The Elliott Bay Trail bike path is closed for construction work until August as Belltown’s Centennial Park gets an overhaul. The waterfront pedestrian path remains open and people biking are encouraged to use it as detour, so long as they yield to pedestrians. The work began in March, but only last week did the bike trail closure expand to the entire trail north of the Olympic Sculpture Park.
The work is being funded primarily by a group of philanthropists led by Mackenzie Scott and Melinda French Gates. A public-private partnership called Elliott Bay Connections formed to plan the work, which is happening on an aggressive pace to prepare for the FIFA World Cup matches that Seattle will host starting in June 2026.
“This week, we expanded the construction zone to include full length of existing bike trail in both Myrtle Edwards and Centennial Parks,” Emily Crawford, a spokesperson for Elliott Bay Connections, told The Urbanist on Friday. “So, from now until August, access through Myrtle Edwards and Centennial Park will be on a temporary multiuse trail using the existing pedestrian path. Bikes and pedestrians can enter and exit the trail at Beach at Expedia, Thomas Street Bridge and Olympic Sculpture Park.”
After the work on the separated bike trail concludes in August, work will quickly pivot to the waterfront pedestrian path and neighboring landscaping, closing that facility. That means detours will continue for people walking through the park, trail users should expect to share one pathway from August 2025 until May 2026, Crawford said.
The combined traffic could lead to crowding as the waterfront park swells with people over the peak summer season. People biking should expect a slower pace in the impacted sections.
The Port of Seattle owns this stretch of the waterfront park. Workers are maintaining pedestrian and bicyclist access through Myrtle Edwards and Centennial Park throughout construction, Crawford added, noting “work is being done in phases with closures scheduled to limit impacts on park users and sensitive fish and wildlife.”
The bike path refurbishing will not include a widening of the facility, although there is some hope that a few of the more awkward kinks in the trail will be ironed out, such as the blind corner behind the shuttered fishing pier bathroom, which will also be getting completely overhauled. In fact, the bathroom has already been demolished, in preparation for the new facility.
The improved bike facilities are sure to be an even bigger draw, which may have policymakers kicking themselves that they didn’t design wider bike lanes while they had the chance. As The Urbanist has noted on several occasions, Seattle is building a bike network that is not prepared to handle its own growing popularity. Wider trails and lanes could end up being essential in the not-so-distant future.
As part of its waterfront project, Elliott Bay Connections is planning to relaunch public fishing from Centennial Park’s fishing pier, which has been shuttered since 2016 due to structural concerns. They’re also envisioning a concession stand at this location and planning to introduce artistic projections on the Terminal 86 grain facility.
Additionally, Elliott Bay Connections is partnering with the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) to added a new multiuse greenway stretching three-quarters of a mile from Pier 62 (at the doorstep of Pike Place Market) to the edge of the Olympic Sculpture Park. That greenway will replace the old waterfront streetcar tracks, adding new landscaping features along with the multiuse trail. The project isn’t touching the street itself, which is part of the plan to expedite construction with the goal of being open by the World Cup.
Within the street, SDOT is building a protected bike lane on the waterfront side of Alaskan Way, but that connection will close when cruise ships are loading and unloading, pushing users to the greenway on the other side of Alaskan Way — or into the street if they’re brave or impatient enough to do so. That’s better than the original design, which would have included two separate street crossings on a permanent basis.
The Elliott Bay Trail is also getting a revamp through Interbay in a separate Port of Seattle project, which means trail users will see improvements (and construction detours) farther north too. That project will include the removal of the Terminal 91 trail bridge and the neighboring single-file pinch point that is often an annoyance for trail users.
The Alaskan Way Viaduct came down in 2019, unlocking immense potential for the waterfront now free of the hulking elevated double-decker highway and all the noise and pollution it brought, but the project benefits for people biking, rolling, and walking along the waterfront were some of the last to get hammered out and delivered.
The Downtown Waterfront Park’s new 1.2-mile protected bike lane just celebrated its grand opening in March, after some delays. The two-way bike lane was one of the last pieces of the $806 million waterfront revamp to fall into place. The Overlook Walk up to Pike Place Market opened in October 2024, shortly after the Seattle Aquarium’s new Ocean Pavilion opened. Later this year, a newly rebuilt Pier 58, the last major section of the waterfront park, will open.
While it’s taken a long while to get here, people will soon be able to enjoy a connected, refurbished, and protected bike and pedestrian path along Seattle’s Elliott Bay waterfront with even more attractions along the way.
Doug Trumm is publisher of The Urbanist. An Urbanist writer since 2015, he dreams of pedestrian streets, bus lanes, and a mass-timber building spree to end our housing crisis. He graduated from the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Washington in 2019. He lives in Seattle's Fremont neighborhood and loves to explore the city by foot and by bike.