almost impossible right now to get between these two places for very obvious reasons,” said Foster. “When that comes down, we build what's called The Overlook Walk.”

Instead of having tourists crowded up on the Western Avenue edge to look out at Elliott Bay, just imagine how nice it will be to walk down to the waterfront from Pike Place Market.

“Now that they're going to take down the viaduct, and they're going to connect the Pike Place all the way down to the waterfront, I think that's amazing,” said Chelsea Merkel, a Seattle resident. “[I think it’s such a good idea] because it's going to create such a connection between the city itself and the waterfront.”

Cox Media Group