It’s not surprising that Sound Transit is looking for a site for a rail yard for its light rail cars. However, what’s likely to catch everyone’s breath is the front-page news today that four of five sites for possible study are in the Bel-Red and/or Northup area.

Yikes! There goes the neighborhood.

Sound Transit insists that it hasn’t picked a site and that it’s only looking at possible areas to study. The fifth site, by the way, is in Lynnwood.

Sound Transit says it needs approximately 20 to 25 acres in a flat, rectangular shape and near light-rail track. Sound Transit says the following Bellevue areas meet those criteria:

n West of 120th Avenue Northeast and east of the BNSF tracks,

n Between 130th Avenue Northeast and 136th Avenue Northeast and south of State Route 520

n Between Northup Way and the planned light-rail in the Bel-Red corridor

n West of 148th Avenue Northeast and north of Northeast 20th Street

It should be obvious that any site in the Bellevue/Overlake area will come at a price – a very high one.

One large flat space west of 148th Avenue Northeast and north of Northeast 20th Street is the Fred Meyer complex. That’s an awfully valuable piece of commercial real estate to turn into a rail yard. The same could be said of land in the Spring District, which is slated to be used for offices, hotels and homes. It’s hard to picture a rail yard being any kind of a fit with these.

A number of the Bellevue sites on Sound Transit’s list might have made sense a decade ago when a lot of the land was zoned light industrial. That’s no longer the case as the city sees the Bel-Red corridor better used for mixed high-end development.

Sound Transit needs to be diligent in examining sites for its rail yard, but the Bel-Red corridor doesn’t appear to be a good fit.

– Craig Groshart, Bellevue Reporter