The latest group to weigh in on the issue is the family that owns the Space Needle, but the Queen Anne Community Council, the Uptown Alliance, the Seattle Center and the Belltown neighborhood also have competing stakes in the outcome.
Jeffrey Wright, chairman of the Space Needle board, wrote the ETC Jan. 22 to say he was "disappointed and extremely concerned" that the planning excludes the existing monorail stop next to the Center House.
However, to include the existing monorail in the route presents its own logistical difficulties. The easiest way would be to shoot the monorail straight across the Seattle Center grounds from Thomas Street to the Experience Music Project site.
Speaking at the Queen Anne Community Council transportation committee meeting last week, ETC council member Craig Norsen insisted the newly drawn green lines on a route map were only subjects for discussion, but one showed an alignment cutting straight across the Seattle Center.
"The geometry doesn't work very well," Norsen conceded. He also said Seattle Center officials are not very supportive of the idea. Indeed, said Seattle Center spokesman Perry Cooper, such an alignment would block the view from the Seattle Children's Theatre across the below-grade Fisher Pavilion that is now under construction.
"We're more than supportive of the Elevated Transportation Company," he added, "but the (cut-across) route wouldn't be consistent with our Master Plan." Open space, Cooper noted, is a key feature of Seattle Center Master Plan, the product of around a dozen years' work.
The Queen Anne Community Council would like to see the route connect the Elliott Avenue West portion to Belltown via Harrison Street, First Avenue North and Denny Way.
Transportation committee chair John Coney said a stop should be located across the street from Key Arena on the corner of First Avenue North and Harrison Street. The Queen Anne Plan, he added, calls for a transportation hub to be established there.
One of the new proposals would offer a variation on that route by taking the monorail from Harrison Street across the Key Arena plaza to the southwest corner of the Key Arena and down Warren Avenue to Denny Way.
One existing proposal for connecting Denny Way to downtown would be on Second Avenue, but the Belltown Community Council thinks that alignment is a terrible idea, said ETC spokesman Ed Stone.
"But we're still going to look at it," he said.
Belltown would prefer the route go down Fifth Avenue, where the current monorail runs, Stone said. That means the existing monorail would have to be demolished or somehow connected to the new monorail system. It is unlikely there would be room for two systems.
Norsen said the ETC council is on the verge of selecting routes to include in an environmental-impact study of the 14-mile system, but he added that nothing has been decided yet.
Estimated costs will be a factor in the choices, and the ETC has also started to consider what funding sources to tap to pay for the monorail system, Stone said.
Options, he said, include a Motor Vehicle Excise Tax of up to 2.5 percent, a Motor Vehicle License Fee of up to $100 per vehicle, a rental car tax of up to 1.944 percent and a property tax levy of up to 1.5 percent of assessed value.
Both state legislative action and a public vote would be necessary to establish the taxes, Stone said, adding that he believes a combination of taxes will have to be used.
"I think it's unlikely it will be just one taxing source."
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