Some days, the high-pitched jackhammering construction noise from outside is so bad, Tara Tamaribuchi can’t work from her artist studio in the Inscape Arts Building on Seattle Boulevard. “There’s just something about that frequency,” she said. “It’s unbearable.”
Every week, Tamaribuchi vacuums up dark dust particles in her studio. Opening a book there often makes her sneeze.
This has been happening for five years, and Tamaribuchi believes it’s caused by construction of Sound Transit’s East Link Extension by the freeway behind the Inscape building.
With Sound Transit now considering building a second light-rail station on Dearborn close to the Inscape building, she worries the impact could be unbearable for artist tenants, forcing them out.
Tamaribuchi and the other tenants rent in a building that until 2004 served as the Immigration and Naturalization Services center in which many thousands of immigrants to the U.S. were naturalized, and thousands detained and deported. It was built in 1932 to detain and deport Chinese immigrants who arrived during the Chinese Exclusion Act.
Now, over 100 artists rent studios that were once detention cells for immigrants. The rent has been relatively affordable, a rarity for artist studios in Seattle. Tamaribuchi and other tenants find it meaningful to have a studio in a place connected to immigration history, the incarceration of Japanese Americans (whose community leaders were held there before being sent to prison camps during WWII) and proximity to the Chinatown-International District (CID).
Since 2021, Tamaribuchi and other tenants have been organizing to preserve the building as an affordable artist studio and cultural center that highlights and preserves its immigration history. She and others started a nonprofit to buy the building from the group of investors who own it.
While Sound Transit has not yet selected a location for a new light-rail station in the CID, its preferred alternative is on Dearborn near the Inscape building. The agency continues to study a Fourth Avenue option, but its most recent analysis cast doubt on it. David A. Peters, a consultant for Sound Transit, said during the November 14 meeting that Fourth Avenue was “not reasonably constructable.”
Sound Transit estimates that the construction area for the Dearborn Station would be the gas station site right across the street from Inscape, as well as on buildings and parking lots to the south and east of the building. Construction would last seven years over three phases.
It would first entail demolishing buildings in the construction zone, possibly relocating a gas line, then building a station wall and excavating the underground station with a tunnel-boring machine. In the final stages, Sound Transit would install station platforms, escalators, elevators, station entrances, roadway restoration and more.
Tamaribuchi and other tenants initially had concerns about Sound Transit’s plans to build a station on Fifth or Fourth Avenue. When Sound Transit proposed two stations north and south of the neighborhood as its preferred alternative, they were taken aback at how close the station would be.
“Looking at this new construction that goes all the way around, it’s like, oh boy,” Tamaribuchi said.
Friends of Inscape is asking Sound Transit to look into mitigation and building improvements, or help with relocation for artist tenants.
Sound Transit spokesperson Rachelle Cunningham said more information about potential mitigation and impact of the Dearborn Street Station will be available in the future Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the Ballard Link Extension. The agency will accept comments on the Draft EIS in 2025.
“We look forward to engaging with Friends of Inscape and others to address questions and concerns about potential impacts and mitigation, both during construction and in the permanent condition,” Cunningham said in an email to the International Examiner.
Through a nonprofit fiscally sponsored by the Northwest Film Forum, Tamaribuchi and others are fundraising to buy the Inscape building. The group is being advised by Cassie Chinn, former deputy director of the Wing Luke Museum. They have been working with the Cultural Space Agency, a real estate development company created in 2020 by the city to preserve arts and culture spaces and prevent displacement.
Last summer, Martin Hogger, CEO of MJR Constructors, said in an email to the International Examiner that the building ownership would be open to selling to the Inscape tenants group.
“Any sale would need to align with the returns our partnership expects,” he wrote. “Currently, our priority is to ensure the building is well-managed, fully occupied, and operating at market rates, which includes addressing delinquencies and ensuring all tenants are reliable.”
Topics: Arts, Transportation, CID, artists, Chinatown-International District