Businesses and community groups in Ballard are criticizing Seattle and Washington State Departments of Transportation for failing to adequately evaluate economic risks from what could be as many as 10 years of traffic headaches building an Alaskan Way Viaduct replacement.

Formal letters from the Ballard District Council, Seattle Marine Business Coalition and Ballard Interbay Northend Manufacturing Industrial Center, among others, contend that until such an assessment is completed, political leaders will not be making an informed choice about what replacement scenario for the aging viaduct is most suitable.

City and state planners have identified three construction alternatives for replacing the viaduct, whether that replacement is a tunnel or new viaduct. Those scenarios forecast construction to take between 6.5 and 10 years, with the shortest construction options requiring State Route 99 to be closed entirely from Spokane Street to Denny Way for three to 4.5 years.

"It's incumbent...to talk about economic impacts and they really haven't done that at all," said Steve Cohn, vice president of the Ballard District Council, who drafted the council's letter to officials arguing for such an evaluation. That letter raises a number of concerns with the Supplemental Draft Environmental Impact Statement, the project road map published this summer by the agency co-leads, the State of Washington and City of Seattle. Several of those concerns touch on the possibility that construction delays will force businesses, as well as residents, to burn up their productivity idling in gridlock or ferreting out alternative routes. Several other organizations both in Ballard and beyond raised similar concerns in formal letters to project officials.

Cohn said that city and state agencies had an obligation to develop such an assessment for inclusion in the final version of the viaduct replacement plan, due out next year.

"That's our expectation - the reason you have comments...is so those (concerns) are included in the final environmental impact statement," Cohn said

But according to the Alaskan Way Viaduct project director for the State of Washington, those concerns will not be addressed in a final environmental impact statement.

"The short answer is no. We're not planning on doing a broader economic analysis," said Ron Paananen, with the state's Department of Transportation.

Paananen said the main reason for not trying to quantify construction impacts to the community beyond the project boundaries was that the effort would be largely subjective.

"It's just hard to analyze and predict the impacts of this project on the economy with every thing else going on for the next 10 years," he said.

Paananen said that the state was hoping to release the Construction Transportation Management Plan before December, which measures vehicle traffic delays on a general level for the city, and more specifically for the area within the project boundaries - from South Lake Union to possibly South Michigan Street.

"People know traffic will be really bad, but what we're trying to do is improve that baseline...(answering) what are the options people have to get around," he said. But Paananen said that traffic study would not have an economic component considering areas as far away from the project as Ballard.

"It's not typically done but this isn't a typical project so never say never," he said.

John Kane, chairman of the Ballard Interbay Northend Manufacturing Industrial Center, was disappointed with the state's reticence.

"My first reaction is, it doesn't sound like a complete environmental impact statement," Kane said.

"They're talking about all this planning that's been done for what five years now? They're putting a lot of time and money in other parts of the (plan), why not this?

Kane disputed Paananen's claim that an objective economic assessment could not be done, and pointed to studies measuring local economic impacts done by the Port of Seattle in 2005 and City of Seattle in 2003.

Kane said that if businesses could not gain traction with the state on the issue, they needed to take their concerns to the Seattle City Council and mayor. A majority of the City Council recently joined the mayor in supporting the $4.6 billion tunnel replacement option for the viaduct, and further suggested that a surface-street-only option was better than rebuilding the structure, despite state estimates that such a decision would lead to mushrooming traffic congestion on Interstate 5 and downtown streets, even as the region is forecast for 30 percent population growth in the next 25 years.

Kane said indifference at city hall about an economic assessment would send a clear message to the local business community.

"If there is no consideration for impacts for business, they're saying 'sink or swim. You're on your own.'"

Kane further suggested that ambiguity about the fate of construction impacts was already sending ripples through Ballard's business community.

"I know Brian (Thomas, co-owner of Kvichak Marine) took a look at that. It was certainly a factor," Kane said.

Kvichak Marine has announced that they plan to relocate some of their business operations outside of Seattle in part, because of commuting uncertainties in the absence of a fully functioning viaduct. The Ballard-based company plans to find a new location to house approximately 100 full time employees who will build the next generation of aluminum-hulled response vessels for the Coast Guard.

Patrice Gillespie Smith, a spokesperson with Seattle's Department of Transportation, said that Kvichak's decision was unfortunate, but it was unfair to presuppose that businesses would be driven out of Seattle based on the "anecdotal evidence" of one company.

She said businesses in Seattle would be resilient despite the possibility of years of viaduct construction. She said the city had already conducted outreach with industrial businesses to get a glimpse into how they might react to such hardships.

"We've learned that businesses can adapt," Gillespie Smith said, referring to the survey, published this summer, of 35 industrial companies in Ballard and the Duwamish industrial area, asking them what methods they could use to mitigate viaduct construction impacts.

That businesses would adapt to viaduct construction was the first finding mentioned in the survey and it cited three adaptation strategies local businesses said they might employ, including using alternative routes to the viaduct and spending money on capital and labor to mitigate traffic delays. The final adaptation strategy mentioned in the survey for contending with viaduct construction was relocation of some or all business operations to regions beyond the city of Seattle; the adaptation strategy Ballard's Kvichak Marine is currently exploring.